Free to Air...are we becoming irrelevant

[Carlos Danger 380]

This is what I don't understand about AFL today.

It's purely about the dollar value in TV rights to stamp authority over previous deals and other codes.

How much is lost in the continually deprived accessibility of the game doesn't appear to be anything that is seriously considered.

I'd also add that Channel 7 is the devil when it comes to AFL coverage, I've never been more critical of a network broadcasting sport than Channel 7's effort at AFL.

[No10 461]

7 hours ago, Choke said:

 

Correct.

It's a massive infrastructure project, and as someone who benefits from it daily, I struggle to understand why it was watered down.

And then I remember politicians were involved.

More than happy to pay taxes for infrastructure.

JNR, if you want a return on investment, I'll give you some examples:

- People in regional areas can get remote surgery, something that's not possible without fast internet, instead of wasting days driving into the city to see specialists. Virtual presence is in its infancy. Remote surgery is just one tangible example.

- As traffic due to poor urban planning (and other poor infrastructure like roads/rail) increase, telecommuting becomes vital. The faster the connection, the more jobs can be done off site. The reduction in traffic alone could make FTTP NBN worthwhile if enough businesses thought of ways to use it, let alone positive mental health outcomes for being able to remove a long commute, or physical health outcomes for not being stuck in a car for 2 hours a day.

- Global information sharing for learning institutions is greatly facilitated by being able to move huge amounts of data between different campuses (or indeed institutions). No wait times, just access what is needed.

- Faster internet gives rise to new businesses for content creation. There's no way Netflix could exist without fast internet, and they make some of the best content going around, as well as being a content aggregator. Personally, I'm loving not being forced to watch ads for products I don't want, during shows on at a time that's inconvenient to me. Also, Rupert loses, which is a big plus for me.

- Faster internet allows for greater scale in cloud processing, which is already being used to look for a cure for cancer. The more people who have faster connections, the more 'idle' computers can be connected to the network to crunch huge problems.

You have to understand the scale of the speeds we are talking. It's near instantaneous transfers of huge amounts of information, and because it's fibre, it's scalable. It CAN GET FASTER.

The watering down of the NBN will be seen as one of the biggest infrastructure blunders this country has ever made.

Choke, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the nbn, I agree it's not the worst idea but the reality is that your rationale isn't good.

Medical and University usage is backbone, not home use.   They're possibly the only genuine benefits from your list.

If you're so passionate about furthering technology then perhaps you should care about the cuts to the CSIRO, they invented wifi, I'm sure you like wifi?  They also do cancer stuff.

[Adam The God 30,259]

On 6/9/2016 at 11:30 AM, Diamond_Jim said:

I think that is the point. The Take up rate for cable television in Australia has been one of if not the lowest in the world. Within 2-3 years (if  not earlier) the NBN will deliver reasonable internet speeds to the vast bulk of the population allowing online streaming of all content. Netflix, Amazon etc will be the big players and even less people will go for what is after all a relatively expensive product in the form of Foxtel. If you can get your TV shows elsewhere who would pay around $60 a month for a few games of football.

From an MFC viewpoint we run a real risk of our brand being increasingly marginalised unless we can get exposure on free to air.

Of course if someone were to come up with a streaming service with all games for $10 per month (not the low grade tablet streaming service we see now) it would be interesting to see what happened. I suspect it would still be outbid by Foxtel as their model is often to use sport as a loss leader.

Not quite true. Murdoch's plan was to use his News Corp arm to ensure the Liberals got in at the last election, so that the then Communications Minister (now the Prime Minister) would prevent the rest of the NBN implementation and instead roll out an NBN lite (the copper wire equivalent). Despite the argument by the self-described 'fiscally responsible adults' that the original NBN would cost upward of $40 billion, the Liberals greenlit an apparently cheaper version. This has now ended up costing the tax payer close to $50 billion and counting. What's worse is that Australia has to wait until the dated copper system needs to be replaced (in a decade or so) and then fork out the billions again to update the infrastructure that they've only just installed. So not only has NBN lite hampered business practices for small businesses (like mine and many others), it means that we continue to fall behind the rest of the world in basic internet delivery for individuals.

