ESPN + is a joke

[two3zone]

On the bright side the Dance Team looks like a contender in the ACC

One way to gain viewership. They have to be the highest ranked dance recruiting class in the league.

 

[two3zone]

Agreed. They look great in HD!

Even better with no sound too.

 

[two3zone]

5-10 years ago, we couldnt even watch every game… now we can access every game in HD on unbelievable tvs… people love to b****

When they started shaking us down for the money they are we should have access. We’re paying for a service that advertises this product, we pay for it and get a substandard product, this is a valid gripe. If you went to a theatre and the film was in backwards would you do something about it or continue to watch the movie?

 

[JustPherU]

Depends on the movie!

 

[STEVEHOLT]

It was clear what was happening. There was no real tv broadcast there. They used the radio feed of Matt Park and Jim Satalin who were calling a radio game...having to keep describing things they would not have to describe on a tv broadcast. My guess is that a tv crew did not show up ... and the school was doing as best it could on an emergency basis. Hey, at least it was on the air. A few years ago, you'd all be griping that it was not being televised.

That may explain the production issues but the poorly functioning espn+ AP is inexcusable considering the scope of the company

 

[Cusefan95]

It was clear what was happening. There was no real tv broadcast there. They used the radio feed of Matt Park and Jim Satalin who were calling a radio game...having to keep describing things they would not have to describe on a tv broadcast. My guess is that a tv crew did not show up ... and the school was doing as best it could on an emergency basis. Hey, at least it was on the air. A few years ago, you'd all be griping that it was not being televised.

I hadn’t considered that, but it would make sense…and it’d probably be bad form for Syracuse to make any public comments about that - better to just take the heat for a bad production from a game which wasn’t going to be watched by huge numbers anyway and move on.

 

[Cusefan95]

That may explain the production issues but the poorly functioning espn+ AP is inexcusable considering the scope of the company

MLB is so far ahead of everyone else in this area it’s crazy. I watch NHL games on ESPN+ - going from Center Ice to ESPN+ was a major step backwards in quality.

No idea what Disney needs to do to catch up - I just hope they realize it’s a need.

 

[FloridaCuse]

I believe the reason for the poor quality of the broadcast was because the normal ESPN production crew was being used to broadcast the SU soccer game on ACCN that was going on at the same time. The same thing happened a week ago for the St. Rose game. Hence they had to use the radio broadcast for audio & the picture shown on the jumbotron for video.

 

[MSOrange]

MLB is so far ahead of everyone else in this area it’s crazy. I watch NHL games on ESPN+ - going from Center Ice to ESPN+ was a major step backwards in quality.

No idea what Disney needs to do to catch up - I just hope they realize it’s a need.

You are right. MLB is definitely the standard imho. Love the ability to start the game from the beginning or join in progress and rewind/fast forward.

You are absolutely right if ESPN is going to push so many games to streaming - which makes sense, that's the way the world is going - they need to do much, much better.

 

[NYCCuse826]

5-10 years ago, we couldnt even watch every game… now we can access every game in HD on unbelievable tvs… people love to b****

People are bitching because a service they're paying for through a subscription or added to their cable package is subpar. Go get your free taco today, you've earned it. Maybe they'll give you another one.

 

[Cusefan95]

You are right. MLB is definitely the standard imho. Love the ability to start the game from the beginning or join in progress and rewind/fast forward.

You are absolutely right if ESPN is going to push so many games to streaming - which makes sense, that's the way the world is going - they need to do much, much better.

I like being able to back up 30 seconds to rewatch a play. I've largely given up doing that on NHL games because I either back up ten minutes inadvertently, it boots me all the way back to the beginning, or - the one which happened to me during the basketball game last night - it kicks me out of the app completely and I need to reload completely.

 

[Scooch]

It was clear what was happening. There was no real tv broadcast there. They used the radio feed of Matt Park and Jim Satalin who were calling a radio game...having to keep describing things they would not have to describe on a tv broadcast. My guess is that a tv crew did not show up ... and the school was doing as best it could on an emergency basis. Hey, at least it was on the air. A few years ago, you'd all be griping that it was not being televised.

