Online Streaming Redux

by Dave on Oct 29, 2009 12:17 AM PDT in News Comment 41 comments

Blazersedge reader Justin was one of the potential beneficiaries of the Blazers' new online stream for games. After the game was done he wrote in with this report regarding its pros and cons.

I paid the $3.99 for the online stream (pimped by Mike Barrett during the game too). I fit into a niche market tonight (local resident with FIOS that hates all tv outside of Blazers so no digital converter box). I was pretty worried the stream would have problems, given Murphy's Law of Online Streaming: More people will probably come than you have predicted.

Some lowlights of the stream:

- Game says "channel not streaming at this time" for many users until about 7:30 left in the first quarter. This might be somewhat bearable in mid-season but this is OPENING NIGHT TIPOFF!

- I am a tinkerer by nature and spent some time experimenting with different browsers - bad idea: Through 3rd and into 4th quarter if you were disconnected, you would come back without sound.

- Periodic lag/video clipping throughout the game on high speed. Personally I never had the low speed option display video or sound with three different browsers.

Wondering if I just had a crappy computer? I don't, but I tried to contact tech support anyway. "Click for Live Support!"

Just don't plan to live to see it.

Waited for 30 minutes several different times. As tipoff was occuring the estimated wait time given to me was 73 minutes. Don't think I'm the only one with a problem here...

Seriously, 73 minutes? Pryzbilla was on the bench with 6 fouls by then I believe.

Obviously Justin's experience was less than ideal. Just as obviously people who have non-ideal experiences are more likely to write in than people who have ideal ones. Still it's apparent that there are yet hitches in the system. We're not trying to beat a dead horse here but I believe people are curious about how the roll-out went and how viable the service is at this point, considering you are paying for it.

If you have personal experience share it below. And be sure and see this post for links to many professional views.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

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I'm on vacation in Hawaii

But the place I’m staying at has a reasonably fast broadband connection. I payed for the whole enchilada (39.99) thinking that I’d get a decent discount, but I was absolutely unable to watch the stream whatsoever. I experienced garbled pictures, no sound, constant buffering, and the low quality stream never worked once.

Frankly I feel like I just got ripped off a little bit. IMO this stuff should have been worked out prior to charging people and well before the regular season tipped off.

I’m going to give it one more shot tomorrow night, but if it happens again I’m going to demand a refund; this is bush league.

by nikolokolus on Oct 29, 2009 12:44 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

That game won't be offered at all.

Only KGW games are included in the package. Next one is November 6.

Disclaimer: everything I know about basketball I learned on Blazersedge.

by pualo on Oct 29, 2009 1:21 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Kinda sad that pirates in their bedroom run a better ship than the good guys.

by prezofdeath on Oct 29, 2009 12:45 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

+1

"A bizarre and extremely rare hybrid Blazer/Laker fan, Timbo has always struggled to contain the Beast Within, like Dr. Jekyll, Bruce Banner, or Ted Kennedy." — Miled Animal

by timbo on Oct 29, 2009 8:19 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

-1

Sorry Prez. If the pirate streams were full HD and had the demand the Blazers got, they’d be destroyed. Their advantage is their load (since pirate sites aren’t exactly advertising, they’ll have less users) and the ability to do lower quality streaming.

I’m surprised everyone is all ready to roast the Blazers over this. As I noted in Ben’s front-page post about this yesterday, they’re offering refunds to take care of fans, and you know they’ll do everything they can to fix these problems, they likely just underestimated the number of users. I mean, this is the first NBA team to EVER do this. Of course there will be problems. They’ll try to expedite fixes.

by Timmay! on Oct 29, 2009 1:56 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

that's why it should be free

or sharply reduced during these ramp-up games. We knew it would be buggy to start, and so did they—and so charging $4 a pop for it is craaaa-zee.

Make it free or at most 99c a game, and people won’t get so tweaked about waiting for version 1.1. Think Hulu!

Game recap of the season opening win--at Loaded Orygun!

by torridjoe on Oct 29, 2009 4:09 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Hulu doesn't stream live events for a reason.

It wouldn’t be free (ad-supported) anymore if they did. They’d probably use akamai, and that’s too expensive to give away.

I appreciate the concept of “make it cheap to start!”, but that’s very idealist. It also wouldn’t give them a realistic view of the number of users to expect, forcing a whole different set of issues. It sure would be nice to the fans, of course. The same ones yelling that they didn’t get meaningless preseason games, while the team instead focused (reasonably IMO) on broadcasting all the regular season games in HD.

by Timmay! on Oct 29, 2009 6:32 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I Had A Similar Experience...