All so Rupert Murdoch could keep the wolves from his door for another decade. And it quite possibly means that the AFL won't sell the rights to their game to a streaming service for at least a little while longer. As I mentioned somewhere else earlier, I'd say this is part of the reason why a dedicated sports streaming service is yet to bob up in Australia. The market isn't strong enough yet and people are basically waiting for streaming to take over the 40+ demographic. At the moment the younger audiences are gravitating to streaming services and the older audiences are sticking to traditional medias. In 5-10 years FOXTEL will be dead and there will indeed be a sports streaming service. I think it'll be more than $10 a month though. You get the exclusive rights to a number of sports and you'll be able to charge closer to $20 or $30 a month for the privilege. In a sports-mad country, the streaming service and/or services will make billions and billions of dollars and that will become normal.

Edited June 10, 2016 by AdamFarr

[Skuit 10,031]

I've recently arrived back to Australia after a long stint living in Cambodia and felt like I've returned to the internet dark ages. Can someone genuinely explain this to me? 

[Bluey's Dad 3,419]

8 hours ago, No10 said:

Choke, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the nbn, I agree it's not the worst idea but the reality is that your rationale isn't good.

Medical and University usage is backbone, not home use.   They're possibly the only genuine benefits from your list.

If you're so passionate about furthering technology then perhaps you should care about the cuts to the CSIRO, they invented wifi, I'm sure you like wifi?  They also do cancer stuff.

This is the thing though, with internet this fast, it means medical and university use can be expanded into the home of employees/patients/students etc, allowing for much more remote work.

No comment on cloud processing? Telecommuting reducing traffic with flow on effects on productivity and health? Hell, if enough businesses work telecommuting right, we reduce the need to spend money on new huge damn roads. Then we have some extra money for some hospitals someone else was going on about.

Point is, there are some solid economic uses for this NOW. And every year there will be more, but stifle the NBN and it reduces the pool of ideas that can be utilised in the future.

As someone who's lived FTTP NBN for almost 2 years, I would never go back. I just use it for entertainment, but it excites me that my kids will have access to these speeds for their education. They'll be able to remote into the local school's robotics room and control projects in real time if they want. And before you say anything, it's a state school, not a fancy private school where the benefits are behind a massive wealth wall.

I do care about cuts to the CSIRO. But when talking about one topic I don't tend to list every single other topic tangentially related that I also care about.

I'm not saying the NBN is perfect, and yeah Labor bungled some stuff. But the Liberals watering it down to FTTN is not a solution, and my latest reading of it suggests it won't have saved us much compared with the initial rollout costs anyway.

[ManDee 7,148]

I live in rural Victoria and we have had fixed wireless NBN for some time 25-50Mbps down & 5-20Mbps up. At work 3 km away we have ADSL and no date for NBN. 

[mauriesy 7,296]

Some of you people should try living in the country, less than 100km from Melbourne, where you get 1-2Mbps ADSL1, no mobile coverage and no future likelihood of NBN fixed wireless. Netflix, Stan and streaming AFL is just a dream, but the people who do have it are creating massive network congestion for us poor sods whose broadband performance just continues to get worse. The national hardware is just not keeping up with the exploding demand.

It's funny how we're spending all this money on broadband networks just to watch media online, while a perfectly good transmitter (or satellite) that's already there will service millions of people, who only need an antenna and a length of co-ax to the TV.

Maybe the problem is also the lack of AFL games on free-to-air. We now have dozens of new free-to-air channels but they're all filled with the same junk.

