warney":g9ubcynu said:
ChepstowGreen":g9ubcynu said:
metroace":g9ubcynu said:
The Senior Greens Twitter ran a totally unscientific poll about iFollow and how reliable/annoying it has proved to be so far this season. There were 62 respondents.
The results were:
No (or very few) problems. 66.1%
Some sound/vision issues. 29%
Many sound/vision issues. 1.6%
Unwatchable. 3.2%
So basically only 2 out of 3 paying customers are happy with the streaming service. Not good. Come on ifollow this needs to be fixed! (Repeating it here as they don't respond to emails).
I'd say that's actually pretty good. Very few service companies (mobile phone, internet, energy suppliers etc) get more than a two-thirds satisfaction rating from consumers. Many are well below this. The trouble with iFollow is that it's a monopoly. If I'm not happy with my phone supplier or energy company I can switch (as many do) but that option's not there with iFollow.
When it's working for me iFollow is brilliant, but it should just work 100% of the time for everyone, particularly with something as time sensitive as live football, and yes the fact it's a monopoly.
If it doesn't, and it must surely be down to streaming capacity (that would explain good for many, not for some - I never had any issues (other than obviously localised ones) over the last couple of seasons for midweek games, for example) then why not just use YouTube and we have a guaranteed service which is 100% rock solid all of the time and suitable for phone, tablet, computer and smart tv, etc.
Streaming video en mass is difficult and needs excellent development and rock solid servers.
Obviously I can see why, in a perfect world, the league wanted to develop its own infrastructure. It's a nice idea, but until it's perfect will only ever result in frustrating those who are suddenly hit by problems.
So IMO the Football League should just use a provider which is already set up to handle large numbers, utilising a paywall which already exists (see how I could 'buy or rent' this film on YouTube, for example -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mqzBlg ... TubeMovies). It needn't be YouTube of course, there are plenty of others out there, Vimeo.com, for example is another which could deliver.
I'd be astonished if something like this happened of course. All sorts of issues, contracts, agreements, far too difficult etc, etc.
And in the meantime those of us willing to risk/donate the £10 per game will struggle on, having to restart our computers, clear our cookies, change our browsers and hope things kick into life and just work.
But if I were in charge, I'd be seriously thinking about jumping ship right now from the current delivery platform, until my IT department categorically could guarantee 100% uptime for every fan with an internet connection. Or maybe a new one could run alongside it while the problems are ironed out.
Anyway roll on 3pm Saturday. I'll be watching (hopefully). :scarf:
