[I.van]

The fee is more than reasonable for a working service, but my feed was terrible.
I watched DH on Freecaster all last year, but last Sundays feed was the worst I have ever had by far. If I refreshed the screen I might get 10 to 20 seconds of video, but then it would revert back to audio only and the home screen. It was very frustrating, and I would have been better off just going to bed. I tried lowering the quality on the player once it started to keep it going, but I didn’t have any luck with that. I switched from chrome to explorer, but that didn’t help either. Then with the last 2 riders coming down, I got booted out of the audio and it asked for my code again.
I watched the XCO a couple of weeks ago and the feed and player were flawless.
I initially tried to pay via SMS, and I got a reply message, but no further message containing a code. I do understand that the reliability of these payment methods are somewhat out of Freecasters hands. So I then payed via Paypal which was very quick and easy.

I wouldn’t pay again for what I received on Sunday, but I would pay for the feed I have received in previous years. If the feed is equivalent to, or better than, previous years feeds, I would pay comfortable with paying twice as much (~$5AUD).

 

[Whoops]

I've commented up-thread on my (good) experience, but just want to echo the more recent comments about 'charge me more'.

A NZD2.50 charge is more or less invisible to me and to watch the sport I'm passionate about I'd happily pay more.

I'd much rather see those who benefit from the coverage (the bike companies) step up though.

Cheers

 

[JCL]

I spent 45mins watching the title page trying to load then went back to bed.

Never had more than one or two brief dropouts for the entire season last year so I'm confused. I can stream two HD feeds at the same time so I don't think it's my connection/equipment. Obviously the replay was great.

Haven't got the slightest problem paying up to $10 for the current amount of cameras but it's gotta stream live.

 

[slothy]

- Paid for it with paypal not a problem
- watched it the next day as i was racing on sunday
- last year I couldn't see the race the next day, it was always down, so I was delighted I could see it. No problems really froze once or twice.
- I thought the announcers were fine and gave some good bits of information on the earlier runs.
- I like really like Warner, but I find him irritating sometimes when he is so obviously un-informed sometimes about certain stuff. The announcers this time at least had some information to help viewers.
- I would of preferred the upper split time to be shown on screen. The announcers seemed to be able to see the riders current time, we could not maybe thats technically very difficult to achieve.
- I would pay more than the price asked for a premium feed. If you ever go back to free some of us would pay for a premium feed.
- I didn't watch the 4x. I am not interested in it all really, dont know why I try to make myself look at it but get bored. I look at results see how Jared and Dan do thats it.
- The out put missed a lot of riders, eg Simmonds

 

[nh dude]

curious how it was $3 for you when the cost was $1.99 ?

because the web hates me and my money it adds a F.A.H.Q. tax every time I do anything online. the web just needs to meet its fully. authorized. hater. quota.

The real question is are u going to Platty?

The point was that it was sick because it actually worked well ( for what % of veiwers ? ) and it was affordable. This is not a common combination regarding entertainment or this sport. Keep it up. I think $ 3caster could get away with being $ 5caster if it never skipped for all customers.

 

[cressa]

Unfortunately I was one of the people who had a "worst ever" freecaster experience. Last year was pretty much flawless, this year, terrible, and I'm still with the same provider, on the same plan. My nearest capital city is Brisbane, Australia.

I got very frustrated and am embarrassed to say I was one of the haters to post useless angry comments during the event.

Checked my internet speeds during the event and they exceeded the recommended speeds.

As the majority of people here have said, I would be very happy to pay twice or even three times the amount to watch live DH - no problem. Whatever it takes to get this working flawlessly. I love it and don't want to loose it. Hell, if money is needed upfront, i would pay for the whole season tomorrow. Bring it on.

Oh, and don't know if it's any help, but I have never had a problem with world tour surfing events that are broadcast live on the web (and other surfing events like The Eddie, Volcom Pipe comp...)

 

[ckooi]

I am viewing live from Malaysia

interrupted like every 30 second, have to reload the browser everytime

- warner is much better commentator
- missed the top10 run all together, got interrupted every 5-10sec
- need more camera on track
- pls allow users to fix the video quality to lowest, asia connection is not as fast

 

[drkenan]

^^ I'd also pay up front if needed.

The feed worked flawlessly for me. It's worth at least $5 or more if more riders are featured.

