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On November 22 2010 22:46 Craton wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2010 22:10 Frozenzen wrote:On November 22 2010 21:31 Craton wrote:
I wont buy one until they price it reasonably. $240 a year is not acceptable (nor is $185 with a -$5 discount for previous purchases.) It should be like $50 a year, tops. Spread over a whole year that's pretty good considering you get a ton of content, they do have to make some money after all since we're not getting ads. If they manage to get some sponsors running commercials in the breaks the price might be able to go down. But in general people today aren't ready to pay what things actually cost I suppose. And honestly, 15$ per month is pretty much no money at all for me. And I got a minimum wage job working ~100 hours per month. Comes down to principles in the end I suppose. The hq streaming isn't worth it at all here in sweden, I mainly get it for the VODs, as well as supporting esports. So I understand people who don't want to pay for it because of that. But whining over the price is just stupid, You could get 1.5 fast food lunches for it here in sweden, and I rather have GOM vods  . It's not a good deal. The "tons of content" thing is thrown around all the time and sounds like a cop-out. The problem with the comparisons people like to make (e.g. movie ticket prices) is that the things being compared aren't good deals whatsoever. I could play an MMO like WoW and get several times the amount of "hours of content" for less money. I could play just about any Steam game online and get an unlimited amount of "hours of content" for no additional fee. Hell, I could get 20 meals for that same $15-20 because I don't blow ridiculous amounts on fast food. You can get an HQ stream or VoDs pretty much anywhere without buying a ticket when it comes right down to it. The only reason to even buy one is to support the tournament, but the price is completely prohibitive. Oh, and being able to afford it is hardly an issue. It's simply just not worth its cost. Marginally better video quality and slightly faster VoDs will never be worth $200+ to me. I also take exception to someone calling a 650kbps stream HQ, but that's for another day.
I like how you compare food, video games, on-demand content, and movies all within the same $20, then defend yourself by saying "price isn't an issue".
Piracy can only get you so far, as whats being re-streamed and re-uploaded isn't reliable and won't always be up.
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Yes, I just did! US$19.95 is incredibly good value! (Especially since the US$ is so cheep at the moment.)
Now I can watch the re-streams (I'm on a mac) without feeling guilty for not supporting the cause and will always have access to the season 3 VODs without having to bear with slow, low def shit dubbed in chinese.
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If I were a well-moneyed person (or any sort of moneyed!) I would have bought all three. I watch what I can from Youtube, and I'm always so excited when a new game gets uploaded. I'm sure it's been mentioned before, but this is 20 bucks a month, roughly. That's half the price of a carton of cigarettes it's one less visit to a sit-in restaurant, one less case of beer.
I guess my point is that humans have historically made worse investments.
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I watch almost every game live, well at least the ones I care about at least.. I am not sure how much I could really benefit from buying the ticket.
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Blitzer
Australia243 Posts
I've bought a ticket in season 2 and 3 (i didn't watch in season 1). Although i pretty much watch all the games live anyway, because due to my timezone it starts at 6pm which is pretty perfect for me but i figure i might occasionally want to see a VOD and i like to support the community, it's great having English commentary in contrast to sc1. I haven't been able to get any use out of the HD stream because i find it lags too much but i have no problems with the standard definition (well except for the grand final of season 2 and i don't think i was alone there). The fee isn't exorbitant for someone who works full time but its a question of your priorities i guess.
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On November 22 2010 23:59 dala wrote:
Yes, I just did! US$19.95 is incredibly good value! (Especially since the US$ is so cheep at the moment.)
Now I can watch the re-streams (I'm on a mac) without feeling guilty for not supporting the cause and will always have access to the season 3 VODs without having to bear with slow, low def shit dubbed in chinese.
Plus you get the original commentary, the pre-game and post-game showboating, and, if you can get the live stream working, the priceless feeling of "I WAS THERE," like when Fruitdealer won those incredible matches in Season 1 when Zerg was "underpowered," or when Foxer clawed his way to the top with a never-before-seen strategy. Participating in the threads on Liquid while the tournament is running is a wonderful, networked thrill that is the culmination of modern technology and interconnectedness.
It's this uniqueness, specifically, that draws me to pro Starcraft!
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On November 22 2010 23:50 lowercase wrote:I got the season 3 ticket last night, and I was very happy with it. I didn't get season 2, but I watched some of the marine micro vids on other sites. My only complaints are that there is no native streaming support for non-Windows platforms. It's kind of a pain to have to look at page source code to find the link for the live video to paste into VLC. At least in VLC I was able to increase the buffer cache to prevent stuttering, though.  The high-def VODs look great, they're what I will normally watch because the live doesn't start until 6 AM for me, so it's kind of weird waking up to watch it. Surreal, actually. Tastosis is still great, but I think GOM needs to mix up the commentating a bit, I think Tasteless is getting a bit fatigued and doesn't contribute too much other than "oh my god, this is so high level."
