Crap iFollow Stream - is it worth it?

I had a better 3rd party free stream of the England/Iceland game found on Twitter than the crappy, blocky, low def dial-up quality stream that I paid £10 for yesterday.

I'm an exile and this would be a great way to support the team and get to the games in the current situation, but I won't be continuing if the quality remains so poor.

I'll give it one more game then most likely will knock it on the head.

always the same quality nothing changes

Their customer service is shocking too.  I've had problems in the past and they don't respond until you start effing and blinding. For instance there was one away game (can't remember who) and it was raining .  The camera was fogged up.  I could see sweet FA.  I told them about it and they said the cameras have nothing to do with them.  I had to get peed off and told them my contract is with them not the cameraman, so it was their responsibility.  Only, I used more French.  Lo and behold it was fixed.  Maybe not just me complaining I guess. I suppose it was critical mass. I'd prefer another option.

Every non Saturday 3pm game last season was really good quality.
Saturday was hit and miss for me but I wasn’t at home where my internet is really good.  

Fast and stable internet leads to good quality pictures. Last years Tuesday games were pretty much HD

I really don't understand all the complaining. I usually connect it to a 32" screen and the picture is fine. Yesterday I had it on my 18" monitor and although it wasn't HD quality, it was certainly good enough to watch the match.

They get hardly any viewers for the matches in relation to the cost of providing a live streaming service, so I think it's very good for such a small audience.

Let's see what away games are like. If there is a big gap quality its not beyond the club to invest in some better equipment if its likely this is a way of obtaining revenue. We're at the very start of a new way of watching football potentially I wouldn't draw judgements too quickly. Certainly having the commentary in sync with the pictures is something I would expect other clubs to do. I watched some of the National League North/South play-offs and the matches I watched were in sync.

I didnt have any prolems, logged in and away you go.

Yeah I've never had any problems with picture quality. I get randomly logged out for being logged in on two devices when I'm not but it's only once or twice max a game and then I relog back in and it's fine. Picture quality (having a fogged up camera aside) is pretty much definitely down to your internet connection.

I saw some comments on Twitter about the commentary cutting out periodically. The same thing was happening on DAB radio, which makes me suspect that problem is at the club end, rather than iFollow. (No idea about the video quality, as don't use iFollow).

Quoted from Mayaman

Their customer service is shocking too.  I've had problems in the past and they don't respond until you start effing and blinding. For instance there was one away game (can't remember who) and it was raining .  The camera was fogged up.  I could see sweet FA.  I told them about it and they said the cameras have nothing to do with them.  I had to get peed off and told them my contract is with them not the cameraman, so it was their responsibility.  Only, I used more French.  Lo and behold it was fixed.  Maybe not just me complaining I guess. I suppose it was critical mass. I'd prefer another option.

Remember it well......it must have been you that made the cameraman wipe the lens.  

I watched the game yesterday on I follow and mine was fine, no buffering or freezing at all, the sound kept cutting every so often but that was not impactful as I paid to watch the game and not to listen to the commentary, the actual quality of the footage was acceptable, obviously not top end HD but it wasn't blurry or anything  and was a half decent standard.

It was watchable but nowhere near the quality you expect in 2020.

Picture quality was fine. Its not HD but does it need to be? Not for me.

The issue with the sound was a BBC thing or a signal thing i think. It was happening on JT's post match interview too wasnt it and thats nothing to do with ifollow.

Picture for me was fine but JT  voice went missing every so often.

Humberside who was doing the commentary said they were having trouble with J T's Mike but there was nothing they could do about it.

Quoted from pen penfras

I really don't understand all the complaining. I usually connect it to a 32" screen and the picture is fine. Yesterday I had it on my 18" monitor and although it wasn't HD quality, it was certainly good enough to watch the match.

They get hardly any viewers for the matches in relation to the cost of providing a live streaming service, so I think it's very good for such a small audience.

My understanding after talking to someone in the business of filming soccer matches is that the company responsible were aware of problems before any games were filmed but continued anyway.