Only 1 small complant - PLEASE allow us to be able to get rid of those facebook haters on the right hand side of the screen. I was trying to watch the race but sometimes it was hard to pay attention because of all the "paycaster" comments.

 

[gemini2k]

I paid for it with paypal today to watch the replays. I liked the video quality and the smooth stream. The $2.22 is definitely worth it. I'd be willing to pay more if
A. There were more cameras as everyone said. I know it's up to UCI, but try and pressure them to get more. We're willing to pay for more damnit!

B. Get WARNER and FABIAN! I mean, Fabian is injured, what else has he got to do that's so important? . And who doesn't love warner and his antics?

C. Also maybe keep a running clock of the run time at the bottom of the screen the whole run? I dunno, that might not be a good idea.

If you get those issues cleared up it's definitely worth $5 USD/weekend. Maybe do some "season pass" deals to watch them all. Or sell like a highlights DVD (like last year's) + live coverage. Bundling might be a great way to raise revenue, as long as you don't gay it up and eliminate the a la carte option.

 

[BKQuill]

Feed was ok!

But I'd like to join to others who criticized the commentary.

Yes I understand that commentators are not professionals (at least this weekend). What I don't understand is that somebody didn't give them a little list of dos and do nots...

Like: Do let Cedric into the booth - but throw him out after 2 minutes.
Do pay attention to racing and try to offer some insights...
Do know at least something about DH racing, beyond usual media stars, even if you're a 4x racer.

For example not everyone racing WC is Brit or American - we others do have our heroes and we hate if you ignore them or even forget to acknowledge their existence due to senseless rambling.

And yes - I understand that you had to pick two racers to jump-in for Warner. And I do understand that for this sport oversize ego is mandatory (guilty myself - obviously) - but for public appearances you need to get over yourself.

Oh and yes - I'm prepared to pay more - without even flinching.

Pretty much sums it up for me as well. Although I thought the feed was great considering how few camera's they had to work with. I also would pay more without a doubt.

The commentators rambled at times about things other then the race at hand. Please pay attention to racing, stick to the racing, offer us some insight on how the track rides, the gear they're using for a particular event, etc. I really like to let the race entertain me, I like Cedric and he can entertain, but again, only in short burst's. Be professional, maybe being more professional can actually attract more mainstream coverage.

Fabian would be an awesome commentator!! He is such a great spokesperson for the sport!

Overall, great stuff! Looking forward to the next one and hopefully we can ride this for all it's worth and land more coverage!

Nice job guys!

 

[Jonnyc]

I love the fact I don't have to get at at 3am any more to watch the race, the replay after the race is worth $$ more.

Anneke Beerten is extremely boring, an most of what she says seems forced. the only positive thing i can say about her commentating is the respect she shows for other riders. I'd quote her but there's nothing to quote. she's the polar opp. of Warner.

Im just very thankful that freecaster exists. I'd without hesitation pay ten dollars for better coverage.

The only thing that would get me to stop watching would be H-ball on the mic.

p.s. having vendors(rob roskopp) on the mic is pointless all they do is plug there product.


can we get a petition going to get Sven Martin to comment?

 

[William42]

Feed was flawless and awesome. Commentators were fine, but not great. I'd still pay for it even if there were no commentators.

Up the pricing if money is the issue. Also, if you give an option to pay between 2-10 bucks, I'd 10. Encourage people to pay more by promising a freecaster compliation DVD at the end of the season if they put in over 50 bucks over the course of the season.

 

[uzziman]

4x had major issues with the streaming, however the DH was fine for me

 

[Covenasty]

It blew, paid my couple bucks a few days back, got up at 4 am to watch the races and it came on for about 30 seconds, then nothing.... I can't even load the replay.... **** free caster.....

 

[Matchew]

I will start out by admitting that I do not have the best internet available, I use free wifi in my appt. complex and the connection is pretty slow (Just tested @ 2.3mb/s download, 68ms ping). I'm running firefox and have had very few issues with feeds in the past. That being said, here are my comments:

-Purchasing with paypal was smooth and problem free, got my code in and email instantly (never had to enter it though)

-Feed connected fine but stalled to buffer about every 30 seconds for < 1 second. This I am fine with, as long as it buffers and picks up where it left off.

-About every 5 minutes It would stall out to buffer, but would eventually lose everything and restart with just the title screen and audio. Refreshing the page would buy me about another 5 min of audio/video with buffering every 30sec.

