All-Access catalog of woes

For those who get their Cornell sports fix online as a supplement to the games we get to see live in our regions, it might be helpful to have a catalog of problems with the Cornell / CSTV alliance that brings us All-Access.

If you've got a different concern than the ones posted, reply to this original message and add a 3-4 word summary to the subject line.

Suggestion: Keep it factual. In case Cornell doubts there's a problem, this will get us started on the 12 steps to recovery. (Isn't the first step admitting there is a problem?)

The morning after the Dartmouth at Cornell game was over, you still couldn't watch a rebroadcast. Once you wound your way through the menus and watched the Toyota ad again, the announcement said, This game has not yet started.

How long should it take to prepare a game for watching again? Right away? An hour? Overnight? A couple days?

For those who want to watch the game the next day (say you were out doing something else that was more important, at least more important to your spouse or partner who dragged you along), it is darn near impossible to get to All-Access, load the game, and watch the game, without seeing the scores on the Cornell Big Red home page or seeing the scores crawler (ticker) at page-bottom on the CSTV page.

The path is convoluted, and the number of screens you have to to go through, to load a game, seems excessive. If there's a shortcut (link), it's not posted.

The goddamn thing doesn't work with IE 7 or Mac.

How hard would it be to have the field engineer (there is somebody besides the two camera people?) stick in an index mark that automatically replays the previous, say, 10 or 15 seconds?

The Dartmouth at Cornell 11/11 hockey game that was broadcast on CSTV (as well as the webcast) seemed to have a better quality video on the webcast than usual including fewer but no lost feed. However:

- Lost signal from middle of the first intermission until about 1:30 into the second period. Anyone else lose the signal here?

- Ten-second freeze in the final couple minutes of the third period.

With a frozen feed it could be the local ISP's problem, a problem on my own PC, or it could be a failure of the Cornell-CSTV equipment and their into-CSTV, out-from-CSTV feed.

The RIT at Cornell hockey game 10/28/06 had no second period feed. We got the first period and much of the third give or take the usual dropouts, some of which required restarting the CSTV feed and seeing the ads all over again.

billhoward
How hard would it be to have the field engineer (there is somebody besides the two camera people?) stick in an index mark that automatically replays the previous, say, 10 or 15 seconds?

This is less a "woe" than a "it would be nice to have." I suggest focusing on the lack of consistent feed and the so-called encoding issues that pop up in the middle of games before we tell them how to show replays.

I understand that this thread should really be a cataloguing of specific dates and times of specific problems with the basic delivery of an otherwise "premium" service. However, I think it is worth pointing out for the record how unfair it is that customers should pay a monthly and not only fail to receive said basic delivery, but also be forced to watch advertisements that are, per the norm, the type of thing one pays to avoid having to watch.
Plainly put, this is double-dipping, which may not be fraudulent, but clearly adds insult to injury when the purchased product is simply not being delivered in the first place.

As a disclaimer, I am not a subscriber to All-Access, nor do I intend to be, based on the numerous bad reports from various respected people in this forum over the course of most of the games since inception of the offering.

Or Firefox for that matter.

DL
I understand that this thread should really be a cataloguing of specific dates and times of specific problems with the basic delivery of an otherwise "premium" service. However, I think it is worth pointing out for the record how unfair it is that customers should pay a monthly and not only fail to receive said basic delivery, but also be forced to watch advertisements that are, per the norm, the type of thing one pays to avoid having to watch.
Plainly put, this is double-dipping, which may not be fraudulent, but clearly adds insult to injury when the purchased product is simply not being delivered in the first place.

As a disclaimer, I am not a subscriber to All-Access, nor do I intend to be, based on the numerous bad reports from various respected people in this forum over the course of most of the games since inception of the offering.

What adds insult to injury is you have to view the ad/commercial before you find out that the game film you are looking for hasn't been posted.

When you click "watch" for the RIT game, you still (after some on the forum have called CSTV and pointed out the error) see the Princeton-Cornell football game.