100% this was it. Obviously it wasn't a network-quality broadcast.

But those of us hundreds of miles away got to watch a game that not too many years ago wouldn't have been viewable without a seat at the Dome. As a one-off, patchwork telecast it did the trick.

To reply directly to the subject of this thread, ESPN+ is certainly not a joke. It's a pretty amazing streaming service actually. I can watch thousands of games that would otherwise be totally inaccessible.

 

[Scooch]

MLB is so far ahead of everyone else in this area it’s crazy. I watch NHL games on ESPN+ - going from Center Ice to ESPN+ was a major step backwards in quality.

No idea what Disney needs to do to catch up - I just hope they realize it’s a need.

MLB.tv is run by Disney.

Did I blow your mind?

 

[Scooch]

You are right. MLB is definitely the standard imho. Love the ability to start the game from the beginning or join in progress and rewind/fast forward.

You are absolutely right if ESPN is going to push so many games to streaming - which makes sense, that's the way the world is going - they need to do much, much better.

ESPN+ could have a much better interface and better features, since the tech group that manages both it and MLB.tv is under Disney.

The challenge for ESPN+ is scale. MLB.tv offers, at most, 15 games a night. ESPN+ is often offering more than 100. There's a lot of automation with ESPN+ that is still very cloogey.

 

[STEVEHOLT]

You are right. MLB is definitely the standard imho. Love the ability to start the game from the beginning or join in progress and rewind/fast forward.

You are absolutely right if ESPN is going to push so many games to streaming - which makes sense, that's the way the world is going - they need to do much, much better.

It’s inexcusable how behind they are. Seems like it would take 1 second of code writing

 

[STEVEHOLT]

D

ESPN+ could have a much better interface and better features, since the tech group that manages both it and MLB.tv is under Disney.

The challenge for ESPN+ is scale. MLB.tv offers, at most, 15 games a night. ESPN+ is often offering more than 100. There's a lot of automation with ESPN+ that is still very cloogey.

i don’t understand this. Why would it matter how many games there are ? The AP should function like a DVR.

 

[Cusefan95]

ESPN+ could have a much better interface and better features, since the tech group that manages both it and MLB.tv is under Disney.

The challenge for ESPN+ is scale. MLB.tv offers, at most, 15 games a night. ESPN+ is often offering more than 100. There's a lot of automation with ESPN+ that is still very cloogey.

I learned something new today, that "cloogey" is a legitimate word. Had to look it up to discover it meant "inelegantly done" or poorly constructed.

Urban dictionary also has some alternate options that are probably best not discussed here.

 

[upperdeck]

ESPN+/accnx is to provide access. To do it at the level of the normal services you wont be getting it for $10 a month given the volume of games. This is the equivalent of 15-20 yrs ago when a random game we got to watch for $40 on a one off where half the time it didnt work at all.

they are doing half a dozen sports on this thing any given night all over the country so these locally produced efforts to not have glitches is a reach.

I mean youtubeTv is doing 15 games a weekend and now 8 weeks in has had major issues 4 of the 8 weeks. And they are using the actual feeds that go OTA.

if everyone wants to pay 2-3x more a month I am sure we could get a few less glitches.

An additional issue is that the apps we are watching these things with are all different. With old cable you had a couple boxes and then the feed goes to the TV.. now you have multiple ways to get it to the TV and every TV handles it differently even within the same brands. Too many variables..

throw in Wifi is not as consistent and its a wonder it works at all.

 

[Scooch]

D

i don’t understand this. Why would it matter how many games there are ? The AP should function like a DVR.

Obviously there are a lot of features that scale regardless of game volume. And I agree that ESPN+ is lacking in having the multitude of features that MLB.tv does. That's a cost issue.

I was referring more to navigation and discovery features. MLB.tv is highly manually curated in terms of its interface, and ESPN+ is all automated. That's why even the basics of a game starting on time is never ever an issue for MLB but alway seems to be wonky with ESPN+.

 

[Cusefan95]

MLB.tv is run by Disney.

Did I blow your mind?