-The Low Definition option did not work. Whenever I refreshed the feed it would start in LD but would switch back to HD within a couple of seconds. Perhaps make the player default to the LD feed and make HD an option.

-The "time scale" of the feed was crazy, something like a total of 20+ hours. This made rewinding to any point within 20 minutes impossible, and also caused me to get booted to the title page.

-I'm willing to pay up to $10US for a live feed, and $5 for the replay. If money is what is needed to get more cameras/glitches sorted then charge us.

-Even with the inconsistent feed and loading issues I will pay again for the next round, what I did see was worth the change I paid.

 

[Princess]

Feed was great, and it was a terrific excuse to get together and drink Bloody Marys at 5 am!

 

[T-man]

I think I speak for all the parents of world cup mtb racers and thank freecaster for their race coverage of these races. International travel is not possible for many of us and it is awesome to be able to gather friends and family together and cheer for our sons and daughters during the world cup season. Thank-you...

 

[JCL]

Just to add to the chorus. Please get THE MAN Fabien in the booth for a couple of rounds if at all possible.

 

[Welshy.]

As many have said, the price was no big deal, and for the quality of streaming I received I would happily triple the price I paid for the rounds. However, despite the excellent picture (I did have mine hooked up to 50" plasma) but near perfect regardless, the cameras needed much better timing. There were only ~5 shots of the start gate, and I felt more cameras were definitely needed.

Overall, I thought you guys (Freecaster) did an outstanding job, and really do hope you stick in there.

 

[Eastwood]

For some reason I got constant errors while trying to load the page during the live translation. All 3 browsers (Opera, Firefox and Explorer) just shut down. Tried to reinstall flash player - nothing. So, I didn't have a chance to assess the quality of live stream, but replays were OK, both for 4X and downhill. Payment proceeded with no issues, the price is very reasonable even for Russia, the country I live in, and I think I'm ready to pay more

Commentary was quite boring, although I think Anneke is very cute
Bringing back Warner would be great

 

[FlipFantasia]

hey bike industry, the fans are ready to put their money where their mouths are and support this venture that hypes your riders, now will you?

 

[Transcend]

hey bike industry, the fans are ready to put their money where their mouths are and support this venture that hypes your riders, now will you?

Quote of the year. Perfect.

 

[Mr Nug]

I thought the coverage was great. I'm in London, UK and the feed was never interrupted. It took about 5mins to connect initially but imagine that was the same for everyone.

Some plus points:

- No more Scott bike ads popping up every 2minutes and stopping the feed. That was pure negative advertisment for me and now feel annoyed everytime I see one!

- Captured most of the riders that i wanted to see

- As said before, smooth feed and very happy with the price

- Scott and Anneke were ok but as they acknowledged, missed the *fun factor* of Warner. No more WCs during X-fighter events please! Certainly they were better than no commentary at all.


Things to be improved

- I'm going to throw this out there -> charge more. Let's see more cameras - not static ones but zip line ones.

- Please get Fabien, he'll be worth the cost

- Can we have the clock on the screen more often. This was good last year so guess it was a glitch for this one.

Overall, great work Freecaster!

 

[spinner]

I had one of , if not the the worst Freecaster streams I've had in the last 2 years of WC coverage.
ADSL
Ping 43ms
Down : 1.3Mb/s
I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 . Last season , the streams were generally very good with minimal problems.

Paid with Paypal , no problems there.

I didn't have to enter the code to start the stream , it started automatically. Every time I had to refresh , I didn't have to enter the code. The webpage would load quickly and streaming would go well for a minute or 2 before it would start to stall , then the "home screen" would come up , sometimes with audio only , otherwise nothing at all. I had to refresh about every 5 minutes. Towards the end of the mens , it completely died , refreshing the page would just bring up the home screen , once or twice with audio only.

I watched a bit of the replay the next day and it worked fine.


Here's hoping the problem is at my end and I can sort it out before the next race......or that I can be one of the lucky ones again.

 

[vikingboy]

Would love to see the streaming work on my ps3 browser (connected to main tv) or iPhone/ipad for viewing when away from home.

Good work.