I remember the good old days of watching the game on teletext or even waiting for the sports telegraph to get the result when I couldn’t get to games 😂 all joking aside, I really do hope they will up the quality if they’re expecting a lot of fans to pay £10 a game whilst we can’t attend.

It seems inconsistent to say the least.

I was watching on a Retina display MacBook with a really quick connection and it was woeful. In the last I’ve watched on my basic work laptop and it’s been ok.

I don’t believe it’s anything to do with the actual cameras as such, or so I’m told be a friend who works for the BBC filming stuff.

I also have issues whenever I try and connect to a TV, doesn’t matter which was I do it it always freezes, I even tried purchasing through my TV and it wouldn’t work.

Any idea how many tuned in on Saturday?

I watched the game on my 15 inch laptop and enjoyed it very much.

The only problem was the sound and I wondered if it might be with JT's mike, which other posters have confirmed.  

Worked fine on my basic Dell laptop. I'll try to hook it up to my 32 '' Sony Bravia TV with the HDMI extension cable tomorrow. It worked last season, and produced better sound quality, but the picture was hardly worth the faff of hooking up. Wife has the new, much larger smart TV in't lounge but I daren't mess around with her labyrinth of Virgin Media, Roku, Now TV, Netflix and WiFi connections. As Ollie says, I'd be 'lower than a snakes belly' if I bolloxed it up.

Is paying for tomorrow’s match a signal of approval for the EFL Trophy format or should I just watch England instead? Would rather spend a tenner in the clubshop than approve of the EFLT.

Quoted from LH

Is paying for tomorrow’s match a signal of approval for the EFL Trophy format or should I just watch England instead? Would rather spend a tenner in the clubshop than approve of the EFLT.

surely not charging a tenner tomorrow are they?

Quoted from Boris Johnson

surely not charging a tenner tomorrow are they?

I would expect so, I think they did last year

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

I have no clue what you are talking about. Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because I have no clue

As I mentioned elsewhere, the company responsible for providing the stream were aware of a problem.

The footage from BP is a direct HF feed.

Quoted from arryarryarry

As I mentioned elsewhere, the company responsible for providing the stream were aware of a problem.

The footage from BP is a direct HF feed.

No idea what you mean by an HF Feed - though it looks like there is a bandwidth issue on the uplink from BP.

It's a terrible service for the money. NOW TV do a 24 hour Sky Sport pass for £9.99, including 11 channels you can watch on multiple devices, which is obviously infinitely superior in quality.

IFollow charge £10 for a crap stream that's not much better than any old dodgy stream you can find for free with an internet search.

Having said that, i would pay £10 to watch Town, because, well it's Town, but i have had nothing but problems with IFollow. From logging in issues, to crap streams that are also out of synch, and terrible communication. I gave up on them a while back and if they want my custom, they need to up their game. There is a big opportunity here for themselves and the club to make valuable extra income, so you'd think they would get their acts together.

It’s not that difficult in 2020 to sort your streaming service out, especially when the money iFollow will be making will be absolutely huge over the next few months.

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

Thanks for this.
Interesting if anybody could confirm they receive a high quality stream (720p minimum) as claimed by ifollow??
The service as it stands is very poor in my opinion.

Previously we have had great quality via a PC on Son Ofs 42inch tv most weeks we have watched, so hopefully it was a one off

Quoted from pen penfras

I really don't understand all the complaining. I usually connect it to a 32" screen and the picture is fine. Yesterday I had it on my 18" monitor and although it wasn't HD quality, it was certainly good enough to watch the match.

They get hardly any viewers for the matches in relation to the cost of providing a live streaming service, so I think it's very good for such a small audience.

??
So a high quality stream is advertised & you confirm it isn't HD.
Then criticise people for questioning the quality?
They certainly wont increase their customer base with the current approach.

I think Saturday was the first time in donkeys I've had a half dodgy picture and by half dodgy I mean the image was slightly off sharpe. No buffering issues, no cutting out (except the audio but that continued on the BBC website after the game) came on on time.

Quoted from Blue Mariner

No idea what you mean by an HF Feed - though it looks like there is a bandwidth issue on the uplink from BP.