[Diamond_Jim 12,588]

out of interest what speed do you need for a decent high definition picture of an AFL game/movie

[ArtificialWisdom 4,045]

19 minutes ago, Diamond_Jim said:

out of interest what speed do you need for a decent high definition picture of an AFL game/movie

Assuming 1080p (which the AFL does not steam in but most movie/TV services like Netflix and Stan will) you are probably looking for 4 or 5Mbps at the minimum to maintain a buffer free experience and still alow other people in the building to browse. If you want 4k (apparently Neflix can do some movies in 4k I have not used it though) you are looking at a fair bit more. Bring that up to a 4/5 person household and suddenly you are looking at requiring 20Mbps+ to prevent people from slowing each other down. Although it is worth asking the question how often are all  the users streaming at once? probably not all that much.

Note: If you are steaming using the AFL app a buffer free experience is amost an impossiblity because Telstra's service they are using is simply not up to standard it will drop either quality or buffer at random points regardless of your own internet connection. The fact is I can stream NBA from the US in FHD with no interuptions but i can't stream AFL in SD(or worse) from here without having issues 

[Bluey's Dad 3,419]

8 minutes ago, ArtificialWisdom said:

Assuming 1080p (which the AFL does not steam in but most movie/TV services like Netflix and Stan will) you are probably looking for 4 or 5Mbps at the minimum to maintain a buffer free experience and still alow other people in the building to browse. If you want 4k (apparently Neflix can do some movies in 4k I have not used it though) you are looking at a fair bit more. Bring that up to a 4/5 person household and suddenly you are looking at requiring 20Mbps+ to prevent people from slowing each other down. Although it is worth asking the question how often are all  the users streaming at once? probably not all that much.

Note: If you are steaming using the AFL app a buffer free experience is amost an impossiblity because Telstra's service they are using is simply not up to standard it will drop either quality or buffer at random points regardless of your own internet connection. The fact is I can stream NBA from the US in FHD with no interuptions but i can't stream AFL in SD(or worse) from here without having issues 

Happens almost daily in my house, in the hour or so before the kids' bed time when everyone is tired and we all veg out. Often I'm downloading from usenet at the same time as well. So 3 or 4 devices on Netflix (1080p) or YouTube (quality varies with source obviously) plus usenet downloads (speed varies according to servers, often between 5 and 10 mbs on its own).

I have no issues streaming on the AFL app. It will occasionally downgrade the quality, maybe once or twice a game, for a few seconds. Fortunately the adaptive bitrate protocol they use is actually good and it doesn't interrupt the game with buffering. It is easily the worst experience of any video streaming service I use though, partly because it's mobile and I chromecast it, putting a double stress on my router for one viewer.

Edit: If I ever get a 4k TV It'll be interesting to see how my connection copes with that as well. Just waiting for more content before I buy one.

Edited June 10, 2016 by Choke

[ArtificialWisdom 4,045]

1 minute ago, Choke said:

Happens almost daily in my house, in the hour or so before the kids' bed time when everyone is tired and we all veg out. Often I'm downloading from usenet at the same time as well. So 3 or 4 devices on Netflix (1080p) or YouTube (quality varies with source obviously) plus usenet downloads (speed varies according to servers, often between 5 and 10 mbs on its own).

I have no issues streaming on the AFL app. It will occasionally downgrade the quality, maybe once or twice a game, for a few seconds. Fortunately the adaptive bitrate protocol they use is actually good and it doesn't interrupt the game with buffering. It is easily the worst experience of any video streaming service I use though, partly because it's mobile and I chromecast it, putting a double stress on my router for one viewer.

Yeah thats probably considered a very heavy use household but it shows how quick it can add up. Especialy when you use something like Steam which will happily eat all possible bandwidth whenever it downloads haha.

Yeah i consider the downgrade of quality not good enough, it shouldnt be impossible to maintain a SD quality stream but it is better than buffering. Chromecast wouldnt hurt so much if they allowed us to transfer the stream like the chromecast is designed to do! Damn stubborn AFL and their money making ways XD 

[hemingway 7,627]

10 hours ago, Skuit said:

I've recently arrived back to Australia after a long stint living in Cambodia and felt like I've returned to the internet dark ages. Can someone genuinely explain this to me? 