 

[primo661]

endless problems. thought it was my code which I bought a week prior to the race. bought another on a whim (yeah, it is that cheap), but same problem persisted. Caught stone last 30sec of sam hill's run which is 30sec of the WHOLE DH event (mens and womens).
Tech support was a friendly dude who stuck it out with me trying to figure out what was wrong.
Issue seems to be what looks like a global proxy server for south africa. The techie mentioned someone else from ZA was having a similar problem to mine, were tech support noticed multiple IPs linked to an unlock code. Granted, very few folks have static IP broadband in ZA, but even non-static IPs only change when logging on and off from the connection, or following the mandatory 24hr IP leasetime.

The problem experienced was:
1) not authenticating on the first go. I had to refresh the page many multiple times.
2) initially, video only ran for exactly 10sec before going back to the static default image. 30sec after that, the sound came thru, but no video. Same static image (greg minnaar)
3) following refresh of webpage + re-authenticating a code, same thing all over again. Same thing occured if I close and reopened the browser. Even updated my version of flash player, but that didnt help.

So in a nutshell, i bought 2 codes for exactly 30sec of race footage. Amazing afternoon of racing.
I dont know where the fault lies, so I wont apportion blame. I just hope some solution could be found cos frankly, i'm super stoked for the service, and will keep paying, as long as it can work. But a no-BS assessment about connectivity from ZA will be appreciated. If it cant happen, let us know then we wont bother stepping into e-Poo, and thus no reason to spread unnecessary, negative experiences.

Us South Africans from KZN couldnt get it to work either, maybe our internet just sucks and has got worse since last year because of ADSL account shaping or something?

 

[monkeyfcuker]

Is it possible to change to configuration of the player so you can start downloading the live event but then pause it for say 10 mins so it gets a bit of a headstart, kinda like what you used to do in the days of dial up, seems to me this would sort out some of the buffeting problems.

I tried doing this for the first round of the 4x as I was having problems but every time I paused it the feed wouldn't carry on loading??

 

[Owennn]

I had one of , if not the the worst Freecaster streams I've had in the last 2 years of WC coverage.

Us Australians all had a problem with the Akamai.net proxy that was used to distribute the video. Just looking through this thread, we were all suffering from the same issue(s).

While the video was playing live I did some troubleshooting and the problem was with the akamaihd.net server I was connected to, can't find the hostname for it now though. The bandwidth either to the server or out from it to all the hosts seemed too contended.

 

[Wobbler]

My feed needed a couple of refreshes but worked really good between those. It did die halfway through the mens and by that time I was half falling asleep so I called it quits.

I paid by sms but still haven't received my code in my email, it did however let me watch the live feed so I'm not sure what's going on with that.

bad - commentators beaumont is awful, I'm sorry but talking between yourselves except when a british rider comes up and beaumont goes "omg he is my neighbour!" is a pain in the arse. If I could have muted the commentators but kept the background noise I would have.

I would pay 5x as much if you guys would get Fabian into the booth and get rid of beaumont

 

[Pip3r]

Worked flawless for me, and I was super glad that you can now re-wind it as I woke up 45min late and didnt have to 'miss' a thing since I was able to skip back to the beginning. Only issue with that was that when you pause it, it skips back ahead to the live bit.

I would gladly pay more than $2 to see this continue, its too good for the sport to loose it.

Warner is hilarious and makes it so much more entertaining, but as mentioned he needs someone to balance him out. It was pretty dissapointing the lack of knowledge and commentating on the actual race that was going on. It seemed like they were just chit chatting the whole time about random crap while they were missing pointing out things that were actually happening on the feed.

It would also be cool to get a bit more of a pre/post race 'show' like when watching Supercross (highlights from practice, rider spotlights, track maps), rather than just tuning in all of a sudden to what is usually a picture of people standing on a hill and the announcers going 'ummm right, well then!' I would think Freecaster could put together pre/post footage on their own that wouldnt have anything to do with the UCI feed.

 

[BKQuill]

hey bike industry, the fans are ready to put their money where their mouths are and support this venture that hypes your riders, now will you?

Quote of the year. Perfect.

Couldn't agree more!

Get Fabian in the booth.

I think I speak for all the parents of world cup mtb racers and thank freecaster for their race coverage of these races. International travel is not possible for many of us and it is awesome to be able to gather friends and family together and cheer for our sons and daughters during the world cup season.

Didn't even think about that. Good point though.

 

[luiz carlos]

I am viewing live from Malaysia

interrupted like every 30 second, have to reload the browser everytime

Same here, but i'm from Brazil.

