Moomba Webcast poll

[Horton]

How is the video quality for you?

[Broussard]

Yesterday it worked great for me, but tonight it's completely worthless.

[skier2788]

I get a commercial and then about 15 seconds of the event and it freezes. It did finally get better for the last three men's slalom skiers.

[Wish]

Couldn't vote since I tried UStream App.

 

Web link = horrible feed.

UStream App = flawless feed.

[Ed_Johnson]

Where do you find the U-Stream App to download ?

[Horton]

I tried the ustream app and it was just as bad.

[Bill22]

Need one more option: "Terrible for 1/2 of MO, then Hit & miss but Okayish."

[Horton]

@Bill22 you have more time to chose.

[Wish]

@Ed_Johnson Apple App Store. I just searched UStream

[rayn]

Awful for most of men's slalom. Then for last 3 skiers it was ok.

 

Used both ustream app and chrome on iPad. Both the same. Froze and had to reload every pass.

[skiinxs]

Hit and miss, but certainly better than nothing at all.

[rayn]

They seem to have worked it out for women's tricks. Flawless for the round so far.

 

Jinxed it. Just went offline.

[bkreis]

never got to see a full pass and when it was close it froze regardless of device

 

[disland]

The recap on worldwaterskiers is better

[A_B]

They cut to an ad right as Sedomajer was entering the course after a few warmup passes. Cutting to ads while skier was in water and back to skier as they entered the course was distracting. I turned it off.

[Wish]

Id rather see an add strip streaming across the bottom of the live feed vs constant cutting to the same adds. Almost counter productive as there are several products (some even water ski related) that would frustrate me to purchase as it would just be a reminder of the constant interruptions.

[dchristman]

Not too bad the times I was watching tricks. During slalom I'm mostly watching the insides of my eye-lids. Maybe it's load related. During tricks I think it was mostly well below 100 watching. Anybody notice how many watching during slalom?

[Than_Bogan]

I only had mild connection issues, but the nearly constant ads covering 100% of the screen were unwatchable. And I mean that literally: I closed it and stopped watching it.

 

I appreciate the need to profit from the broadcast, but this particular try swung much too far: If you show almost nothing but ads, then nobody will watch and the advertisers aren't getting anything out of it.

[Jody_Seal]

There is a group of boat racers on the west coast that web-cast their events from time to time. Keep in mind these are small inboard circle racers that race in confined areas such as long beach, Parker and a few other venues. They utilize YouTube for their webcast and the broadcasts are flawless. I know that the sponsors that pay for the waterski webcasts pay a very handsome sum for the service and in many times not getting what they pay for.

The moomba is an extraordinary event with ever changing challenging conditions set up in front of spectators that can number in excess of 50,000 at any given time. The hard work that goes into this event is beyond belief. Finals are this evening hopefully everything comes together and we get to watch an exciting finals to one of our sports biggest event.

[dhofert]

I watched only for an hour or 2 both Thursday and Friday and had no connection issues. Yes the ads are quite annoying but it is free. Would be nice for some replays or something.

[One_Ski]

At first, it didn't work at all. Later in the evening it started working smoothly, but the continuous commercials were so annoying, I just shut it down. I mean, seriously - there were a couple hundered viewers, and they're going to pound us into the ground with commercials? Even network TV limits commercials to 20 minutes per hour or so.

[Horton]

@dhofert I'm completely perplexed that it works so much better for some people than others

[dhofert]

Yeah it really makes no sense. I really don't think I watched long enough to be a good statistic though.

[Jibbo]

The connection struggled the first day and kept freezing. But fine after that.

But the commercials are so constant that I just gave up watching. There were some amazing moments that they could have replayed and really captured the audience but they seemed to miss that opportunity. Did seem to work better on my iPad through the upstream app than my computer .

[DavidN]

Unwatchable

[ALPJr]

Varied, at times it loaded right up and kept going, other times it took three or four tries, and last night it would stop after about 10 seconds. Hope tonight goes smooth.

[Wish]

What the finals like as far as our time zone (East) to start watching? Guessing late?

[ALPJr]

1:25pm AU time, so minus 14hrs should be about 11 - 11:30pm est. for womens slalom followed by mens.

[rayn]

Anyone having luck today. Clearly I am not.

[DmaxJC_ski]

Worked great for me a couple times, today not even a hint....

[Kelvin]

It’s been nearly perfect for me today. Back at home with cable modem internet.

[MarkTimm]

It was awful on my android tablet using google chrome and was almost flawless on my laptop using google chrome. The difference was enough that I thought the problem was with my tablet.

[APB]

such a great event and such poor coverage. id rather just watch a youtube shot from the announcers booth and posted an hour after the event.

 

those repetitive ads were so damn annoying when i could watch. right a benny cut out for his 41 gate..... boom ad. f-u.

 

[Bill22]

Used desktop with Firefox for ALL of the finals, only had to refresh 3-4 times.

 

I can’t believe that the announcer said Nate had “guaranteed” himself 1st place before Benjamin had skied. That’s just down right disrespectful!

[WaterSkier12]

Or confident

[Kelvin]

I watched Saturday using Firefox and a rural internet connection. Everything was spotty and the ads were a bit annoying. For the finals, I was back home using a good high speed internet connection and Chrome with an ad-blocker plugin - NO ads whatsoever and the connection was fairly stable with only 3 or 4 refreshes.

 

To get technical, alot of their issues come from the Ustream service only offering a single bitrate stream at a fairly high bitrate. Made for great picture quality when it came in, but made drop outs and buffering more likely.

[Robbo5252]

Thursday & Friday were perfect on a high speed connection. During the finals, just trying to listen to it on the road while my 7 year old watched was hopeless. He was retrying every 2 minutes with minimal luck.