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Flo S#cks, For everyone. Period. Unless you are the only person watching.. Ever..


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1 hour ago, Old Corps Guy said:

It's really simple.  Go in expecting that Flo will give you low quality service and you won't be disappointed. They know they have a captive audience and they're the only game in town. Not much motivation to produce a quality product.

I’m sure there is some truth in what you write, fellow ‘old corps guy.”    It’s just that I’m not aware of any competitor out there willing to step-in to replace Flo, on terms DCI can afford.  More importantly, Flo is unique in that it represents an opportunity to join with ALL segments of this entertainment form. WGI, BOA, etc.  There’s added value in DCI being grouped here, rather than stand alone.

Until there is an alternative service to choose, HERE is where the pressure is required. I am hopeful, fans of those other programs, if equally dissatisfied, are similarly vocal. If not, why not?

Overall, my Flo experience throughout every DCI event on the schedule was better than last year. As Jeff Ream already pointed out, the Flo Semi-Finals product, just 24 hours before, was flawless on my Roku. To me, that means FLO, and no one else, was not prepared for higher demand. This is a level of ignorance and carelessness that should not be tolerated by the Flo ownership group. 

I won’t be canceling. But will, when I have an alternative.

Edited by Fred Windish
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Welp FLO pooped the Bed Saturday night..

And I was on their FLO Sports App. on a brand new 4K Fire Stick, 1 Gig Fibe connection, with a direct line of sight from the Fire stick to the Wifi Router not even two feet away.. 

The App itself was Crashing non stop the second half of Bluecoats all through BD's performance... It was also crashing earlier in the night around Boston's performance.. 

The worst part was that once it crashed it, it went to the main page and an ad for their Bowling coverage immediately started playing.. "Williams is dominating" is all I kept hearing.. Then sometimes when I restarted the app to quickly the Bowling coverage would keep playing even though I restarted the DCI coverage.. It was a nightmare!!! The little that I did get to see of BD, their two Bowling announcers were Yucking it up about how much Williams was dominating..  Flo really F-ed up my experience of BD that night.. 

I was so relieved once the Finals Retreat Youtube Live stream started.. I immediately switched over to Youtube and guess what not one single glitch.. 

 

I'll have to modify the Thread Title again.. FLO S*cks, Unless you're the only one watching..... 

Edited by Glenn426
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2 hours ago, cixelsyd said:

My discount HDTV never locks in the middle of a program, requiring me to manually refresh the feed.  Why should a video feed to a computer (a far smarter device) be vulnerable to such behavior?

Because the issue isn't the device receiving it, it's the network that gets things to them.

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On 8/12/2019 at 9:12 AM, Fred Windish said:

I’m sure there is some truth in what you write, fellow ‘old corps guy.”    It’s just that I’m not aware of any competitor out there willing to step-in to replace Flo, on terms DCI can afford.  More importantly, Flo is unique in that it represents an opportunity to join with ALL segments of this entertainment form. WGI, BOA, etc.  There’s added value in DCI being grouped here, rather than stand alone.

Until there is an alternative service to choose, HERE is where the pressure is required. I am hopeful, fans of those other programs, if equally dissatisfied, are similarly vocal. If not, why not?

Overall, my Flo experience throughout every DCI event on the schedule was better than last year. As Jeff Ream already pointed out, the Flo Semi-Finals product, just 24 hours before, was flawless on my Roku. To me, that means FLO, and no one else, was not prepared for higher demand. This is a level of ignorance and carelessness that should not be tolerated by the Flo ownership group. 

I won’t be canceling. But will, when I have an alternative.

the first year DCI showed finals live was a mess...they weren't prepared for the amount of volume they got. They kinda sorta admitted it too. But Flo remains deathly silent. I know at least 2 threads on their Facebook page were complaints from all over the country.

if Flo has one GLARING issue over the years, it's being forthright, admitting yes, it was their fault, and customer service. That time Broken Arrow was a huge mess, DCI had to make a statement because Flo didn't.

Edited by Jeff Ream
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On 8/11/2019 at 1:59 PM, rjohn76 said:

The important thing to understand is that the stream you're watching isn't a direct pipe from Flo to your home.  It runs through a multitude of different networks & providers through various peering agreements.  Depending on your ISP, it could be a relatively short/direct path... or it could be a completely roundabout path with many hops.  At any point on that path, a slowdown can occur that would effect your streaming experience.  That's in part why some end users have flawless streaming experiences, while others have freezes every show.

