EPTHDH Invitational #1 - Page 174
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monolith94
United States47 Posts
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spoonraker
United States9 Posts
I simply think that from an organizational standpoint, this tournament could be run better. Let me elaborate. The biggest problem is that the tournament is played online, but it's trying to be presented as if it were played on LAN. What I mean is that nobody knows exactly when all the games will be played, there's a pretty big window of time for them to actually happen, but yet you are attempting to "live" stream the results of each round all at the same time as if all the games were played consecutively for each round. This just doesn't work. When you can't strictly control exactly when games are played, you can't do one massive live stream with all the games for that round, and even if you stream the results live as if it were played LAN-style, then the results cast is going to be massively delayed. Yes, 2 or 3 days is a massive delay for "live" streaming results over the internet. A tournament of this caliber run online really needs a dedicated website with the ability to quickly and easily post stream times and results. Then you cast every single game LIVE (or as close to live as humanly possible with the replay cast). You post the stream time on the website as soon as you know it, even if it's just a couple hours notice or less. It's not your job to make sure everybody can see the stream, it's your job to provide the stream live. Remember, it's a live stream, don't kill the live aspect of the stream just to get more viewers, that's not the point of a live stream. The very minute after the game has been cast live, get to work on uploading the VOD and post the results. Make sure the results are on a separate page on the website with a spoiler alert, and then make sure the VODs are all posted to the website as quick as they are available. When you get to the RO4, don't change the way anything is handled, just ask the players if they can decide on a time to play their game well ahead of time. If they can commit to a time 2 days in advance, perfect. This way everybody has a chance to watch the games live, and if they can't do that then they can watch the VODs nearly live at their own convenience. I realize that this is a tremendous amount of work, and it may interfere with your social life since you don't control what time matches are played, but that's just what comes along with livestreaming an online tournament. Just my opinion. I think right now you're kind of shooting yourselves in the foot by taking the "live" out of the stream, and taking the hype out of the results by waiting so long to post them and then posting them all in one big batch. Also, if you want to seriously pursue getting a website up for this tournament (I assume there will be more HDH tourneys), feel free to talk to me about it. I'm a professional web programmer with 3 years professional experience. I do primarily php/mysql (and java, ugh). I'd be glad to help out in any way possible with getting a site up for you guys. ^my username^ @ gmail.com | ||
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Jubuntu
United States15 Posts
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GG-Striker
Czech Republic112 Posts
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Sejong
Korea (South)153 Posts
On May 05 2010 21:28 TotalBiscuit wrote: + Show Spoiler + On May 05 2010 20:15 Odoakar wrote: + Show Spoiler + Great post TotalBiscuit, that's some interesting stuff. On that note, I thought last stream had 3x10 000 viewers, someone mentioned there being 3 channels for stream, would that mean the actual bandwidth usage was triple of the numbers you mentioned? If that was actually the case then yes, which is even more horrifying in terms of the sheer cost of that. If you had say a Premium Livestream channel, which would already cost you $350 per month, you get 3000 viewer hours with that. An hour of HDH would eat that up, plus 7,000 extra, then 10,000 extra viewer hours every hour it went on. If it had the 30,000 that may have been the case over 3 simultaneous streams, that's a total of 60,000 viewer hours for a 2 hour show. Take off those 'complimentary' 3000 viewer hours and you have 57,000 viewer hours still to pay for. You can stream HDH for the bargain price of $15,000 per show! (jesus christ). And that's assuming by the way, that Livestream has servers equipped to handle that kind of cpu and memory load and that they're properly balanced to take that load across multiple boxes dynamically, which they may very well not be. It boggles the mind just how utterly impractical Livestream's business model actually is. It's not cost effective on any level, either large or small scale, for anyone to ever use Livestream Premium and Livestream Free is fraught with problems and monetised by ads that are not properly targetted at the demographic in question and are easily blocked by the net-savvy people that watch these kind of streams. If we were to look at the numbers based on my previous calculations then multiply those by 3, that's 15Gbps (dear lord). The provider I use goes up to 10Gbps max per box (and those boxes cost around £300 a month minimum, plus setup fees, plus they throttle the hell out of your connection if you exceed 40TB traffic a month). 2 of those boxes would suffice for 500kbps streaming to 30,000 people. Give em 1mbps which would provide nice quality in 720p and you're looking at 15,000 people. Then look at bandwidth used. We said what, 2.25TB per hour for 10,000 at 500kbps? that's 7.75TB for 30,000 at 500kbps, 7.75TB for 15,000 at 1mbps (again, approximately numbers, not accounting for overhead). 