Belgium Open 2008 - Live Online

[Rane]

and dave harold seems to have been on the way to a maximum, missed an easy green when among the colors. Or so I read atleast

Fourth time so far this season. Guess he soon will get the last few balls.

[snookersfun]

They definitely are... I'v some 250 pics already, many very good and funny...

Coming soon if I manage to upload them... does not seem to work right now!

sounds like it was a rather good tournament with many big names. Well done Ricky Walden!

Any news on those pics yet Mon?

[Monique]

sounds like it was a rather good tournament with many big names. Well done Ricky Walden!

Any news on those pics yet Mon?

I'd need at least a week off work to cope with my pics back log!
And I will try to make a report on the tournie also. It was great!:snooker:

[poolqjunkie]

If the streaming is expected to have problems as The teach said, and the tournament press and the streaming company are not really working together smoothly as the Teach kept saying that he is not responsible for tournament result (although I can see he has done his best to keep us updated on the result and it is very much appreciated), may I suggest to let the next event be free streaming until all the minor details are iron out. I am just afraid if you keep having problems such as this time, you may loss a lot of potential customers even if you will be up and running very nicely in the future.

I am not sure what your cost is, so may be it is impossible? I am only suggesting this because as you can see from the responses from some people here, who said they may never pay again and said theya re disappointed, you may want to consider offering it for free to build up some good consumer network and word of mouth, and use the experience to iron out any unexpetced problem, before you get into making some money.

Juts my opinion.

[Monique]

Well TheTeach did his very best. Two persons worked 14 hours/day during three days to get that streaming working and to provide meaningful comments and results. One of them kept running around, collecting result sheets from the refs to try to figure out what was happening. I was there, I saw it. Surely things are perfectible but ... I'm reacting this way because the criticisms - although valid - definitely go to a person who did all he could to provide the best possible service with the means he had.

[The_Teach]

Thank you Monique it was great to meet you in Belgium.

Just arrived back and very tired after 3 days of live and one day set-up!

In an ideal world everything would be free, we encountered no issues at all during the final day and the stream ran very smoothly indeed. Yes, we are a business, however, we have no corporate backing and have put our own modest money into this project so that we can provide a service. This is the first PPV event we have done and everything we have done so far has been for free, my pocket simply cannot take free anymore and if I gave you our real financial position you would not believe me. The licencing of the streaming software we use is very expensive which enables us to provide a good quality picture.

What has to be mentioned is the fact that we rely on Internet connections to provide our service, across the world Download speeds are very good, but for streaming we need Upload speeds which unless you go to a large corporation are actually very slow in comparison. This weekend the Upload speed kept chnaging dependent on the local traffic and the contention ratio. We know that the service needs to better and are the first to admit this, but for this it requires heavy investment.

We want to be able to broadcast via satellite which would eliminate these problems overnight, however this cost is not affordable in the current climate, we also want to be able to offer score graphics and multiple camera production, all of which we are capable of but this requires something we physically do not have at present.

The Belgium Open was a bit of a test in terms of PPV and one which has its upsides and its downsides. Many of our viewers contacted us whilst on air with their thoughts which were both productive and positive and we thank them for that.

We will be bringing more live snooker in the future and are positive that the pictures we provide other than the major broadcasters are the best available on the Internet at this time. We believe in our service and we hope that in time some of you will as well.

[poolqjunkie]

Thank you Monique it was great to meet you in Belgium.

Just arrived back and very tired after 3 days of live and one day set-up!

In an ideal world everything would be free, we encountered no issues at all during the final day and the stream ran very smoothly indeed. Yes, we are a business, however, we have no corporate backing and have put our own modest money into this project so that we can provide a service. This is the first PPV event we have done and everything we have done so far has been for free, my pocket simply cannot take free anymore and if I gave you our real financial position you would not believe me. The licencing of the streaming software we use is very expensive which enables us to provide a good quality picture.

What has to be mentioned is the fact that we rely on Internet connections to provide our service, across the world Download speeds are very good, but for streaming we need Upload speeds which unless you go to a large corporation are actually very slow in comparison. This weekend the Upload speed kept chnaging dependent on the local traffic and the contention ratio. We know that the service needs to better and are the first to admit this, but for this it requires heavy investment.

We want to be able to broadcast via satellite which would eliminate these problems overnight, however this cost is not affordable in the current climate, we also want to be able to offer score graphics and multiple camera production, all of which we are capable of but this requires something we physically do not have at present.

The Belgium Open was a bit of a test in terms of PPV and one which has its upsides and its downsides. Many of our viewers contacted us whilst on air with their thoughts which were both productive and positive and we thank them for that.

We will be bringing more live snooker in the future and are positive that the pictures we provide other than the major broadcasters are the best available on the Internet at this time. We believe in our service and we hope that in time some of you will as well.

Best wishes to your venture.

Thank you for promoting snooker via the Internet to the world.

[snooky147]

I was one who bought the live streaming and it was okay, to a point. Any criticism on the absolutely appaling lack of info should be directed fairly at Connect Managements door who did not even bother to reply to my email. @the teach, Have you checked out the possibility of Live streaming via Bittorrent?. It would reduce your bandwidth significantly if it can be done.
On the subject of the final itself, Ricky Walden came out flying like the fizzer he can be and potted Graeme off the table, simple as that. A good result for Walden and invaluable match practice for Graeme as he heads for Shanghai.