Quality of weekend's games

13 July 2009 (10:51)

RugbyZone

Many of you have complained about the quality of the weekend's games for the 1st round of the Currie Cup, so this is an update to let you know what caused it, and is being done to resolve it.

We receive a satellite signal for each game, and then encode it digitally before it is passed on to the world-wide-web where you view it, either in Flash, or WMV format. Unfortunately the feeds received over the weekend were in a format which meant that, when encoded, the video quality was very poor.

We are in the process of re-encoding, and re-uploading these files, and these will be released as and when they are available. We have engineers who are actively working on this problem.

We understand that this has caused considerable inconvenience to our viewers, and hope that you will bear with us while the videos are replaced. We are also in communication with our signal provider to ensure that in future the signal received is of a sufficient quality to enable us to encode the video to an acceptable standard.

Thank you for your patience - The RugbyZone team

Comments

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by Trainer July 13, 2009 11:15 GMT

Thank you - was wondering if it was normal? Thank you for the update - looking forward to the next games. Cheers John Clark

by Carlos Leite-Ferraz July 13, 2009 12:48 GMT

Thank you - it would have been just great to hear that right away yesterday while we waited for hours to get the corrected footage. I understand and support your efforts and thanks for tellign it like it is. My feedback would be in future put up a post onto the site so we can see you are experiencing problems and we cna go back to our lives and check in later. Thanx

by john perry July 13, 2009 17:17 GMT

the jittery screen nearly resulted in my demise. i am very relieved to find that i will not expire twice. i support the view that you should let people know what is going on so the wives and children to not suffer from goring by raging bulls. please, oh please, get it right for the australia new zealand game or else i will have to defect to setanta who do not get it wrong. wretched, vancouver.

by ryan karim July 13, 2009 20:05 GMT

Thnaks for the heads up RZ....

by Nadean Lane July 13, 2009 23:56 GMT

Am I correct that they are also looking at why the commentary was several seconds in advance of the visuals and repeated itself? That was quite weird and minimally enjoyable. Thanks for working on a fix.

by Gerald Motsi July 14, 2009 21:21 GMT

Thanx 4 the update...

by Tony Fitzwater July 15, 2009 00:42 GMT

Thanks for letting us know guys. While you are at it, could you write a system that would re-encode all Aussie commentary. Make it so that every time they are biased we hear nothing. This way we can watch the whole game in perfect silence... aaaahh, bliss

by Sammy Getty July 15, 2009 00:57 GMT

Well I just finished re-watching the WP v Sharks match via Flash on linux and can confirm that at least that match (and media) are of better quality. As I suggested when you experienced technological difficulties at the start of the Super 14, you might want to offer some live feeds during the week and have us (the subscribers) do some testing to make sure everything is up to snuff come Match Time. Additionally you might want to consider using an open source format instead of DRM-protected windows & proprietary flash formats. After all, subscribers have paid for the right to watch the content, we should not be restricted on how to watch it. Regardless, thanks for fixing the feeds. BTW - the Lions v. Bulls flash feed also seems fine now.

by Trainer July 15, 2009 11:20 GMT

I am with Tony Fitzwater on the commentary issue...........LOL!!!!!

by RugbyZone July 15, 2009 15:09 GMT

The videos are practically all up now. Once again apologies for the delay - we are putting processes in place to ensure a smoother delivery for next weekend.

by Niels Thornberg July 15, 2009 18:57 GMT

Thanks for the update. Now please consider making a test where you make a stream in HD. Would be interesting to see if it can work. I would love a better LIVE quality than 800k and definitly more than the 1000K on the DLC. Im using my mediacenter to throw this on my 52 inch TV, so better quality would be appriciated.

by Addi July 16, 2009 10:47 GMT

Yes, certainly want to see higher speed - here in Germany speeds keep going up and up - here an example of good quality (sorry language is german) it goes over 2000K http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/content/9602?inPopup=true Hope rugbyzone is keeping to test higher quality, I'm grateful to do tests...

by RugbyZone July 16, 2009 11:35 GMT

Excellent feedback - thank you, and please keep it coming. Look out for a poll in the near future - are there formats we can drop in favour of higher bit-rates and better quality?

by Albert Potgieter July 16, 2009 12:35 GMT

Another suggestion is to provide an option to hide the headlines on your homepage, like you can do with the scores. It is very disappointing to log in when you don't watch the games live, only to see a headline that tells you who won the game before you can even watch it.

by RugbyZone July 16, 2009 14:43 GMT

Hi Albert. If you are logged in, and you have clicked the "Hide the latest scores" option, headlines are not displayed on the home page, so I don't quite follow you. If you aren't logged in, or you haven't clicked the option, then yes you will see the headlines. If you wish to avoid this, I suggest you bookmark www.rugbyzone.com/video

by Christo July 16, 2009 19:19 GMT

I can't wait to see better quality video! I will be looking out for those polls. In my opinion you could skip all those fancy things like "virtual stand" or whatever it is called and rather invest that energy to increase the quality. Thanks RZ for the honest feedback on the weekend's mishap.

by Niels Thornberg July 17, 2009 08:11 GMT

I agree with Cristo. Drop all the fancy stuff and have better quality. I´ll use the WMA stream over the Flash any day, just to avoid unnessesary use of computer power. Also make a forum where we can discuss rugby. That will also give you a better tool in getting feedback from users on things like quality and user interface.

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