40/7.75, yeah, that's not a lot of hours before your provider tells you to sling your hook. There are no doubt other providers more equipped to deal with sporadic bursts of extreme traffic with priceplans more suitable, but still, it's a big investment whatever way you look at it. Daunting isn't it? What we have on our hands is a rapidly growing interest in a scene that has literally no feasible way to provide large numbers of people with streaming live video and the 3 main providers of what streaming facilities exist are all built on doomed business models with no apparent willingness to work with any broadcaster who doesn't have corporate backing, regardless of the size of their audience. Bloody hell. Anyway that's all hypothetical. The hope would be that Livestream, Justin.tv or Ustream see sense and enter into an agreement which is mutually beneficial to both parties. Then again, that would involve internet businesses getting it into their heads that banner advertising is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be and that innovation is required in advertising media online. Let me tell you from personal experience, getting that message across to people like that is absurdly hard. It took me 6 years to monetise my podcast correctly because people who do business online have an irrational fear of multimedia advertising. There are some good points here and as I am brainstorming around how completely impractical their model is, it strikes me that we don't necessarily have the full picture. I think the secret is Leverage and Resource Utilization. Consider (purely hypothetical but could be the case) that livestream/ustream are partnered or co-owned by a hosting company. If this is the case, then they have dozens (hundreds) of rack servers that they rent out to regular websites for a monthly fee, and they have one huge (not byte-limited) access to the internet that all their website clients use. If this were the case, then they are almost certainly never running at 100% capacity of their rack machines and their bandwidth connection, in which case a service like livestream/ustream is using spare resources that they already have, and is free monetization of these resources. Under this model (where the video streaming service is complimentary to another revenue source) the business model is genius. A similar model to what I am describing is how cable networks charge money for paid programs in the middle of the night. What else are they going to send through the pipe at that hour? It's either the RGB 'OFFLINE' message, or it's an ad for George Foreman's grill. + Show Spoiler + | ||
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Odoakar
Croatia1837 Posts
On May 05 2010 22:50 ranirahn wrote: Can someone generate Countdown Clock for live? Go there http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdclock.html But right time and even can type name there about what this is and then bush "Generate short URL" button. Then copy paste link here. Then I see exactly when stream starting. Thanks  Is this what you had in mind? THOAR IS HEAR! If I'm not mistaken GMT+2 is +9 hours from PST, so it should be 22:00h in Central Europe. | ||
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SilverPhoenix
Canada3 Posts
The next one is 24 hours after that. ... too late  | ||
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TotalBiscuit
United Kingdom5437 Posts
On May 05 2010 23:47 Sejong wrote:+ Show Spoiler + There are some good points here and as I am brainstorming around how completely impractical their model is, it strikes me that we don't necessarily have the full picture. I think the secret is Leverage and Resource Utilization. Consider (purely hypothetical but could be the case) that livestream/ustream are partnered or co-owned by a hosting company. If this is the case, then they have dozens (hundreds) of rack servers that they rent out to regular websites for a monthly fee, and they have one huge (not byte-limited) access to the internet that all their website clients use. If this were the case, then they are almost certainly never running at 100% capacity of their rack machines and their bandwidth connection, in which case a service like livestream/ustream is using spare resources that they already have, and is free monetization of these resources. Under this model (where the video streaming service is complimentary to another revenue source) the business model is genius. A similar model to what I am describing is how cable networks charge money for paid programs in the middle of the night. What else are they going to send through the pipe at that hour? It's either the RGB 'OFFLINE' message, or it's an ad for George Foreman's grill. + Show Spoiler + That all makes an awful lot of sense when you think about it. Doesn't AOL own Ustream? Livestream and Justin.tv are both start-ups to the best of my knowledge, but for that kind of bandwidth they must be involved somehoe with a big hosting company, I can't imagine they'd actually make money any other way. | ||
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ranirahn
Estonia34 Posts
On May 05 2010 23:47 Odoakar wrote: Is this what you had in mind? THOAR IS HEAR! If I'm not mistaken GMT+2 is +9 hours from PST, so it should be 22:00h in Central Europe. Short link is better but its ok. Question is why time is not same in both counter :D Time left have do be same even the time is different. It so nice if husky include that counter link with livestream time. Counter dont care what time zone you but in and what is target time until its right time. Right now i have 2 counter and time left is different:D | ||