Last year worked fine.

 

[SylentK]

Watched 4x live and it was the best stream yet from Freecaster, but I also finally got hi-speed internet (measured at 5 mb/s, which isn't all that fast IMO) and I'm in the states.

Dh I watched the replay. Worked great except when I paused and restarted it went back to the beginning instead of where I left off.

It would be really nice to be able to play it thru BlueRay Player/Wii/PS2 to watch on the big screen. Not a priority.

But I'd rather see the UCI get their **** in a pile and get more cameras and a better production crew. Why did it seem like the top 10 riders had less footage/camera time than the bottom 70? And there is more time between each rider when they reach top 10 or 20, right? Doesn't make sense.

I don't know, most of my complaints seem to fall in the UCI category.

Thanks Freecaster!

 

[CBJ]

Really enjoyed the much improved picture quality. I thought the commentators did well and I actually like they also mentioned some of the gear people were riding.

Would love to have Fabien commentating together with Warner. Funny guy and knowledgeable guy is a good mix.

 

[StabprimoMonkee]

(Warner + Barell) === OMGPWN!!!

 

[William42]

So, it sounds like feed was F**ked up in some places, probably because of the proxy used (flawless and awesome here), so sorting out proxy's/bandwith will be a must, but worth it.

Everybody is willing to pay more it sounds like (including the people with feed issues, provided you sort out the proxys), so you should set up a sliding scale - 15 bucks gets you low quality DH footage for the year, 25 gets you mid quality DH and 4x for the year, 35 gets you high quality streaming for both, and 50 gets you High quality for both and a DVD at the end of the year full of highlights. Stop complaining about not having enough money, and let us pay more! We want to watch it, we will pay more, the end. Lets make it happen, talking about what to do will do less then just allowing us to pay more, giving us packaged deals, and seeing where the money lands. If you don't get enough, offer full or partial refunds. Don't do 2 bucks per race though, packaged deals will always land you more money.

 

[captainspauldin]

Would love to see the streaming work on my ps3 browser (connected to main tv)

Did anybody try this? I dunno if Ps3 supports flash, can't remember to be honest..

But as far as my experience it was pretty flawless, only time I had issues was when my roommate figured out how to download podcasts, not a flaw of the feed/freecaster though. Nice being able to watch it full-screen on my 26" monitor and not having my eyes fall out.

 

[addomg]

We did the early morning bloody mary breakfast party. Had 5 guys watching one paid code. In the states with flawless streaming for the entire time (didn't have to refresh once). Charging only $2 seems like you shouldn't charge at all, move up to at least $5 especially if will help sort out some of the issues. $10 is completely reasonable as long as it works (at $2 who really cares if doesn't work great, but at $10 and doesn't, the hate will really start flowing).

Commentary did not add to the experience and should be better. They didn't seem to know a lot and threw out uninteresting or cliche commentary. I guess being riders they focus on riding and not internet owning like all us wannabes, but the commentating needs to play to us wannabes since we are the fan base.

The previous years feeds were fun and exciting because new and almost like pirate radio and crazy language and drinking of Rob added to excitement. Now that maturing and becoming more professional product, polish up the technical side, but don't lose the grass roots fun/excitement of it.

Keep up the good work!

 

[nmpearson]

it was great here in the USA. Never reloaded once, but was painfully boring without warner.

I totally agree though, i'd def pay more for more camera angles. One thing that was just amazing was the times at the bottom that constantly kept me updated on splits/standings. That was awesome.

I'd be interested to hear on feedback from the owner of freecaster. Did that help alleviated some financial issues? was in more/less successful? I'm all for companies making money and want to see the world cup get back to it's glory days. I think this is a step in the right direction as far as more money flowing into the broadcasting. The money was nothing to most of us as we spend $5k on a new bike every year, and i'm sure it was nothing to freecaster, but i hope it helped a bit

 

[819]

A usual, the race falls during riding hours so I didn't watch it live. I did; however, get the replay last night.

Purchased using paypal with no problems. The feed was fine. If I paused for too long it would time out and I would have to press refresh, but that wasnt' an issue.

Overall coverage was great. Just a personal opinion and not to be malicious but Anneka is kind of boring as a commentator. The other guy wasn't much better.

In any case, I'd pay again and even pre purchase the season if it helped.