Should have said HD feed🙄

Quoted from Blue Mariner

No idea what you mean by an HF Feed - though it looks like there is a bandwidth issue on the uplink from BP.

Nothing wrong with the uplink from BP as can be seen on the highlights clip as well as HD on Quest.

It is a streaming issue by the company responsible for it.

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

The quality is better but it's still not great. The framerate is poor and you can clearly see the blur when there's a bit of action going on, everything seems a bit fuzzy. And that's basically in perfect lighting conditions too.

Quoted from arryarryarry

Nothing wrong with the uplink from BP as can be seen on the highlights clip as well as HD on Quest.

It is a streaming issue by the company responsible for it.

There is a difference between uploading (streaming) in real time and uploading a broadcast quality version for editing/later transmission.

It's quite possible the bandwidth is too poor to allow a real time stream.

In other news, the Club has acknowledged the issue

Quoted Text

We are aware that there were some problems with iFollow at the weekend. We think that the audio issue was one that was caused by a faulty ISDN kit. This kit will be changed for tomorrow night’s live stream against Harrogate Town.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused and we hope that it didn't spoil your matchday coverage.  


If you experience any technical issues or have any billing queries, you can have I live chat with the iFollow support team by clicking on the speech bubble on our homepage.

[url]https://www.grimsby-townfc.co.uk/news/2020/september/ifollow-mariners-issues[/url]

Though ISDN is prehistoric technology and would support an audio stream.

This is who the National League used for the North/South play-offs

https://www.sportradar.com/

If you can watch Boston United in HD, why can't you watch Town?

https://events.sportradar.com/en-int/page/vanarama-league-play-off-passes

Could've been worse:

https://www.crawleytownfc.com/news/2020/september/ifollowrefunds/

Quoted from Blue Mariner

There is a difference between uploading (streaming) in real time and uploading a broadcast quality version for editing/later transmission.

It's quite possible the bandwidth is too poor to allow a real time stream.

In other news, the Club has acknowledged the issue


[url]https://www.grimsby-townfc.co.uk/news/2020/september/ifollow-mariners-issues[/url]

Though ISDN is prehistoric technology and would support an audio stream.

This is the company responsible for taking the HD live feed from BP and all other grounds and received in a large centre in Stockley.

https://www.efl.com/news/2020/january/ifollow-revolution/

It would appear that IMG are owned by a company called Endeavor

Looking at the response on the Crawley site it looks like this is the company responsible for the streaming of the footage

https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/

I have been talking to a gentleman from another EFL Club and he suggested the streaming company were aware of software problems before Saturday.

Hopefully all will be sorted by the Harrogate game.

That comment by GTFC didn't mention quality of the stream just the audio.

It seems the EFL were aware of streaming problems back in June.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/53121719

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk.....ifollow-efl-18460610

https://www.hulldailymail.co.u.....eam-problems-4247704

Comment on another site :-

On June 2, when the EFL’s version of “Project Restart” was still in the planning stages, a senior figure at a Championship club made a prediction.

“You heard it here first — iFollow will crash trying to cope with demand,” he said.

The EFL’s streaming system was about to become the vital conduit by which match-going fans, denied the chance to watch their clubs’ final nine games of the season in person, could see them in action.

The official’s fears seemed serious. On the first day of Championship football resuming, they proved to be well-founded.

As the second tier’s 3pm matches prepared to kick off behind closed doors, a proportion of fans of eight clubs found their virtual route into the stadiums blocked by on-screen error messages.

The problem was rectified — but not before some fans had missed the opening 10-15 minutes of their clubs’ first games.

So what people are saying is, iFollow is shite, it costs money and for some folk it looks like it’s recorded on a potato.

You can argue the intricacies but given this is celery the route they want folk to watch football you’d expect better. The company supplying it and so forth clearly knew but have seemingly done little in the time they’ve had to try and improve it.

Plenty of us are quick to have a dig at the club but I can imagine when they saw the quality they probably just put their head in their hands...the inconsistency in quality is naturally a concern, thankfully they promise it’ll be improved for tonight. A game in a competition that’s pointless...