The game did not come on right away after I ordered the stream. There were several small buffering issues throughout the night where I would lose the feed momentarily.

I lost sound for about 12 minutes of actual game time during the 3rd and 4th quarters. I lost video between the 45th and 46th minute of the game. Obviously not happy when that happened especially considering the game hadn’t been decided yet.

Having said that, the picture quality was very good. I would compare it with League Pass Broadband in that respect. I didn’t try to rewind plays but that could be an interesting feature. Once they figure out the streaming issues I think it will be very good. I do think the price is a bit high right now when comparing it to League Pass but I will probably pay what they ask once Comcast comes on board for the full package. I don’t have cable so this is the best option for me.

However, I believe the Blazers will get it worked out and they went well above and beyond in terms of customer service when told of the problems. I was offered a refund for last night’s game, a credit for the next game (San Antonio), and 2 LOWER LEVEL tickets for a game in November. I was given a list of 5 games to choose from.

This response was obviously well above and beyond what I hoped for or expected. I’m glad that they are offering this service and am hopeful that everything will be fixed soon.

by FeelTheLove on Oct 29, 2009 12:52 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I recomend downloading the game by typing "nba torrents" into google. The first sight has the Blazers game.

The HD one has no sound, so get the SD version. It has the Houston commentators which makes it interesting to watch.

by BRoyInThe4th on Oct 29, 2009 12:54 AM PDT reply actions 1 recs

thanks a lot

The games are during the night for me, so being able to see them afterwards is great.

by egxf on Oct 29, 2009 1:56 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

They use the same infrastructure as LPBB/International LPBB, e.g. the RayV plugin, so they have the same issues

You should have about a 1.5 MBPS connection to have an uninterrupted stream – and still be able to BEdge/chat/etc.
At times it will buffer and then nothing, though that became better over the last year with ILP. In the beginning they had horribly fractured images every few seconds (JPEG blocks), but that problem also became much better.

When there is a problem with sound out of sync or no sound, hitting pause and then re-starting to force a refresh often helps. At times you have to restart the browser, and last year I had more stability when using Firefox over Safari that crashed all too often, this year I dunno yet.

But slowly things happen that they cannot help and the Blazers Fellowship of the Ring begins to break apart

by Norsktroll on Oct 29, 2009 3:25 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

This seems like a good place for a tech question

In the past I have used speedtest.net and pingtest.net to validate my speed and check the quality of my connection. Are these good sites? Are there better ones?

by Corvid on Oct 29, 2009 12:19 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

So there is also the NBA package right?

Isn’t the streaming product offered by the NBA at their web site cheaper and also includes all the games? I have not looked into it yet, but was wondering what kind of experience someone might have had with that service. Obviously I am not paying 4 bucks a game for what I have read above.

by zersrule on Oct 29, 2009 7:11 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

nba broadband not gonna work

The league pass broadband has blackout restrictions for local games and nationally televised games. If you get this, you will never watch a single Blazer game, or anything on TNT, ESPN, etc.

by meppdx on Oct 29, 2009 2:12 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I've been streaming games with Fox Soccer since August.

My understanding is that they use the same technology. The first couple weeks I was using it the quality of the streaming was unreliable. Since the middle of september the streaming has generally been much better. I imagine the next blazer game will be improved. I think the most frustrating thing is that they are not archiving any of the games. All of the games that Fox Soccer streams are archived for at least a couple weeks.

by glycogin on Oct 29, 2009 7:32 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Agreed.

A lot of people seem to expect perfection right out of the gates. This was the FIRST game that the team has televised on the internet. First. Really, I too think it can only get better.

Also, the archiving point is a good one, which needs to be taken into consideration. I’d love to be able to go back and compare game film, see what is happening at similar periods of time.

Dave's Keys to the Season: "GREG ODEN SMASH!!!!!!"

by Jeremiah S on Oct 29, 2009 10:54 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

If they would have planned ahead...

They should have tested this new technology out by streaming either the first game for free or streaming preseason. This would have been a great marketing ploy and it would have gave them a chance to work out the bugs and get a feel for their target audience as well as their own system requirements. Now they’ve got hundreds of angry subscibers.. It’s no ones fault but their own.

by draker on Oct 29, 2009 8:36 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

a similar experience

First of all, until things went south during the 3rd quarter, it worked OK. The picture quality was clear, but the motion was slightly jumpy. Not bad, well within acceptable limits. If I hadn’t seen the incredible NCAA tourney stream earlier this year I probably would have thought it was amazing.

