What does a digital platform mean for Bills in London?

[mightysimi]

I would be interested to see how many Game Pass subscribers there are. If everyone of those guys can watch 4 different games at once, I think it will be alright. I also think you over estimate how many people would want to watch Buf Jax early in the morning for the east coast and stupid early in the west.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

Is it dumb because you don't like it or because you don't think it will work?

Both

[DraftBoy]

Both

Putting what you like or don't like aside. Why don't you think it will work?

[IlluminatusUIUC]

Putting what you like or don't like aside. Why don't you think it will work?

Streams have worked in the past when they are the alternate means of watching the event. Catching the overflow from tv, for example. But when it becomes the primary means, the traffic frequently overloads the service. The Super Bowl stream fell way behind the action, buffered frequently, and dropped many viewers.

[DraftBoy]

Streams have worked in the past when they are the alternate means of watching the event. Catching the overflow from tv, for example. But when it becomes the primary means, the traffic frequently overloads the service. The Super Bowl stream fell way behind the action, buffered frequently, and dropped many viewers.

But isn't comparing one of the largest sporting events in the world to a Week 7 football game between two bad-mediocre football teams a little unfair? I have no idea if its going to work or not, but I've heard great things about the NFL's streaming service through Direct TV. If runs like that has then this could be a huge hit since it would draw in more than just Bills/Jags fans who just want to watch some football at 9am on a Sunday.

[Joe Fo Sho]

But isn't comparing one of the largest sporting events in the world to a Week 7 football game between two bad-mediocre football teams a little unfair? I have no idea if its going to work or not, but I've heard great things about the NFL's streaming service through Direct TV. If runs like that has then this could be a huge hit since it would draw in more than just Bills/Jags fans who just want to watch some football at 9am on a Sunday.

Plus, like all things, streaming will become better and get more reliable as they move toward this way of distributing their content. Like you said, the stream through DirecTV is fine. They will need to invest a ton of money into their network in order to be able to stream something like the Superbowl solely over the internet. Why would they invest that much money without doing their market research to see if the people would be willing to watch the game this way? They wouldn't, and what a better test of their current streaming service than a game between 2 small markets that will be playing at 9am EDT?

If this turns into a pay-per-view type thing, I'm gonna be pissed though.

[mightysimi]

i would think this would do a little less traffic than the superbowl. probably a way to test it for the next one.

[IlluminatusUIUC]

But isn't comparing one of the largest sporting events in the world to a Week 7 football game between two bad-mediocre football teams a little unfair?

No, because the Super Bowl was also broadcast on television pretty much anywhere in the world that received a TV signal. The Super Bowl stream peaked out at 1.3 million viewers (http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/02/medi...eaming-record/), about 1/100th of the people watching, and was struggling mightily under that load.

The average NFL game draws about 19 million viewers. If you halve that because of the teams involved, halve it again because of the time zone, and then halve it a third time assuming the viewers in the local markets are watching OTA, that's still ~2.4 million viewers.

I have no idea if its going to work or not, but I've heard great things about the NFL's streaming service through Direct TV. If runs like that has then this could be a huge hit since it would draw in more than just Bills/Jags fans who just want to watch some football at 9am on a Sunday.

I used the DirecTV streaming service all last year. It was better than FirstRowSports obviously but still a pale imitation of an actual broadcast. If they want to offer a stream on the side, I say great idea. If they want to offer a stream alone, it creates a huge problem.

[Joe Fo Sho]

If they want to offer a stream on the side, I say great idea. If they want to offer a stream alone, it creates a huge problem.

Is this solely just because you don't trust the NFL's ability to stream the game? You don't think the technology would ever get better?

Would you trust YouTube to stream NFL games? What about Neflix?

[IlluminatusUIUC]

Is this solely just because you don't trust the NFL's ability to stream the game? You don't think the technology would ever get better?

"Ever"? Of course it will get better eventually, but are we going to overhaul the country's internet infrastructure in the next 9 months?

Would you trust YouTube to stream NFL games? What about Neflix?

No, because it's not about the service hosting it, it's about the technical limitations of streaming live content. When you watch a Youtube video or Netflix movie, it downloads the upcoming part of the movie. If your connection severs for 30 seconds, you don't even notice because it's already downloaded the next 90.

OTOH you can't pre-buffer a football game. If your connection fluctuates, as it often will when 2 million other people are hammering on the same content, then you start missing plays.

[Joe Fo Sho]

"Ever"? Of course it will get better eventually, but are we going to overhaul the country's internet infrastructure in the next 9 months?

You think we need to "overhaul the country's internet infrastructure" to stream the Bills Jags game?

[stuckincincy]

"Ever"? Of course it will get better eventually, but are we going to overhaul the country's internet infrastructure in the next 9 months?



No, because it's not about the service hosting it, it's about the technical limitations of streaming live content. When you watch a Youtube video or Netflix movie, it downloads the upcoming part of the movie. If your connection severs for 30 seconds, you don't even notice because it's already downloaded the next 90.

OTOH you can't pre-buffer a football game. If your connection fluctuates, as it often will when 2 million other people are hammering on the same content, then you start missing plays.

I see you have come around to my contention. Heh - I recall using telephone acoustic couplers and amazing (!) 300 baud transmission. We marveled at it. It was of course mostly ASCII back then, the old AT command set and compiling with Fortran...2 minutes for the handshake was pretty spiffy.

I still have an ISP that tosses in dial-up along with hi-speed, still have a junk box full of MFM, IDE, SCSI, PCi cards and a couple of serial external jobs. Got a cobbled-up Radio Shack breadboard with PROMs and DACs that could convert ASCII kyb presses to Morse code that I linked with a SW transmitter.

Gawd - that was light years ago...












i

[IlluminatusUIUC]

You think we need to "overhaul the country's internet infrastructure" to stream the Bills Jags game?

To get an uninterrupted HD stream to millions of simultaneous viewers? Yes.

[Joe Fo Sho]

To get an uninterrupted HD stream to millions of simultaneous viewers? Yes.

I'm not trying to start a big thing here, but I think it can be fine. If it fails, I think it will be due to the NFL's ignorance not our internet infrastructure. We'll see I guess.

[better days]

I'm not trying to start a big thing here, but I think it can be fine. If it fails, I think it will be due to the NFL's ignorance not our internet infrastructure. We'll see I guess.

Well, there may be like a dozen Jags fans that stream the game.

The rest of the Jags fans can watch it OTA.

So I would say the vast majority of people that stream this game will be Bills fans.

The Bills have fans far & wide, the Jags, not so much..not even in Fla outside of Jax.

[mightysimi]

If Austin Powers doesn't introduce them as the Jacksonville Shaguars I think it's a wasted opportunity.

[better days]

If Austin Powers doesn't introduce them as the Jacksonville Shaguars I think it's a wasted opportunity.

Oh, behave yourself.

[DraftBoy]

No, because the Super Bowl was also broadcast on television pretty much anywhere in the world that received a TV signal. The Super Bowl stream peaked out at 1.3 million viewers (http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/02/medi...eaming-record/), about 1/100th of the people watching, and was struggling mightily under that load.

The average NFL game draws about 19 million viewers. If you halve that because of the teams involved, halve it again because of the time zone, and then halve it a third time assuming the viewers in the local markets are watching OTA, that's still ~2.4 million viewers.




I used the DirecTV streaming service all last year. It was better than FirstRowSports obviously but still a pale imitation of an actual broadcast. If they want to offer a stream on the side, I say great idea. If they want to offer a stream alone, it creates a huge problem.

Thank you, didn't know the number broke like that.