All-Access catalog of woes

[billhoward]

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?)

[billhoward]

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?

[billhoward]

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.

[billhoward]

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.

[Al DeFlorio]

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

[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?

[billhoward]

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.

[billhoward]

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.

[Liz '05]

[quote 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?[/quote]

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.

[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.

[fink]

Or Firefox for that matter.

[redhair34]

[quote 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.[/quote]

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.

[redhair34]

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.

[billhoward]

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.

[billhoward]

[quote Liz '05][quote 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?[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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.