Then I paused it about halfway through the third quarter, and basically that was it. The sound never came back. I restarted the browser (FF) and tried another browser (IE, ick) without effect. I fired up a second computer, a Macbook Pro, and the player failed to ever pick up the stream at all in either FF or Safari. By the mid 4th quarter, back on the original computer, the stream had moved into perma-buffering – just black, no image.

FWIW, just my yes-I-know-what-I’m-doing disclaimer:
- Both computers are high end less than a year old, Dell XPS M1530 and MacBookPro
- tested audio hardware separately
- tested streaming video playback (youtube, etc) separately, which doubled as bandwidth test

A final issue I had: on both computers, the RayV player installed icons, on the PC in the bottom right tray, on the Mac in the top right system bar area. In both cases I had to uninstall the player to remove them. This is ludicrously unacceptable behavior for a video player (or any other software).

I have yet to hear back about my refund, with will obviously be necessary. This service would be very valuable to me and I’m not giving up on it yet – as long as they refund this first game’s payment without a fight. If they do that, then I’ll feel like I can try it again safely. If they don’t, I’ll do everything I can to talk people I know out of risking their money.

I’m not mad. I want this to work. I am an internet professional working in a high-server-load field and I know how hard it is to get things right the first time. If they don’t rip me off, I’m still on board for this thing.

FWIW I suspect it’s basically that their Flash video player blows. Just a semi informed hunch.

by MrCompletely on Oct 29, 2009 8:41 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

also, this site rocks

Been reading for a year or so, just got on board to post. Seems like a great fan community. This thread right here is very valuable since we can all see that other people had similar issues – which, if nothing else, will keep them from trying to tell us the problems were at our end. So thanks for providing a forum to help us work this out. I’ll lay off the rah rah posts in the future but I thought I should say it once.

Go Blazers!

by MrCompletely on Oct 29, 2009 8:44 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Streaming the Blazer games

My friend had a terrible experience too. Basically it was unwatchable. No sound, constant buffering — just total garbage. Fortunately he only dropped the $4, just to check it out.

Stream FAIL…

by j7_97219 on Oct 29, 2009 8:53 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

League Pass Broadband

Is currently in free preview mode. I was delighted by the quality of it, and you can go back right now and go watch the Houston game in DVR mode (skipping around at will).

Seriously , everybody go do this, it’s free until 11/3.

by rmcdougall on Oct 29, 2009 9:01 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I did not need/use the Blazers free stream...

but clearly the technology exists if NBALPBB is utilizing it, right?

I am an oasis of Blazer fandom in a bleak desert of Laker fans.

by RenoBlazerFan on Oct 29, 2009 9:13 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

I'm up in Seattle

and my broadband connection’s speed is about 1 Mb-so I was going to have to use the lo-definition option-which just simply never worked the entire game long. no image no sound, nothing. I tried watching it in HD but it was buffer-city. It was a totally frustrating way to spend a first opening night away from Portland in 10 years.

by Waltonia on Oct 29, 2009 9:33 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Beta Test

Why didn’t they do a beta test during preseason? Stream the fan fest for free or whatever just to work out the kinks.

"It all depends on where his growth will come and we think his growth will come within us" -- Kevin Pritchard on Jerryd Bayless

by Jumbo on Oct 29, 2009 9:54 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

probably because they pulled the trigger on the deal at the last second

the whole thing seems rather slapdash IMO

by MrCompletely on Oct 29, 2009 10:26 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I didn't stream.

because I had a hunch it would be 3.99 wasted on beta testing a system for them. They apparently took the Windows Vista method of development. My guess is that they have it working properly @ the all-star break. Since it seems they vastly underestimated the strain of streaming games online. I believe they will get it right, but thankfully I have comcast until they do. Once they do, comcast can kiss my ____. Until then, I’m sticking with the tried and true and praying the blazers get it done right.

As a caveat, I wonder how much of this has to do with comcast? They are the ones providing the feed, correct? I wonder if they thought about asking the IT folks involved if this was ready to roll, somehow, I doubt it. If they did, whoever said yes should get an ax for christmas with a pink slip of paper.

Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'. -the shawshank redemption.

by pdxborn on Oct 29, 2009 10:27 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Note that the stream is only going to be for the 14 remaining KGW games

…not any of the much larger number of other games.

