5 ms·

It's been 10 years since I worked on live streaming for sports. Lets see if it's finally happening. My guess is... meh.

ascagnel_ 8y ago
I've been using NHL.tv and MLB.tv for at least the last half-decade to watch ice hockey and baseball, respectively. I've been looking at F1 TV for this season, but haven't jumped in yet as there isn't an app for $STREAMING_BOX (you have to send video from another device to get it onto your TV). It's less a question of technology and more a question of business at this point.
- giarc 8y ago
  There is still technology issues with streaming. Take DAZN for example. They are the provider of NFL streams and they started with a ton of issues with quality of streams, to the point where it was unwatchable. They actually refunded everyone a month's worth of service ($20) because it was so bad.
  - eunoia 8y ago
    The NFL is also their own provider of streams. GamePass works great, all games live. It’s just not available in the states for business reasons.
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    They had similar problems with their football (as in soccer) streams in europe at the beginning. However to be fair they improved a lot since then and it's pretty stable now. One has to consider that it's live and while I'm sure Netflix or other big players would do a better job, being able to buffer makes this much easier. I think DAZN is an awesome package with lots of relevant content for a football (soccer) enthusiast like me at a very fair price.
- CoolGuySteve 8y ago
  Yes, those use the CoreMedia rtsp streaming that I did a little bit of work on. Or at least they did when I was there.
- samstave 8y ago
  Naive question, from me: Why isnt there a "streaming hub" Where anyone can pub-sub model streaming through "allstreams.com" and users just publish to it, and subscribe from it based on the content they want. Subs pay some amountto subscribe to topics of interest and pubs pay premium to be "featured in their category" Imagine "reddit for streaming" and each /s/substream can have uses subscribe and comment and thread-topic beneath the stream.... with meta, mega, mash streams available as an option... Build your own stream channel watching library.... #tag them so you can have #gaming streams lumped. #nfl, #nhl or #Raiders for all things Raiders, as an example... #news or #conservativenews etc... you get the idea...
- paddy_m 8y ago
  I'm an F1 TV subscriber. The F1 TV website has a pretty poor UI. No spacebar to pause. No distinct bookmarkable URL for past seasons. Sporadic full race archives - from 93 to 2001, there are only about 3 full races per season, the rest are highlight coverage. When live watching a race switching to one of the in car cameras results in the whole app reloading. The streaming quality of the Australian GP was pretty good, no buffering or image quality issues. That said, the coverage is more reliable than ESPN's. When F1 moved to ESPN from NBCSN for the past year, I think it was a huge slap in the face to US F1 fans. NBCSN really cared about the coverage, they had their own team and they promoted the coverage. ESPN seems to run F1 like an infomercial, they just rebroadcast the british coverage. ESPN frequently doesn't broadcast qualifying or worse will broadcast practice and not qualifying.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  Until TV stops paying for a monopoly on sports (via blackouts of local games) the fans will continue to consume subpar services. I would pay hand over fist for an NBA streaming app that gave me every game at good quality. Instead I use the Hulu Live TV package and occasionally watch pirate streams (because the Hulu UI for recording a game interferes with watching it live - I've been stuck in loops of watching 5 minute commercial blocks endlessly because they didn't invest enough into QA). EDIT: I use the Apple TV hulu app which probably gets less development resources/QA then other platforms.
  - ascagnel_ 8y ago
    The nice thing about the ATV Hulu app is that you can log in to Hulu at a system level, and then individual channel apps can use that system-level login. If I wanted to watch+record, I'd watch live via the channel's app, and then watch the recording via Hulu. As you said, though, catching up to a live event was an awful UX. FWIW, I've been trying PS Vue this month, and they handle that case far better than Hulu.
- rconti 8y ago
  Yup, I have used the NFL one. I don't care that it's not live because I don't want to spend my daytime hours watching football, but I'm happy to watch my out-of-market team after-the-fact while I eat dinner. Particularly on 60 minute replay. I'm really interested in F1 TV, but I suspect they'll never offer the features I want: * Play via AndroidTV or AppleTV * Live OR replay * 2nd-screen sync for tablet or computer so I can watch telemetry and data and driver views. It's definitely a non-starter to have to cast from my laptop to my TV, and only have a single-screen experience. I really want the main broadcast on my TV and only choose to have the telemetry or driver views as a second screen.
  - ascagnel_ 8y ago
    F1 TV has said they'll do apps for streaming boxes, but haven't given a timetable as of yet, the same for in-session catchup. 2nd-screen sync sounds cool, but I also feel like getting the sync right will be very difficult.
wapoamspomw 8y ago
All of the OTT services have sports packages similar to what you'd get from a cable company.

