Elephant in the room

[BDStaffAlum]

Gambling $ on finals this year is one thing, and a reasonable caution, IMO.

I will continue to purchase FN, however, because internet-based programming is getting better and more reliable all the time, and anyway, it's the future, for all kinds of programming, from news to sports to music to drama. As fiber-optic cable continues to spread, and as innovations such as ChromeCast and Roku and others continue to roll out, we'll be relying on the Internet for more and more of our media.

I would totally pay for a Roku "Marching Arts" channel, including DCI, BOA, other state and national contests like Texas TMEA All-State, etc. That would be amazing...

[Peel Paint]

I've found life on the Fan Network to be a lot less stressful when I stop trying to watch it live. A day later, even ten minutes later, it runs much more reliably, plus I can skip over the intervals between corps and cut to the chase. Now I fully understand why those who say, I'm paying for live, I want it delivered live, and I shouldn't have to delay it to get it are correct. If that's how you feel, go for it. For me it isn't worth stressing out over. Other things that people have found helpful include using Google Chrome as a browser instead of Firefox and if it freezes live, press pause, then play after a brief interval; if you stop playback or close the window, you may not be able to get back in. Neither of those tips work in every case.

/not going to try and streamcast finals live. Odds are strong that I would have serious technical glitches and miss corps given Fan Network's performance this year, Tom Blair notwithstanding... he has nothing to do with the feed. I'll catch it later and be happy doing so. It is possible it will go smoother than other shows live this year because fewer people will be trying to streamcast.

[skevinp]

I'm not paying for the live cast because none of my other live cast experiences this summer have managed to be live. I have continually been dropped in the middle of shows and told it is unavailable, then spent forever trying to get back in.

I am really tired of being told by those fortunate to have a good experience that it must be my fault. I am using the same equipment that worked OK last year. This year the service has been horrible. Besides, DCI doesn't sell it as something that, if you are an IT professional and do everything just right you might be lucky enough to see some of it live if it makes it from their end to yours. They make it sound like it is something easy and accessible to most anyone with a computer.

It is hardly an entitlement mentality to expect to be able to consume a product that you paid for.

[fsubone]

there's entitlement, and then there's getting what you paid for. I had some issues last summer, mentioned it on here, people way wiser than me in the interwebs showed me how to test for this and that, wrote it all down, and tried it right away this year...and per the tests, everything was fine on my end. But I still had issues with every live feed I watched this year.

If I am paying for it, it's not being entitlted...it's getting what I paid for. I didn't pay for multiple freezes per corps.....every corpsuntil the 2nd break...at Atlanta. if you feel I'm acting entitled, so be it. I'm feeling like I paid for good service, and I'm not getting it.

Then I would assume it's a problem on your end. I've been watching every webcast for the last few years, and haven't had problems with freezing. As usual, because it's online, everyone's mileage will vary. To write it off though as some are because they don't have a strong WiFi signal is akin to hating a satellite provider because you live in an area with bad weather a lot.

[Phirefenix]

I've mentioned this before, but DCI shouldn't be taking on the infrastructure portion as heavily as they do. Amazon Web Services is a perfectly reasonable alternative. In conjunction with Adobe Media Server 5 you get well supported multiprotocol streams running on arguably the quickest hardware for the dollar. CloudFront from AWS makes this pretty streamlined as well. Costs could be competitive if not reduced, and maybe those savings pass to us the fans. The current provider for dci.thefannetwork.org looks to be okay. The prices are likely above AWS, and they offer a mix of bare metal and cloud hosting. I'd argue that for equal performance they'd pay less with Amazon. Reddit runs on AWS reasonably reliably, and the Fan Network is not going to draw anywhere near the same amount of traffic.

The bottleneck is still the bandwidth available at the show site, which really is a roll of the dice. With the comfort of running on a stable, well proven platform DCI can switch gears to this problem. If they aren't already, stream via UDP rather than TCP, and implement DCCP for greater congestion management. UDP streams being stateless are much quicker in general compared to TCP which needs to handshake, and then assure packets arrive in order. DCCP will give UDP streaming greater reliability by introducing a streamlined handshake. However delivery order is not a part of that protocol. Workarounds exist. Partnerships with local news camera crews for smaller events may provide adequate dedicated bandwidth for quality streaming. Tom Blair and his crew can focus on large events, and provide great drum corps coverage.

I think in short DCI needs to focus on managing the content they want to provide, not the infrastructure they need to provide it. There are so many options out there now that are cost effective, and provide a good experience for end users. This entire post hinges on them managing their own bare metal box though. I'd love to know more about the gears in the machine to see if they're already using a cloud solution. In which case I'm just talking out my ###. Drop me a line DCI.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Phirefenix

[BRASSO]

i dont think it is a gamble at all

tom blair and the lead team will produce it / should be identical in quality to the cinema event

expect a high quality production!!!

I agree. If its a Buffalo mishap repeat, you ask them for a refund, you get it, and so what did you lose ? On the other hand, if you don't pony up,and the production is of good quality, you receive this :

Edited August 6, 2013 by BRASSO

[skywhopper]

I, for one, won't be purchasing their fan network streams again until this gets fixed. I'm all for DCI making a profit, but what we've seen this year (especially at the Buffalo show) is unacceptable. Approximately 5000 fan network subscribers (that's what they've told us, but it may be more than that) x $69 = ~$350,000. They have 21 total shows available to watch on demand.

350,000 / 21 = ~$16,500 per show revenue

I would do each show for $500 + travel costs and you'd have zero problems. Where did all of that money go?

It goes to pay the staff, equipment, bandwidth, website hosting, support staff who are available for live chat and respond to all our nasty emails. Then some portion gets shared with the corps, and a large chunk has to go to pay for music licensing. I'm sure DCI makes some 'profit' off of it, but at the end of the year, whatever extra they make goes back to the corps or to be invested in new things. Some of the money has to offset declining margins on the finals CDs/DVDs/BluRays, and to help pay for show costs. Of course DCI also has other staff to support, including Dan Acheson, their accounting staff, their lawyers, etc.

[skywhopper]

That end will be fantastic, but I'd still be a little worried about the connectivity/stream quality issues that some people have reported, because that all is happening upstream of them.

EDIT: or is it downstream?

Downstream of DCI, upstream of the end-users.

FWIW, the Buffalo stream problems were, for the most part, NOT related to bandwidth or connectivity issues. That production was terrible before it hit the wires.

[skywhopper]

I've mentioned this before, but DCI shouldn't be taking on the infrastructure portion as heavily as they do. Amazon Web Services is a perfectly reasonable alternative. In conjunction with Adobe Media Server 5 you get well supported multiprotocol streams running on arguably the quickest hardware for the dollar. CloudFront from AWS makes this pretty streamlined as well. Costs could be competitive if not reduced, and maybe those savings pass to us the fans. The current provider for dci.thefannetwork.org looks to be okay. The prices are likely above AWS, and they offer a mix of bare metal and cloud hosting. I'd argue that for equal performance they'd pay less with Amazon. Reddit runs on AWS reasonably reliably, and the Fan Network is not going to draw anywhere near the same amount of traffic.

Running their stuff on AWS would *increase* the work DCI has to do, not lessen it. And I doubt that you're going to be able to run a livestream better from AWS using Adobe Media Server than via Brightcove or another dedicated live stream provider who already have all the infrastructure in place to support live streams from venues. The livestreams DCI provides are commodities. They don't need to be in the business of re-inventing that particular wheel.

[Dash Fieldpaint]

Then I would assume it's a problem on your end. I've been watching every webcast for the last few years, and haven't had problems with freezing. As usual, because it's online, everyone's mileage will vary. To write it off though as some are because they don't have a strong WiFi signal is akin to hating a satellite provider because you live in an area with bad weather a lot.

You would assume it's a problem on his end, and you would most likely be wrong. Do you know how he's connecting to his router? Is he using a router or is he connected directly to the modem? Do you know his connection speed? If he's using wifi, is it N? G? What browser? Do you know these things?

I've been subscribing to Fan Network since the beginning and I've never had the freezing issues I've had this season. I'm running a solid 20 mbps download, 10 mbps upload connection. I'm running it off of a high end laptop connected directly to my router. This computer has a fresh install of Windows 7 and I haven't used it for anything but Fan Network.

I've watched the live streams in years past at friend's houses, connected to their G wifi network. I would have one or two lockups per night. This was with the computer in their back yard with the router 60 feet away inside of the house.

This year I haven't been able to watch a single live show without losing the stream at some point. One webcast lost the stream and I wasn't able to refresh the page. I'm not sure what changed on DCI's end, but it wasn't a change for the better.

I'm glad you haven't been experiencing any issues. Other people have. A very large number of people.