Once upon a time movie theaters just showed movies and promos for upcoming movies. Then they started showing commercials in the theaters. A few people booed the commercials as an intrusion and, as noted here, double dipping of a sort. Now this is just standard fare: forced to watch commercials. It also means if you start to watch a game already in progress and you're dying to see the action, or if something broke and you need to restart the webcast, you're another half-minute away from the watching the game.

Liz '05

billhoward
How hard would it be to have the field engineer (there is somebody besides the two camera people?) stick in an index mark that automatically replays the previous, say, 10 or 15 seconds?

This is less a "woe" than a "it would be nice to have." I suggest focusing on the lack of consistent feed and the so-called encoding issues that pop up in the middle of games before we tell them how to show replays.

Agreed in part. If this was a free video feed I wouldn't be so concerned. But instant replay is a decades-old technology and relatively easy to implement, I believe. If fans are PPV'ing, the show should include instant replay and in the corner the score, the clock, and maybe a penalty clock. We're not asking CSTV to implement instant replay instead of giving us a stable feed for all three periods.

I subscribed last year, but have had trouble signing up again this year. I tried to log on with my email address and last year's password, but got an error message saying I had the password wrong (which I strongly doubt). I asked them (via the button for such purposes) to send me my password, and didn't get it. I tried to register afresh and was denied, with an error message saying someone already had registered with that email address (and indeed I got a "sign up again" email from them after all this). I emailed them via their "contact us" email address on their web site and got no response.

Screw them -- they obviously don't want my money. And count one more person seriously P.O.ed at the Athletics dep't. Feh.

lhayes
I subscribed last year, but have had trouble signing up again this year. I tried to log on with my email address and last year's password, but got an error message saying I had the password wrong (which I strongly doubt). I asked them (via the button for such purposes) to send me my password, and didn't get it. I tried to register afresh and was denied, with an error message saying someone already had registered with that email address (and indeed I got a "sign up again" email from them after all this). I emailed them via their "contact us" email address on their web site and got no response.

Screw them -- they obviously don't want my money. And count one more person seriously P.O.ed at the Athletics dep't. Feh.

I had this problem too, and ended up giving them my yahoo.com email address and registered as a "new" user. This was after spending ~20 minutes trying to find the sign-up/register link.

With the new Irish Pub that just opened in town, the $6.95/month would be better spent on a couple of pints of Guinness.

Well, I had a discussion with our wonderful AD at the Dartmouth game, and I'll tell more about it at a later date, but I don't expect this to get better unless someone with a university status at least as strong as his gets involved. I have some hope that Coach can stimulate help. The best quote as our AD was yelling at me was "Do you think we control this?".

The way we might get help with resolution is that All-Access will not accept Canadian credit cards, which means that player parents and recruits can't get to watch the team. Because of the problems, the Cornell Hockey Association has not contributed their money to fund this. That's right, not only do you have to pay to get access, but others have to pay to subsidize it. I suspect that it will get resolved because Coach wants to make sure his constituency gets served.

Please keep this thread going with constructive comments. The more problems we document the better.

Jim Hyla
Well, I had a discussion with our wonderful AD at the Dartmouth game, and I'll tell more about it at a later date, but I don't expect this to get better unless someone with a university status at least as strong as his gets involved. I have some hope that Coach can stimulate help. The best quote as our AD was yelling at me was "Do you think we control this?".

Jim, did you smile sweetly and say "Well you are the one that signed the contract with CSTV for the service and the service is not being rendered. Aren't you at all upset that money from Cornell's Athletic's Department is essentially being thrown out a car window?"

The way we might get help with resolution is that All-Access will not accept Canadian credit cards, which means that player parents and recruits can't get to watch the team. Because of the problems, the Cornell Hockey Association has not contributed their money to fund this. That's right, not only do you have to pay to get access, but others have to pay to subsidize it. I suspect that it will get resolved because Coach wants to make sure his constituency gets served.

Please keep this thread going with constructive comments. The more problems we document the better.

