Jeff Ream Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 The relevant portion of the email: This could mean a change from Brightcove to something else, but I'd say they are just going to give the website a face lift. To save face in response to the copyright issue. A face saving face lift. The face, having been lifted, will be saved. Maybe they were already planning an upgrade, but if so the copyright issue is coincidental. More likely they will be choosing a web design service or person (homebrew is still quite possible given what is achievable today) "during the next few months". upgrade was already in the planning stages Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 As others have pointed out here, DCI has done precisely what you describe. They have looked at their internal data on recent traffic and sales, seen that live coverage gets more traffic than archives, and concluded that people are less interested in archives to whatever proportion their data suggests. How stupid is that? Is anyone surprised that live events drive recent traffic? The last time DCI did anything significant with archival media was when they released the legacy DVDs back in, what, 1999? Live coverage brings us fresh new material frequently, but there is nothing being added on the archival front, and no effort to even stir the pot. Thousands of video and audio recordings sit and rot, while the Fan Network archival stream selection has remained unchanged since inception. Coverage of the current season is heavily promoted from May through August, while there is zero promotion for the Fan Network archives at any point in the year. Put simply, what DCI does is: - promote A and ignore B (maybe even promote A at the expense of B) - watch as A receives more traffic than B - take the resulting data as proof that there is no interest in B "Market research" requires that you look beyond your internal sales data and consider (like the phrase says) the "market". DCI does not even look beyond their own one-sided promotional efforts, and the conclusions drawn from such myopic analysis are nothing but self-fulfilling prophecies. mre of the older stuff has not been put up because quite honestly, the cost for licensing rights for that material dwarfs what the estimated revnue would be if they put it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 It's nice that DCI has announced a new platform objective, but they aren't made of money. I'm probably jumping to conclusions (again) but isn't using legal counsel a significant expense no matter what the outcome? Yes, but it's not impossible/unheard of to find a good attorney/firm run by a specialist (i.e. copyright law and how it may apply to non-profit educational institutions) who have a reasonable monthly retainer fee. I personally do not work in that field extensively, but I have experience in other fields and have been represented impeccably for a VERY reasonable monthly retainer. It is a cost, for sure, but it might not be astronomically expensive; and depending on the attorney/retainer contract, doing research & filing paperwork may be part of the monthly expense: it's the extra hearings where things get expensive Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 The benefit of the system will probably be more administrative than anything pixel-specific. Legacy stuff is 640x480. That's because the DVDs are the same, and they're just rips from the collection. In season, probably not much different quality given it'll probably be nearly the same equipment broadcasting it. What you'll probably see is more along the lines of a modern, responsive, mobile friendly site. Maybe even some integration between what's dci.org and what's FN. I can tell you that the back end of their systems is "homebrew"... like, someone sat down and wrote it. The systems in need at the time were just not something you could buy. Today, they are still complex enough that it's either a major purchase, or more commonly, a service. If you want kind of the example everyone envisioned from the beginning, look at your average sports league. League home pages, team pages, integrated highlights... that sort of thing would be out of reach without either a larger web staff, or in this case, a partner platform. What you're going to see in the little black video box won't be much different. It'll be everything else. This is an exciting thought, and you have me excited to see what may be in store for us!! With DCI to me, the line between large organization/company and mom-and-pop/small company seems razor thin, and anything that visually that can be improved by their web presence would be awesome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigadier80 Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 And I'll go one step further as I contemplate my vast collection of legacy BETA, VHS, CD, DVD, and now BluRays. I've felt a twinge of regret over the years wondering why I'm buying all these media when darn-near everything I want to see in on FN (so long as the corps is still active). I must admit to a twinge of satisfaction at having all of this media when the FN was chopped off at the knees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brigadier80 Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 OMG do you really still have Beta? What was released on Beta? I am with you regarding accumulating media. A number of years ago I bought all the old 'Through the Years' series and converted them to DVD. I also traded with other collectors semi final videos from the 80's and 90's. I was never able to get my hand on prelim performance from the 70's. From what I heard I think some of them went up in flames. I also cleaned up and converted to CD audio tapes and records containing non-finalist recordings from 76-89. I wish I could find more. I think the 'Through the Year's' tapes are no longer in circlulation. I still go back and watch Boston, Dutch Boy and Trooper's shows from 82-94. Some great shows during those years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garfield Posted January 22, 2015 Author Share Posted January 22, 2015 OMG do you really still have Beta? What was released on Beta? I am with you regarding accumulating media. A number of years ago I bought all the old 'Through the Years' series and converted them to DVD. I also traded with other collectors semi final videos from the 80's and 90's. I was never able to get my hand on prelim performance from the 70's. From what I heard I think some of them went up in flames. I also cleaned up and converted to CD audio tapes and records containing non-finalist recordings from 76-89. I wish I could find more. I think the 'Through the Year's' tapes are no longer in circlulation. I still go back and watch Boston, Dutch Boy and Trooper's shows from 82-94. Some great shows during those years. Yes, yes I do. And I have a shrink-wrapped Sony Betamax that still plays like new. Several early years were available on BETA. I have 1986 Finals (that's FOUR tapes!), 1987, and 1988 on BETA. I switched to VHS in 1989. I also made BETA recording of many of the PBS broadcasts beginning the first year of broadcast. I bought the Legacy collection just for the ease of not having to set up the tape machines, and the BlueRay quality of the Legacy shows is superb (and the audio is immensely better, too). Just today I gave all of my old finals vinyl albums to a friend to scrub to CD. Gosh, they go back to the mid-1970's and the USOpen (on vinyl!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KVG_DC Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 I have to agree with Garfield regarding the picture quality. Even with shows from more recent years, anytime there's a decent amount of motion (which is almost always in a DCI show) the image turns into a blocky mess. Here's an example screen shot: (hopefully a single frame grab isn't against DCP policy) I'm positive it used to look better than this. I also don't think it's my ISP because I'm averaging 13-14 Mbps and other streaming services like Netflix are showing full HD flawlessly. Between this and the loss of content, I'm pretty disappointed. The up/down numbers a speed test site gives you won't necessarily indicate if your ISP is throttling or if something else is causing the player to go for a lower definition file (which is what that screen grab definitely looks like). if you want to know which file you're getting (the higher resolution or lower one), Run the FN player with the Brightcove Debugger open in another window of your browser. http://admin.brightcove.com/viewer/BrightcoveDebugger.html Then sift through what the Debugger file says and see if you notice it buffering then loading a different resolution file for playback. This is what did to trouble shoot with the FN tech when I did what I was talking about in my previous post because my player was often getting stuck going back and forth between thinking "hey this bandwidth can do the high resolution file" then "whoops no, fishing up the low definition file so you can at least see something" ... "Hey this bandwidth can do the high..." and so forth and I'd end up with endless buffering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 Just today I gave all of my old finals vinyl albums to a friend to scrub to CD. Gosh, they go back to the mid-1970's and the USOpen (on vinyl!). Let me know when every things done and I'll try to make time to spend a week at your home! As long as you've upgraded your big screen to 4K. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Freedman Posted January 23, 2015 Share Posted January 23, 2015 The up/down numbers a speed test site gives you won't necessarily indicate if your ISP is throttling or if something else is causing the player to go for a lower definition file (which is what that screen grab definitely looks like). if you want to know which file you're getting (the higher resolution or lower one), Run the FN player with the Brightcove Debugger open in another window of your browser. http://admin.brightcove.com/viewer/BrightcoveDebugger.html Then sift through what the Debugger file says and see if you notice it buffering then loading a different resolution file for playback. This is what did to trouble shoot with the FN tech when I did what I was talking about in my previous post because my player was often getting stuck going back and forth between thinking "hey this bandwidth can do the high resolution file" then "whoops no, fishing up the low definition file so you can at least see something" ... "Hey this bandwidth can do the high..." and so forth and I'd end up with endless buffering. So can you confirm that the lower file is use more recently? I use a iPhone 3GS which wouldn't notice the difference. Still, I aspire to view it on hi resolution again one day. Someday ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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