News and Analysis
It was rough 24 hours for those who believe live streaming will soon replace traditional pay TV.
First on Tuesday night, Sling TV, the Dish-owned live streaming service, began experiencing widespread technical glitches that prevented many subscribers from logging in. If they were able to log in, they then had difficulty watching a live channel without getting an error message on screen.
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Sling issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon saying the problem had been fixed, but the snafu had already so angered subscribers that some threatened to switch services.
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While Sling was issuing its mea culpa, Facebook was preparing to stream its first Major League Baseball game as part of its exclusive $35 million agreement with the league to show 25 weekday afternoon games this season.
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The game, which pitted the New York Mets against the Philadelphia Phillies, would not be available anywhere else. Not on a regional sports channel, and not even on MLB.TV or Extra Innings, the league’s pay packages of out-of-market games.
While the game was free to Facebook users, fans were not impressed, according to several publications. The stream often froze or ‘buffered,’ forcing viewers to adjust their settings. For added insult, Facebook’s on-screen graphics tended to dominate the screen, making it difficult to see the action when the stream was good.
“Fans quickly voiced their displeasure with the newfangled broadcast and its glitches…” writes The New York Times. “Several viewers complained that the onscreen scoreboard and statistics banner blocked too much of the screen, as did the comments bar on the side. And in the fifth inning, as the broadcast showed a montage of the Mets’ oft-injured captain David Wright, the feed froze.”
Facebook and MLB issued statements following the game saying they were pleased with the broadcast but promised to do better thanks to viewer feedback.
And it’s likely that they will do better. Facebook has enormous resources and will undoubtedly devote some of them to improving the experience for MLB fans.
It should also be noted that Sling TV had numerous technical problems during its first year or so, but has improved of late. (Not counting the issues that plagued it on Tuesday and Wednesday, of course.) The live streaming service seems to have learned much from its early mistakes.
But the problems that marred the viewing experience of both Facebook and Sling TV users during the last few days serves as another reminder that live streaming isn’t quite ready for prime time.
While the technology is improving — and should improve more with greater investment — live streaming still has too many glitches to be considered a viable replacement for traditional pay TV service.
That doesn’t mean that consumers won’t continue to subscribe to live streaming services such as Sling TV, DIRECTV Now, and the others. The price is attractive (as low as $20 a month for Sling) and the channel lineups are constantly improving. But it does mean that most people will stick with their cable or satellite service until the live streaming picture becomes more reliable.
— Phillip Swann
Photo credit: Free photo via Pexels.com.
Thank you Answerman for truthfully exposing the live streaming issues! Your analysis of the technology not being ready is spot on. What people don’t understand with this technology is that every view is another stream request, so if you have a half milllion watching a program, that is a half million stream requests. When you have a big event of national interest that number could ballon to several million stream requests and it brings this infrastructure to it’s knees and creates a very poor customer experience. Sadly, people are paying good money for an inferior video experience. I say so what if its cheaper – if you can’t even watch it!
I’ve tried them all and settled on one no one ever mentions. PlayStation Vue. I pay $44 per month and the only channel missing is my local Astros channel. I’m sure PS Vue has issues but hasn’t when I was watching.
FYI…the game was available though MLB.tv through my smartphone though it looked like they were relaying the Facebook Live stream. Only caught about a half inning. I had to swipe away the comments box because it interfered too much with the game video which itself was more 3/4 screen due to a left and top side graphic display.
Glad to hear that. MLB PR said it would not.
have been considering adding sling for pac 12 games, has this been a problem also? not trusting charlie to make it right if a live sporting event fails to work. thanks
I had no idea facebook was exclusively showing the Mets game. I was going nuts trying to find it on MLB Extra Innings, but it appears that facebooks contract is so tight that Directv actually removed SNY from the guide during the game.