Reds Player issues

CTFC Bruce T · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:10 pm Post subject: Reds Player issues

Hi
First of all apologies for the issues with Reds Player commentary at Crewe on Saturday.
I have since investigated what went wrong and it appears to have been an issue with the ISDN line.
To explain, we use BBC commentary equipment as we 'share' JB with the BBC so he does live comms on Player while regularly updating radio listeners. BBC then dial out to the Perform Group, who runs the Player service for Football League interactive, and the stream ends up on Reds Player.
After discussions with all parties, we have put in place more checks to ensure that we aware of any issues far earlier and can hopefully sort them out. When I checked at 2.45pm on Saturday all was fine but the first we were aware of issues was on here and Twitter.
As with all 'technology' nothing is ever guaranteed of course, but the club is acutely aware that our subscribers deserve a better service than the one they received on Saturday.
Bruce

Armchairfan · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:26 pm Post subject:

Surely the paying customer deserves a certain standard of broadcast to be in place before the service is made available for purchase?
I don't subscribe myself,but am aware of the problems on an almost fortnightly basis through the match thread.
Having said that,I am also aware that these problems are not unique to CTFC and to me it seems like a service that is not fit for purpose has been on sale for some time now.
I really would like to subscribe to keep up with all things Ctfc.Hopefully this latest plan of action will lead to less frequent problems.
When there are less frequent problems,I will part with some of my hard earned.

Graeme · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:04 pm Post subject:

I have puzzled for months why the Reds Player is so unreliable and the quality so bad, now I understand.
Trust the BBC to invest in old ISDN technology. But also I find it amazing that we are relying on the BBC to relay the feed to our own Reds player.

It might be an idea to issue JB with a laptop with mobile broadband, a mic and an audio IP link package then configure a connection directly over a std dial up line into the Reds player. My guess is that quality and reliability would improve immediately. Plus the set up required would be minimal.

Paulc222 · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 7:11 pm Post subject:

It wasn't just the Crewe game though. The service has been flakey for ages. So much so that I stopped subscribing a while ago. It's not just the audio. I've seen better video footage from a mobile phone - and I'm not joking either.

lurker · Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2012 9:43 pm Post subject:

The video highlights are terrible. We can watch better quality, for free, on sky sports. I am a subscriber, though if it keeps being as poor as it is then I will cancel.

The interviews can also be shocking, not only the video but it often sounds like there is a hurricane while it was done. This is not a player issue, its just a bad investment in equipment to give to someone.