I had heard that the players' parents were having difficulties, but I did not know the extent. I know Coach Schafer has other things to worry about, but his voice is the one that would get the AD to complain to CSTV about the coverage. However, it is possible that since CSTV also has Cornell's money (which I'm sure is more than $6.95/month) that they will turn a deaf ear to the AD as well.

Same problem here: Last year's e-mail and password wouldn't work. Last year's email and a new password elicits a lockout saying that e-mail address is already in use. So you switch to your work or Yahoo or GMail address.

Rita

Jim Hyla
Well, I had a discussion with our wonderful AD at the Dartmouth game, and I'll tell more about it at a later date, but I don't expect this to get better unless someone with a university status at least as strong as his gets involved. I have some hope that Coach can stimulate help. The best quote as our AD was yelling at me was "Do you think we control this?".

Jim, did you smile sweetly and say "Well you are the one that signed the contract with CSTV for the service and the service is not being rendered. Aren't you at all upset that money from Cornell's Athletic's Department is essentially being thrown out a car window?"

The way we might get help with resolution is that All-Access will not accept Canadian credit cards, which means that player parents and recruits can't get to watch the team. Because of the problems, the Cornell Hockey Association has not contributed their money to fund this. That's right, not only do you have to pay to get access, but others have to pay to subsidize it. I suspect that it will get resolved because Coach wants to make sure his constituency gets served.

Please keep this thread going with constructive comments. The more problems we document the better.

I had heard that the players' parents were having difficulties, but I did not know the extent. I know Coach Schafer has other things to worry about, but his voice is the one that would get the AD to complain to CSTV about the coverage. However, it is possible that since CSTV also has Cornell's money (which I'm sure is more than $6.95/month) that they will turn a deaf ear to the AD as well.

All that you have written is true, meaning I did point that out to him. At that point he told me to stop lecturing him. It's truly amazing to me that he an act as he does.

Al DeFlorio
The goddamn thing doesn't work with IE 7 or Mac.

fink '09
Or Firefox for that matter.

Nor with any browser that exists for Linux. In summary, it only works under one version of one browser running on certain version of one OS. (A simple Windows Media stream like the one we had last year is intelligible to many applications running on many platforms.)

billhoward
Same problem here: Last year's e-mail and password wouldn't work. Last year's email and a new password elicits a lockout saying that e-mail address is already in use. So you switch to your work or Yahoo or GMail address.

For what it's worth, your old account is probably fine. They sent out that email saying your password had changed, but didn't provide the new one or a way to change it. You have to use their 'lost password' functionality at which point they sent you some random password. After that, the only way to change it to something you might remember is to call their customer service and have them do it manually. This is absolutely bush league. Either this product was released six months earlier than the developers expected or nobody on that development team deserves to keep their job.

pfibiger

billhoward
Same problem here: Last year's e-mail and password wouldn't work. Last year's email and a new password elicits a lockout saying that e-mail address is already in use. So you switch to your work or Yahoo or GMail address.

For what it's worth, your old account is probably fine. They sent out that email saying your password had changed, but didn't provide the new one or a way to change it. You have to use their 'lost password' functionality at which point they sent you some random password. After that, the only way to change it to something you might remember is to call their customer service and have them do it manually. This is absolutely bush league. Either this product was released six months earlier than the developers expected or nobody on that development team deserves to keep their job.

An excellent point. Major software companies would be driven out of business if they released software with key features poorly implemented, hidden, or not working at all.

billhoward
An excellent point. Major software companies would be driven out of business if they released software with key features poorly implemented, hidden, or not working at all.

LOL. (You are being sarcastic, right? )

Kyle

I think it's worth noting that after a woman sued a theatre chain for showing commercials after the published start time for a movie, pretty much all movie theatres who show commercials have put the commercials before the published start time. For a 7:15 movie, commercials run up to 7:15, and then the trailers start. (There's such a long history of trailers at the movies that there's no way those are going away.) Being expected to pay to watch an ad is crass.