Canceling CSTV All-Access Monthly Subscriptions

[Rosey]

[Q]1. CSTV is a customer service company. Their livelyhood depends upon making their customers happy.[/q]
Well, like any corporation, CSTV exists to maximize its profit for its shareholders, within some domain and over some time period.  I'm with Milton Friedman on this one.

If they consistently provide poor customer service, then they will go out of business... assuming some competitor providing better service for a comparable price appears.

So, yes, they are a customer service company, but the definition of "happy" depends on the presence or absence of competition.  To wit, I am willing to put up with a lot of crap from CSTV (a) because it's the only practical choice at the moment, and (b) because even if another company were equipped to provide this service, I doubt the level of problems would differ significantly considering the other major factors involved beyond the competence/interest level of the employees.

It's all relative: I am satisfied because at this point I'm happy with any video.  But like the guy who thinks his neighbor's Toyota Avalon sucks because he's used to driving an S600, I would have different expectations if things suddenly went from awesome to crappy.  But the video CSTV provides is light years ahead of what i2sports gave us, so from that perspective, this is a strict upgrade.

To head off a different argument: it's not clear LynahCam would scale to the number of streams CSTV provides and still be able to remain free.  But I honestly have no idea.  Yes, I do think Cornell swallowing the bandwidth cost would be in their best interests, but in the absence of any way of proving it to them, since they evidently don't feel inclined to believe it on their own I doubt I would be able to convince them of it.
[q]2. So they hired students without proper knowledge and failed to train them properly, and their customers should forgive them?[/q]
Simply being realistic.  The problem that resulted in the slideshow for the low-bitrate stream was not something a student technician could notice, much less diagnose.  This is where having a hockey guy monitoring all the streams would be helpful, a point I will not contest.
[q]3. So maybe CU doesn't provide the right environment. Isn't it up to them to ask CU to get it right?[/q]
Where do you work?  Discussions between two bureaucracies move at glacial speed as a matter of course.  Since CU clearly just barely gives a shit about the internet video, it's not at all clear that CSTV didn't inform CU of the problem promptly.  Again, I have no idea.
[q]5. Many problems originate with the viewer, who doesn't know any better. True, but I contend that it's up to the company to provide adequate instruction. Their website should contain all needed info, in an easily obtainable manner.[/q]
Yep.  They do have a FAQ that lists lots of common problems, but some of their solutions...er, need tweaking.

Cheers,
Kyle

[puff]

Personally i just plug the S video cord from my laptop to my TV and some voodoo magic makes it appear full screen. Sure, not digital quality, but it makes the viewing experience alot more enjoyable.

[Rosey]

[Q]JasonN95 Wrote:

 I'm not sure any additional plugin, etc. is needed for full screen. I use Firefox (although I'm pretty sure this works in IE, too) and after the video starts in the embedded viewer, I right-click on the video and choose full screen under zoom (the % options don't work, but full screen does). I then have a full screen version of the feed.[/q]

If this works for you, go for it.  My embedded player (WMP 10) doesn't have this option.

Kyle

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]krose Wrote:

 [Q2]JasonN95 Wrote:

 I'm not sure any additional plugin, etc. is needed for full screen. I use Firefox (although I'm pretty sure this works in IE, too) and after the video starts in the embedded viewer, I right-click on the video and choose full screen under zoom (the % options don't work, but full screen does). I then have a full screen version of the feed.[/Q]
If this works for you, go for it.  My embedded player (WMP 10) doesn't have this option.

Kyle[/q]

Do you the cables etc to make an S-video connection to your TV?  When WMP isn't playing, the TV acts as a low-res monitor, but when WMP starts playing a clip, no matter how large it is on my laptop screen, it takes over the whole TV screen.  Pretty handy, actually, since I can have chatzilla on the laptop and the game on the TV.