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Azarkon
United States21060 Posts
Just a heads up. | ||
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Aether
Canada123 Posts
On May 05 2010 18:03 HDstarcraft wrote: Couldn't have said it better regarding our past history of streaming issues TotalBiscuit! If Husky and I had the money to pay for a dedicated server to stream for HDH and other future events, we no doubt would. But at the moment, its completely out of our price range/pockets. Btw, I must say... I love your shoutcraft Right, but the GLHF guys offered their help, that's a pretty easy solution to this incredibly long response you've written out. Their stream works perfectly, it was used on the first cast and was offered again. The viewership is only going to increase as the tournament gets deeper and competition escalates. I understand that you can't just run out and buy a server, but there are options available to you. Maybe you feel like you're imposing on them, but I think everyone would agree that for the sake of finishing the tournament smoothly, it wouldn't be a big problem to borrow their channel for a few hours out of the coming weeks. Like I said many times, it's a great tournament and you guys are doing a good job, but this is a big problem with a very easy solution, at least temporarily. | ||
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InfoDav
Canada46 Posts
On May 06 2010 01:21 Aether wrote: Right, but the GLHF guys offered their help, that's a pretty easy solution to this incredibly long response you've written out. And guess what service GLHF are using? Oh, right, its Ustream. | ||
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Hold-Lurker
United States403 Posts
I think it lets you get the VODs out slightly earlier since you can do them at your convenience (rather than schedule something that works for all viewers), should increase the youtube views since all 8000+ of those viewers will absolutely go to the youtube, and lets us watch at high def without you guys worrying about any streaming issues. It'll also ensure that you can cover up the replay bars appropriately which was a problem with the last few games from the stream and cuts out any interference from bnet maintenance midway through a cast. Plus TLI #2 on Saturday! | ||
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teko
Canada1197 Posts
Last time it took Husky and HD over 6 hours to prep for Ustream. Also there were plenty of downtimes during the broadcast (some caused by Battle.net issues). If you guys just let GLHF hosts it, you can spend more time on what you're best at: commentating. So if we let everyone do what they are best at, the broadcast will run more smoothly, and the viewers will be happy too. | ||
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Aether
Canada123 Posts
On May 06 2010 01:43 InfoDav wrote: And guess what service GLHF are using? Oh, right, its Ustream. What's your point? Their channel was able to sustain 7k+ viewers with no problem and hd's was not. Why not use the only one of the three channels that has worked? Any snarky sarcastic remark to explain why this doesn't make sense? | ||
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Crixus
Canada110 Posts
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TotalBiscuit
United Kingdom5437 Posts
On May 06 2010 03:29 Aether wrote: What's your point? Their channel was able to sustain 7k+ viewers with no problem and hd's was not. Why not use the only one of the three channels that has worked? Any snarky sarcastic remark to explain why this doesn't make sense? His point I'd imagine, is that unless GLHF are paying for watershed functionality (ie. premium) on Ustream, they are using exactly the same streaming facilities as HD/Husky, the free ones. The stability of one streaming attempt does not prove that it's stable 100% of the time and indeed unless they are paying for premium slots, there's no reason to believe that it would be any more stable on Ustream's end. Now in terms of the technical aspects, sure, GLHF know what they're doing, but what use is that if Ustream decides to flip out? | ||
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One.two
Canada116 Posts
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shinosai
United States1577 Posts
On May 06 2010 06:41 One.two wrote: Fox should just give HD and Husky their prime time broadcasting hours... those 2 would generate more viewership than any current television show for them! OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Yea except they'd probably cancel it 2 weeks afterwards. Bam! | ||
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Enox
Germany1667 Posts
On May 06 2010 01:11 Azarkon wrote: HD & Husky: since TLI #2 is going to be cast May 8th at 2 PM EST, and there are some big names in that one (just like this tournament), are you guys still planning to do this cast at 4 PM EST? I don't think TLI is going to be over in two hours, so it'd probably lead to timing conflicts for a lot of people. (But at least we'll have VODS.) Just a heads up. not only that. actually, the razer domination cup final + match for 3rd place is at the same time. nazgul vs strelok and demuslim vs dimaga. that could "steal" quite some viewers, since the HDH matches will be on youtube anyway and the razer matches will be really live | ||
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