It was another bad night for live streaming fans. Well, actually, last night made two bad nights in a row.
On Saturday, both the UFC and Showtime streaming apps for the Mayweather-McGregor boxing match suffered several knockdowns, forcing battered subscribers to crawl to their favorite social media sites to register complaints.
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The streamers, or we should say, attempted streamers, said they could not log in to the apps. Or, if they could actually log in, the fight would often freeze or pixelate during key moments.
“@UFCFightPass customers: Due to overwhelming traffic you may be experiencing log in issues. This will be resolved shortly,” @UFC tweeted shortly after the preliminary fights began.
“How short? 40 minutes into it and I’ve seen a black screen,” responded one angry customer.
Showtime also acknowledged the numerous technical issues affecting its stream of the fight.
“We are aware of issues that may be affecting your ability to watch SHOWTIME & SHOWTIME Anytime streaming services. Check back for updates,” the premium network tweeted.
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And if Saturday night wasn’t enough to send a cord-cutter back to his or her favorite cable TV service, HBO Now and HBO Go suffered widespread technical problems during last night’s airing of the season seven finale of Game of Thrones. (Note: HBO Go is the streaming service for pay TV subscribers; HBO Now is a standalone online subscription service that costs $15 a month.)
“What kind of blood magic I gotta do to get this HBO Now to work? I will burn literally anyone alive at this point tbh,” tweeted ‘April Van Buren,’ five minutes after the episode began.
HBO Now posted this message at its web site in an attempt to soothe ruffled subscriber feathers.
“We’re aware some users experienced playback issues this evening streaming HBO NOW. To resolve this, please restart your device, clear app cache and then relaunch the HBO NOW app,” the service said.
DownDetector.com, a site that tracks online outages, says more than 5,000 HBO streamers were registering complaints online at the height of the problem.
Over the last two years, numerous must-see programs and sporting events have suffered significant streaming issues, leaving viewers unable to watch their favorite shows or teams. The streaming industry has promised the technology will improve, but the last two nights were more evidence that we are far from making any progress.
— Phillip Swann