Quoted from Chrisblor

The quality issues have nothing to do with the camera being used to film the match. As you can see from the highlights here, the footage is in HD quality and far better than what iFollow served up on Saturday -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0HInHPwHM

This leads me to believe that at some point during the process of taking the footage from the camera, encoding it, sending it off to iFollow and then streaming it to viewers, someone won't have set something up correctly.

iFollow claim to offer a 720p stream, so it's possible that since the quality when you set the stream to 720p isn't anything like that then there's some kind of encoding / stream quality intercourse-up on town's end, between the camera and sending the footage to iFollow (not sure if they use the internet or a separate satellite link-up for this process). It's also possible i'm completely mistaken on this and town are submitting the footage to iFollow at an appropriately high bitrate. In that case some clown at iFollow has compressed the stream quality on their end meaning we end up with disappointingly poor and blurry footage.

In either case it's an issue that can easily be resolved with some minor tweaking. iFollow is run by Endeavour Streaming (https://www.endeavorstreaming.com/) who are reponsible for managing live streaming of many other sports leagues (NFL, NBA, UFC) at much higher quality with no issue, so they definitely have the bandwith to offer a fully HD stream. You just need someone with the technical know-how at iFollow or the club to look into what is causing the problem. Will this actually happen? I doubt it!

Weirdly, that highlights quality is a lot worse for me than the match was.

I have a season pass for iFollow as I have done the past few seasons. Couldn’t watch the game on Saturday as apparently the Carabou Cup wasn’t included.

Tonight’s game is however and at the moment you can watch the warm-up and the picture looks crystal clear on my phone; better than last season arguably. I don’t know whether it’s a bandwidth issue and the picture degrades when usage is high, but I’ve never had much issue with it really.

I’m watching it on a 65” tv and the quality is HD, 100% improvement on Saturday’s service.

Yes but they have lost Humberside cement at moment. It was on earlier!

Started off decent quality but got progressively worse, lots of buffering and blurry pictures most of the time.

Fuming, missed both Harrogate goals due to buffering!

This will be my 3rd season with iFollow watching from “abroad”. I’m streaming to an iPad via a VPN and I’ve never had any problems with the steam and it’s always good quality picture. Vastly improved last season when they synced up with Humberside commentary and started showing replays.
Renewal was €160 this season, a big jump on last season when it was about €120 I think, but I think they are streaming more matches this season with the cup games. Seem to think it was only league matches last season. You get the odd technical glitch but overall I’m happy to renew each season.

Much better quality picture tonight, no buffering for me, was well worth the £10.

Quoted from 123614

Much better quality picture tonight, no buffering for me, was well worth the £10.

I thought you watch it on a dodgy stream and never want to give the club your money?

Very good sound and vision. Even able to pause it to fetch a beer. Missed first 15 min but watched it back during half time.
Enjoyed the insight and summaries from Gary Croft but it was clear that him and JT have a problem identifying players near the Findus from the Main Stand press box. Do they have a video feed or Ipad I wonder?

Missed last night's match but good to hear it sounds like they've sorted out the video quality issues.

Quoted from Croxton

Very good sound and vision. Even able to pause it to fetch a beer. Missed first 15 min but watched it back during half time.
Enjoyed the insight and summaries from Gary Croft but it was clear that him and JT have a problem identifying players near the Findus from the Main Stand press box. Do they have a video feed or Ipad I wonder?

An answer from the man himself:

https://twitter.com/JohnTondeur/status/1301806506107645953

Have watched the last two games and whilst it isn’t HD I haven’t had a problem with the picture. Had my pc hooked up to my tv and happy enough with it - bit of ghosting/soft edges but not enough to bother me.

The worst thing is the non-working tabs etc on Town’s website. Something Town need to take responsibility for.

Quoted from Chrisblor

Missed last night's match but good to hear it sounds like they've sorted out the video quality issues.



An answer from the man himself:

https://twitter.com/JohnTondeur/status/1301806506107645953

Some one should buy him the iFollow app!

Quoted from pen penfras

I thought you watch it on a dodgy stream and never want to give the club your money?

You have absolutely no idea how much money I have invested in GTFC, which is fine, because it is none of your business.