Not really. While not in communications, I do have - sadly - professional experience doing something really well at a small scale and turning it into a cluster when attempting to scale up. Also know its almost impossible to explain to people who don't understand the logistics of it and are only viewing things tactically why everything turned into a giant mound of crap when it happens.

What's concerning about that is I also know that sometimes the "cloogey" infrastructure that was built to scale up the process needs to be blown up and almost completely rebuilt...and a lot of time its easier to just lower expectations and live with the flawed infrastructure since the costs to rebuild are too high to be economically viable. It may be something Disney knows is broken but can't possibly justify fully fixing.

 

[upperdeck]

if you go under the covers of alot of these services you would be amazed at how poorly it all works.. Things like amazon that we all use and behind the scenes it looks likes squirrels are making it all work..

Honestly the front end interfaces of most of these TV services are pretty lacking.. But it doesnt help that the tv companies cheap out as well with the Tvs and the remotes and the software and that all hurts response issues and what you can do.

 

[FloridaCuse]

I had a great technological experience with ESPN+ last night. (Not the quality of the so-called "production" of the game.) I normally watch using ACCNX but when I clicked on the game about 15 minutes late last night it gave me the option of ESPN+, ACCNX, or ESPN+ from the beginning. I'd never used ESPN+ from the begining before, so I clicked on that (I have an ESPN+ account). It was great. It started from the beginning, it let me FF ahead through timeouts and halftime, and it even let me pause it and switch over to my linear TV to watch some of the SU soccer game. I continued to go back and forth between the 2. I never tried that with ACCNX. I had no problem with the audio and not once did it revert back to the beginning like the original poster of this thread said happened to them.

 

[shandeezy7]

It was clear what was happening. There was no real tv broadcast there. They used the radio feed of Matt Park and Jim Satalin who were calling a radio game...having to keep describing things they would not have to describe on a tv broadcast. My guess is that a tv crew did not show up ... and the school was doing as best it could on an emergency basis. Hey, at least it was on the air. A few years ago, you'd all be griping that it was not being televised.

I don't think the game merely being "on air" should be acceptable in 2023. I went back and looked at the schedule from 10 years ago. Literally all but 4 games were televised on national networks (ESPN family - including streaming, ACC Network, CBS, FS1). The other 4 games were on the ACC Regional Sports Network, which meant they were available basically on the entire east coast. And I can 100% guarantee that the production value on every single one of those broadcasts was one million times better than what was put out there last night.

Being able to watch the game was better than nothing, but that doesn't mean that folks should just sit there and take it without complaining about an extremely poor product that they are shelling out money for one way or another.

 

[Cusefan95]

if you go under the covers of alot of these services you would be amazed at how poorly it all works.. Things like amazon that we all use and behind the scenes it looks likes squirrels are making it all work..

Honestly the front end interfaces of most of these TV services are pretty lacking.. But it doesnt help that the tv companies cheap out as well with the Tvs and the remotes and the software and that all hurts response issues and what you can do.

No idea if this is public, but what kind of service life do companies forecast for the back-end processes/equipment?

In manufacturing, generally nobody would forecast more than 20 years life - by that point the equipment needs to be fully paid off since new technology will have made it obsolete. The result is instrumentation is often cut to the bare minimum required (and often beyond that..) - because the cost of electrical and instrumentation are often more than half the total project cost. Often a brand new operation looks like a bunch of headless chickens running around, because things which could have been automated are being manually processed since the instrumentation didn't make the final budget cuts.

Not knowing much about the business of streaming, my totally uninformed guess would be they expect things to last way less than 20 years - with the result being they are holding things together with duct tape and bubblegum (and poorly compensated squirrels) because the instrumentation to make things run smoothly is too costly to justify for that short a service life.

PS - I realize we're way off topic from Syracuse basketball, but I'm fascinated by this discussion here.

 

[Todd23]

I liked last night's production. It was obviously the radio broadcast with the in-house videoboard feed. I like Matt Park on p-b-p rather than a random ACC Network announcer. And I like the extra descriptiveness of the radio broadcast vs. a TV broadcast. Plus, seeing the video board feed and some of the promotions and dance team made me feel more like I was at the game. It's a nice feature, and it saves the huge cost of having an additional crew there.