From what I know of streaming, the chances of the issue being at Comcast’s end are negligible and if it were true, fingers would be pointing that way already. All Comcast (or KGW if it’s done directly) need to do is provide a single AV line (well, 2 or 3 to be redundant/careful) to the streaming provider. It’s the easiest part of the chain. It’s also very unlikely to be a bandwidth issue at any point, bandwidth is cheap and scales easily and quickly these days.

50% chance it’s the video player client, 25% chance the servers, 25% some other thing I’m not technical enough to know about.

Bottom line, these “RayV” people are most likely the ones who borked it.

by MrCompletely on Oct 29, 2009 11:30 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

or maybe flip the above %s btwn server and client

…since it sounds like it blew up for everyone at about the same time, which points more towards the servers

by MrCompletely on Oct 29, 2009 11:32 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Seattle

Does anyone know for sure how the blackout affects Seattle? I’ve heard all games are blacked out, but the last game was being shown on NBA League Pass Broadband…

I was thinking about subscribing to League Pass but don’t want to pay $100 to find all the games are blacked out.

by anupam on Oct 29, 2009 12:42 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

How were they not prepared for 500 people?

500 is tiny. If this thing really takes off and becomes popular they could get 100,000.

Disclaimer: everything I know about basketball I learned on Blazersedge.

by pualo on Oct 29, 2009 1:22 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

not likely

I would think more along the lines of 2kish due to it’s limited nature. Maybe 5k.

"Fernandez, to my eyes, is the Blazer who walks that walk most comfortably. A lot of Portland's fans (egged on, dare I say, by their local broadcasters) lament things like how Ron Artest or Yao Ming get to hit Brandon Roy's arms.

But I suspect Fernandez sees all that and thinks: We get to hit arms! Cool!"

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-39-135/On-Playoff-Experience.html

"I told Pau the Lakers never win here in Portland; I think it's great." -- Rudy Fernandez

by ratbastird on Oct 29, 2009 1:26 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I meant if the limitations were removed

Disclaimer: everything I know about basketball I learned on Blazersedge.

by pualo on Oct 29, 2009 2:08 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Based on what I read

those who had issue and provided feedback were taken care of. I really think that should also be included in this post as the customer service reaction was beyond what I think was required.

But I suspect Fernandez sees all that and thinks: We get to hit arms! Cool!"

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-39-135/On-Playoff-Experience.html

"I told Pau the Lakers never win here in Portland; I think it's great." -- Rudy Fernandez

by ratbastird on Oct 29, 2009 1:27 PM PDT reply actions 0 recs

Yeah somehow any positive stuff about the Blazers is being summarily ignored for the "They messed up!" storyline.

by Timmay! on Oct 29, 2009 1:58 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

I'm assuming

that other than the fact that they’re trying to make good the Blazers wouldn’t want details printed. If they truly are going beyond what is required there are those who would see an opportunity for cheap goodies there.

The story here is that the process isn’t working ideally at this point, so caveat emptor if you pay to try it. “It isn’t really working but the Blazers will make it up to you if you have a problem” isn’t really accurate nor is it the point. That’s not to impugn the organization. Heck, I told you in the lead up story a few days ago that it wasn’t likely to work that well so it’s not like this is a shock. It isn’t a value judgment, but an assessment of how ready the service is.

—Dave

by Dave on Oct 29, 2009 3:14 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

you have a good point

on the other hand, if i’m going to purchase a product, it’s nice to know that my investment is covered. It gives me a comfort level to try again. ON the other hand if my first experience was horrible, i may just nix it all together.

But I suspect Fernandez sees all that and thinks: We get to hit arms! Cool!"

http://myespn.go.com/blogs/truehoop/0-39-135/On-Playoff-Experience.html

"I told Pau the Lakers never win here in Portland; I think it's great." -- Rudy Fernandez

by ratbastird on Oct 29, 2009 5:46 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Correct.

I can appreciate the reason of two main-page posts in two days talking about Portland’s failure in the first attempt at Internet streaming.

But as far as we can tell, they messed up, they know it, and they’re making good to those who had problems, and are presumably workring hard to fix this. That’s really part of thee overall story.

I haven’t seen any sign of a anything from the Blazers, “no comment” or otherwise. Obviously they’re not going to do a “we messed up” press statement, Michael Scott style. Has anyone contacted them in an official capacity to ask for an on-the-record comment about this? I imagine their execs in broadcasting are reachable, considering Cab reached one within 24 hours last week, I believe, just for a League Pass blackout question.

by Timmay! on Oct 29, 2009 6:37 PM PDT up reply actions 0 recs