I've been using NHL.tv and MLB.tv for at least the last half-decade to watch ice hockey and baseball, respectively. I've been looking at F1 TV for this season, but haven't jumped in yet as there isn't an app for $STREAMING_BOX (you have to send video from another device to get it onto your TV). It's less a question of technology and more a question of business at this point.

giarc 8y ago
There is still technology issues with streaming. Take DAZN for example. They are the provider of NFL streams and they started with a ton of issues with quality of streams, to the point where it was unwatchable. They actually refunded everyone a month's worth of service ($20) because it was so bad.
- eunoia 8y ago
  The NFL is also their own provider of streams. GamePass works great, all games live. It’s just not available in the states for business reasons.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  They had similar problems with their football (as in soccer) streams in europe at the beginning. However to be fair they improved a lot since then and it's pretty stable now. One has to consider that it's live and while I'm sure Netflix or other big players would do a better job, being able to buffer makes this much easier. I think DAZN is an awesome package with lots of relevant content for a football (soccer) enthusiast like me at a very fair price.
CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Yes, those use the CoreMedia rtsp streaming that I did a little bit of work on. Or at least they did when I was there.
samstave 8y ago
Naive question, from me: Why isnt there a "streaming hub" Where anyone can pub-sub model streaming through "allstreams.com" and users just publish to it, and subscribe from it based on the content they want. Subs pay some amountto subscribe to topics of interest and pubs pay premium to be "featured in their category" Imagine "reddit for streaming" and each /s/substream can have uses subscribe and comment and thread-topic beneath the stream.... with meta, mega, mash streams available as an option... Build your own stream channel watching library.... #tag them so you can have #gaming streams lumped. #nfl, #nhl or #Raiders for all things Raiders, as an example... #news or #conservativenews etc... you get the idea...
paddy_m 8y ago
I'm an F1 TV subscriber. The F1 TV website has a pretty poor UI. No spacebar to pause. No distinct bookmarkable URL for past seasons. Sporadic full race archives - from 93 to 2001, there are only about 3 full races per season, the rest are highlight coverage. When live watching a race switching to one of the in car cameras results in the whole app reloading. The streaming quality of the Australian GP was pretty good, no buffering or image quality issues. That said, the coverage is more reliable than ESPN's. When F1 moved to ESPN from NBCSN for the past year, I think it was a huge slap in the face to US F1 fans. NBCSN really cared about the coverage, they had their own team and they promoted the coverage. ESPN seems to run F1 like an infomercial, they just rebroadcast the british coverage. ESPN frequently doesn't broadcast qualifying or worse will broadcast practice and not qualifying.
ben_jones 8y ago
Until TV stops paying for a monopoly on sports (via blackouts of local games) the fans will continue to consume subpar services. I would pay hand over fist for an NBA streaming app that gave me every game at good quality. Instead I use the Hulu Live TV package and occasionally watch pirate streams (because the Hulu UI for recording a game interferes with watching it live - I've been stuck in loops of watching 5 minute commercial blocks endlessly because they didn't invest enough into QA). EDIT: I use the Apple TV hulu app which probably gets less development resources/QA then other platforms.
- ascagnel_ 8y ago
  The nice thing about the ATV Hulu app is that you can log in to Hulu at a system level, and then individual channel apps can use that system-level login. If I wanted to watch+record, I'd watch live via the channel's app, and then watch the recording via Hulu. As you said, though, catching up to a live event was an awful UX. FWIW, I've been trying PS Vue this month, and they handle that case far better than Hulu.
rconti 8y ago
Yup, I have used the NFL one. I don't care that it's not live because I don't want to spend my daytime hours watching football, but I'm happy to watch my out-of-market team after-the-fact while I eat dinner. Particularly on 60 minute replay. I'm really interested in F1 TV, but I suspect they'll never offer the features I want: * Play via AndroidTV or AppleTV * Live OR replay * 2nd-screen sync for tablet or computer so I can watch telemetry and data and driver views. It's definitely a non-starter to have to cast from my laptop to my TV, and only have a single-screen experience. I really want the main broadcast on my TV and only choose to have the telemetry or driver views as a second screen.
- ascagnel_ 8y ago
  F1 TV has said they'll do apps for streaming boxes, but haven't given a timetable as of yet, the same for in-session catchup. 2nd-screen sync sounds cool, but I also feel like getting the sync right will be very difficult.

wapoamspomw 8y ago

All of the OTT services have sports packages similar to what you'd get from a cable company.