Crap iFollow Stream - is it worth it?

Quoted from LH

Is paying for tomorrow’s match a signal of approval for the EFL Trophy format or should I just watch England instead? Would rather spend a tenner in the clubshop than approve of the EFLT.

surely not charging a tenner tomorrow are they?

Quoted from Boris Johnson

surely not charging a tenner tomorrow are they?

I would expect so, I think they did last year

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

I have no clue what you are talking about. Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because I have no clue

As I mentioned elsewhere, the company responsible for providing the stream were aware of a problem.

The footage from BP is a direct HF feed.

Quoted from arryarryarry

As I mentioned elsewhere, the company responsible for providing the stream were aware of a problem.

The footage from BP is a direct HF feed.

No idea what you mean by an HF Feed - though it looks like there is a bandwidth issue on the uplink from BP.

It's a terrible service for the money. NOW TV do a 24 hour Sky Sport pass for £9.99, including 11 channels you can watch on multiple devices, which is obviously infinitely superior in quality.

IFollow charge £10 for a crap stream that's not much better than any old dodgy stream you can find for free with an internet search.

Having said that, i would pay £10 to watch Town, because, well it's Town, but i have had nothing but problems with IFollow. From logging in issues, to crap streams that are also out of synch, and terrible communication. I gave up on them a while back and if they want my custom, they need to up their game. There is a big opportunity here for themselves and the club to make valuable extra income, so you'd think they would get their acts together.

It’s not that difficult in 2020 to sort your streaming service out, especially when the money iFollow will be making will be absolutely huge over the next few months.

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

Thanks for this.
Interesting if anybody could confirm they receive a high quality stream (720p minimum) as claimed by ifollow??
The service as it stands is very poor in my opinion.

Previously we have had great quality via a PC on Son Ofs 42inch tv most weeks we have watched, so hopefully it was a one off