[Rosey]

[Q]Do you the cables etc to make an S-video connection to your TV?  When WMP isn't playing, the TV acts as a low-res monitor, but when WMP starts playing a clip, no matter how large it is on my laptop screen, it takes over the whole TV screen.  Pretty handy, actually, since I can have chatzilla on the laptop and the game on the TV.[/q]
I might try this with my monitor, but NTSC looks bad enough on my TV... watching internet video on a screen that large is basically unbearable.  It actually looks *better* at postage stamp-size.

Cheer,
Kyle

[Rosey]

[Q]I gave up.[/q]
Not so fast.  I figured out what the problem is.  I am using an SB Live with a native sampling rate of 48000 Hz.  If I add

srate=48000

to /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf, then everything works perfectly (at least with the archives).  Scha-weet!

Cheers,
Kyle

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]krose Wrote:

 [Q2]I gave up.[/Q]
Not so fast.  I figured out what the problem is.  I am using an SB Live with a native sampling rate of 48000 Hz.  If I add

srate=48000

to /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf, then everything works perfectly (at least with the archives).  Scha-weet![/q]

Er, so, would you happen to know how I determine my sound card's sampling rate, and/or how I configure the sampling rate in xine/kaffeine?

[Rosey]

[Q]Er, so, would you happen to know how I determine my sound card's sampling rate, and/or how I configure the sampling rate in xine/kaffeine?[/q]
Well, sound cards are usually either 44100 or 48000.  If one doesn't work, try the other.

Try Settings>Setup>audio, setting "always resample to this rate" to 48000; not sure if this is the option, but it seems likely.  I'd grab mplayer first, and see if you can get it working there the way I did; at least then you'll know that you have the same problem.

Kyle

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]krose Wrote:

 [Q2]Er, so, would you happen to know how I determine my sound card's sampling rate, and/or how I configure the sampling rate in xine/kaffeine?[/Q]
Well, sound cards are usually either 44100 or 48000.  If one doesn't work, try the other.

Try Settings>Setup>audio, setting "always resample to this rate" to 48000; not sure if this is the option, but it seems likely.  I'd grab mplayer first, and see if you can get it working there the way I did; at least then you'll know that you have the same problem.[/q]

Cool, that worked.  You rule!  One less reason to use Windoze. :-}

But I still get the stuttering sound for the MSU games.  Have you tried those?

[Rosey]

[Q]But I still get the stuttering sound for the MSU games.  Have you tried those?[/q]

No, but I'm willing to chalk it up to early (buggy?) encoder configuration.  Those were CSTV's first Cornell games, after all.

Cheers,
Kyle

[jtwcornell91]

Because I'm tired of clicking through all the default options on the all access schedule:

http://allaccess.cstv.com/media/school_epg.jsp?sid=700&ts=0&ngSportId=all&ngDates=all&gState=1&gDates=all&gSportId=14&gMediaType=all

[schoaff]

Well, since I'm quick to complain I should admit that the picture looks good tonight and they had the pregame show. Nothing to complain about so far (knock on wood).

[Rosey]

The 271 kbps stream is still fucked up.  So, if you're stuck on a broadband connection that can't get the 519 kbps stream (or if your media player is configured for something less than that), you get a slide show.  Still working this issue...

Kyle

[RichH]

[Q]krose Wrote:

 The 271 kbps stream is still fucked up.  So, if you're stuck on a broadband connection that can't get the 519 kbps stream (or if your media player is configured for something less than that), you get a slide show.   Still working this issue...

Kyle[/q]

Kyle: you said that there are two feeds before.  Where?  When I go to the website where I find links to launch the broadcasts I see one video and one audio link.

[Rosey]

[Q]Kyle: you said that there are two feeds before.  Where?  When I go to the website where I find links to launch the broadcasts I see one video and one audio link.[/q]
The stream you get is based on the performance settings of your media player, i.e. the same URL can lead to multiple streams.

In this case, if you have a link that can't quite do 520 kbps, you get the next lower-bitrate stream, which in this case is 271 kbps.  You can also force this by setting the "link speed" to something lower than 520 kbps but greater than 271; WMP has an option for 384 kbps, for instance, which allows me to see this problem even though I have a 1.5 mbit connection.

Cheers,
Kyle