Large streaming providers like Netflix & Youtube typically work with ISPs (or pay) to ensure that their streams have a pathway of least resistance with more than adequate bandwidth.  They also have fall backs in place that allow them to re-route around problems & slowdowns.  While Flo as a streaming provider is growing in size with the addition of more sports coverage, it's definitely not in the same class as those other streaming providers at this point.  That's not saying that they shouldn't be working proactively to provide a better streaming experience, but it is acknowledging the fact that some factors may not be in their immediate control.

  isp-peering-explanation-diagram.png

Which I think most people understand.  However, it doesn't explain Flo's suggested "fix" during the broadcast to try and watch using a browser instead of the app since the same ISP is supplying both.

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Flo’s issues could be solved, it seems, by simply upgrading their streaming server and bit depth. A modern streaming server would be able to shift load as more people sign on to stream, and better bit depth would mean we could all watch shows on our tv monitors without fuzzy images or three second refreshes.

This costs money. But it seems as if Flo is pissing off what should be it’s most loyal and lucrative customer base, which is drum corps fans. Their other programming can’t possibly match the size of the dci audience. College wrestling? Come on. DCI sold about a million hard tickets in 2019.

I couldn’t wait to cancel my subscription after finals, esp after they botched the showing of Bluecoats and BD. That’s a #### shame for Flo. An unimaginably bad marketing fail.

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On 8/12/2019 at 1:09 PM, Jeff Ream said:

the first year DCI showed finals live was a mess...they weren't prepared for the amount of volume they got. They kinda sorta admitted it too. But Flo remains deathly silent. I know at least 2 threads on their Facebook page were complaints from all over the country.

if Flo has one GLARING issue over the years, it's being forthright, admitting yes, it was there fault, and customer service. That time Broken Arrow was a huge mess, DCI had to make a statement because Flo didn't.

Rivals.com made that mistake in their early years. National signing day is the equivalent of dci finals and their service went down all day long. When it would resurface it took so long to load pages that people just walked away. Despite always being prepared for more volume, they always underprepared and underprojected.

Even after Yahoo bought them the issues continued. And Yahoo never admitted any mistakes and refused to make it right with subscribers.

Finally the leadership of Rivals itself said enough is enough. When it happened again for like the tenth year in a row, the ceo of rivals gave EVERY SINGLE SUBSCRIBER a one month REFUND. It costed them over a million dollars but it finally convinced Yahoo that the status quo was unacceptable. 

These issues are NOT the fault of subscribers. They are fixable. But DCI is going to have to basically say fix it or else. 

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Honestly, I would give up streaming completely to have the old PBS broadcast back. Maybe it's a nostalgia thing. 

48 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

These issues are NOT the fault of subscribers. They are fixable. But DCI is going to have to basically say fix it or else.

Mike is right. This isn't an "us" problem...it's a "them" problem. That being said, I would boldly guess that DCI has no contingency plan, alternatives or the chutzpah to force flows hand. The best thing that could happen would be for flow to partner with one of the MANY wireless companies to give them some advice on capacity and stability IMHO. Just my .02

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2 hours ago, MikeRapp said:

Flo’s issues could be solved, it seems, by simply upgrading their streaming server and bit depth. A modern streaming server would be able to shift load as more people sign on to stream, and better bit depth would mean we could all watch shows on our tv monitors without fuzzy images or three second refreshes.

This costs money. But it seems as if Flo is pissing off what should be it’s most loyal and lucrative customer base, which is drum corps fans. Their other programming can’t possibly match the size of the dci audience. College wrestling? Come on. DCI sold about a million hard tickets in 2019.

I couldn’t wait to cancel my subscription after finals, esp after they botched the showing of Bluecoats and BD. That’s a #### shame for Flo. An unimaginably bad marketing fail.

Do we have any numbers on viewers for the different activities. Maybe it’s the area I live but college wrestling is big for some colleges and their fans and alumni. Point is there might be more viewers than one suspects outside of their own interests 

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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27 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Do we have any numbers on viewers for the different activities. Maybe it’s the area I live but college wrestling is big for some colleges and their fans and alumni. Point is there might be more viewers than one suspects outside of their own interests 

No doubt, but the issue with DCI is the sudden and disproportionate draw it pulls on your servers. You might have a million college wrestling fans but rarely if ever are they all on the same streaming event at the same time.

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