[opendtv] Re: Wired: The Internet's clearly not ready to stream big TV events
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 23:56:39 -0400
On Apr 11, 2015, at 7:40 PM, Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
As I often ask Craig, when he waves arms, "compared with what?" What Craig
should be asking himself, if he had read the article carefully enough, is how
would a typical cable system, or for that matter even DBS, respond to 100s of
thousands of new requests for service, immediately before some sporting
event. The effect would be that many of those requests would not be met. Not
enough manpower to meet every demand, especially in high density markets.
Duh. In most cases it takes a truck roll to establish cable or DBS service.
I'm not sure why Bert used the example of hundreds of thousands of requests. In
the Sling case the numbers were more like ten thousand, if that. Estimates are
that they only had about 100,000 subscribers as of last week.
What Craig should also ask himself is how the cable and DBS MVPDs would
respond to these hundreds of thousands bailing out of the subscription, after
the event.
It would depend on what those customers signed up for. In most cases they are
agreeing to long term contracts if they signed up for a promotional bundle. The
analogy does not work, as the terms and conditions are very different.
We are entering new territory when one can sign up for or cancel service with
the click of a button, without consequences. I'm sure CBS All Access may have
seen a spike Monday night for the championship game. And there have already
been reports of people signing up for CBS All Access, binge watching a few
shows, then canceling.
Connecting to a service over the Internet is typically really, really simple.
And even for Sling, in this one difficult time, most people got perfectly
fine service. So even this example of growing pains needs to be put in
perspective. "Compared with what?"
Most Sling customers were already signed up. The problems occurred primarily
with people trying to sign up just before or during the event, and with ISPs
that were not properly provisioned for the spike.
To put this into perspective, read the article you posted. The author noted
that these glitches are still commonplace, and they are typically related to a
surge of interest for a live event.
Regards
Craig
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