I must agree with you on the commentating part. Overall I think it's fine, but there is a lot of repetition. Anyway, I think there was a thread dedicated to this, so I won't go OT here.
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Third time buyer here, solely for the VOD's (I did watch IdrA play live when it was much earlier). Love Tastosis and I find the quality of the games and the excitement of the tournament better than anywhere else.
For those arguing we shouldn't have to pay for this content, it is completely unrealistic to expect the same out of Starcraft as something such as FIFA or the NFL. You have to realize that e-sports is something still new to a lot of people and putting out a free, televised broadcast wouldn't generate enough ad revenue to support itself. Who are you kidding? Maybe someday, but we won't get there if the e-sports fans now aren't willing to give its support.
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I just make an effort to be awake to watch the games I'm really interested in live, which is not particularly a problem for the evening games being a student in the UK (10am live broadcast start).
I just use the free Low-Qual link - although that said, I might pick up a pass anyway because I'm quite sure that - at least for this season - there will be some games I can't be around/awake to see live but I really don't want to miss - particularly them foreigner games (perfect example being Hayder playing in the early hours tmrw... :/)
It's all good though, support what you love and such.
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Do VODs still take 4 hours to load for european users?
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Not hours, but I can't stream the hq vods (even though my connection could), I have to buffer.
Main problem right now is that the vods are skipping because of errors during encoding. Dunno whats up, but some games are unwatchable. Hope they fix it (day 1 and 2 it happens in a couple of vods). Don't buy if you are thinking about it, especially if you are from Europe. Right now it ain't worth it at all.
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to be honest, i'm kind of conflicted with whether it was a worthwhile decision to buy a ticket this season cus the vod encoding is just fucking terrible. like seriously, it's not hard at all to encode a video...
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HELLZ YEAH MO'FUCKAS
bought all 3 seasons
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Is it possible to watch VODs with the GOMPlayer? I'm also having the problem with VODs stuttering. I'm pretty much justifying the season ticket price with the access to VODs. If they don't work flawlessly it really is a problem (not to mention the live streams are lagging).
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I have an error when using paypal every time I try to buy one 
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I bought one for season 2, I did not buy one this season. The reason why I didn't is because of lag issues for europeans. Last season I ended up watching restreams for the majority of the games. I watch exclusively restreams this season.
I watch every single game live so I have no need for VODs.
If they fix the lag for us europeans I will pay them again.
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Of course I bought one, GSL and Tastosis are so exciting to watch. How can you be bored watching the greatest sc2 tournament of all time once a month and that for the cost of one dinner
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On November 24 2010 01:14 nomel wrote:
Is it possible to watch VODs with the GOMPlayer? I'm also having the problem with VODs stuttering. I'm pretty much justifying the season ticket price with the access to VODs. If they don't work flawlessly it really is a problem (not to mention the live streams are lagging).
As far as I know it is not possible. But the stuttering is caused by bad encoding, not by ones connection, so it wouldn't make much of a difference, it would still be unwatchable.
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I bought a S2 and S3 ticket and I'm happy of course with Tasteless and Artosis. They're screwing up sometimes but it really just makes it more fun to watch. I never feel like it detracts from the experience when they're like all confused waiting for the voice to announce the player... makes me giggle every time.
The problem is the technical aspects.. I wish I could actually use what I paid for.
The live streams, both low and high quality, are awfully low quality (650kbps for high quality? it's very low res indeed, free ustream channels have much higher quality), and the high quality stream is never smooth for me. So even though I have the season ticket I still have to watch the low quality stream which just pisses me off sometimes.
Having access to the VODs though at least allows me to watch the best matches in high quality, as the VODs are higher quality than the stream, you actually do get high quality there.
I'm not sure right now but it looks like 720p and has a high bitrate. Looks good and sharp.
Again here though, it doesn't run smooth. I need to leave the high quality VODs on pause for like 30-50% of the length to let it cache so that I can then have smooth playback.
Obviously for VODs it's not a big issue, so I'm fine with that. I just wish the live stream would run better because low quality live stream has such a low bitrate that the picture is unbearable on a high definition TV, which is how I prefer watching SC2. Would probably at least be decent with the high quality stream, if it ran properly.
So bottom line: There's good and bad sides. Personally I feel that the 20$ is easily worth it for the amount of VODs that you get, with great commentary and great players. I'd be willing to pay more if only the live streams were higher quality and actually working properly.
-edit-
Just a note, I can confirm that there is encoding problems on the latest VODs. Skips around weirdly sometimes and produces sound and video artifacts. It's quite annoying but I'm sure they'll sort it out soon because there were no such issues last season that I know of.
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Using script to watch free.
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EPT