We live in a third world country or one heading in that direction with a Chinese flag soon to be flying over our national capital. 

[Mach5 4,767]

I think the broader issue is those failing to recognise that FTA TV is dead.

[ManDee 7,148]

16 minutes ago, Mach5 said:

I think the broader issue is those failing to recognise that FTA TV is dead.

[ArtificialWisdom 4,045]

8 minutes ago, ManDee said:

Thats what they said about Richmond's Season 

[dpositive 1,665]

6 hours ago, mauriesy said:

 

It's funny how we're spending all this money on broadband networks just to watch media online, while a perfectly good transmitter (or satellite) that's already there will service millions of people, who only need an antenna and a length of co-ax to the TV.

Maybe the problem is also the lack of AFL games on free-to-air. We now have dozens of new free-to-air channels but they're all filled with the same junk.

Cant help but agree there

And 

we could then spend some of the serious money on making sure that Health and Education receive the high end priority stuff. oh and CSIRO and other specific research places. Businesses needing faster or larger download capacity should pay through private providers. It seems there is still plenty of subsidisation occuring to private sector through the charade of public utility

[jnrmac 20,065]

8 hours ago, Choke said:

This is the thing though, with internet this fast, it means medical and university use can be expanded into the home of employees/patients/students etc, allowing for much more remote work.

No comment on cloud processing? Telecommuting reducing traffic with flow on effects on productivity and health? Hell, if enough businesses work telecommuting right, we reduce the need to spend money on new huge damn roads. Then we have some extra money for some hospitals someone else was going on about.

Point is, there are some solid economic uses for this NOW. And every year there will be more, but stifle the NBN and it reduces the pool of ideas that can be utilised in the future.

As someone who's lived FTTP NBN for almost 2 years, I would never go back. I just use it for entertainment, but it excites me that my kids will have access to these speeds for their education. They'll be able to remote into the local school's robotics room and control projects in real time if they want. And before you say anything, it's a state school, not a fancy private school where the benefits are behind a massive wealth wall.

I do care about cuts to the CSIRO. But when talking about one topic I don't tend to list every single other topic tangentially related that I also care about.

I'm not saying the NBN is perfect, and yeah Labor bungled some stuff. But the Liberals watering it down to FTTN is not a solution, and my latest reading of it suggests it won't have saved us much compared with the initial rollout costs anyway.

90% of our populatiopn live withink 100kms of the coast. Its a total waste spending $70bn for 'remote surgery' whatever that is. Be cheaper to charter lear jets for them.

[Bluey's Dad 3,419]

11 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

90% of our populatiopn live withink 100kms of the coast. Its a total waste spending $70bn for 'remote surgery' whatever that is. Be cheaper to charter lear jets for them.

Yeah it would be, if that was the ONLY use for the NBN. That's like saying the government shouldn't build a road because it only goes to a hospital, when it clearly has other uses. Infrastructure has many uses, NBN is no different. The fact that you can't understand this indicates that I'm better off arguing with a brick wall.

Also, because you are clearly incapable:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=remote+surgery

 

 

[ArtificialWisdom 4,045]

11 minutes ago, jnrmac said:

90% of our populatiopn live withink 100kms of the coast. Its a total waste spending $70bn for 'remote surgery' whatever that is. Be cheaper to charter lear jets for them.

of course its a waste of money if it is put to only 1 purpose... given the internet has new applications every day it adds up to be a worth while investment. You talk of health care, have you heard about citizen science projects online?. You can, yourself, go online and aid in research of all kinds including medical from mapping genomes to simulating drugs. Sounds like you're suggesting that the internet has no practical use other than entertainment this is very foolish and narrow minded. It's the future like it or not 

 

Just now, Choke said:

Yeah it would be, if that was the ONLY use for the NBN. That's like saying the government shouldn't build a road because it only goes to a hospital, when it clearly has other uses. Infrastructure has many uses, NBN is no different. The fact that you can't understand this indicates that I'm better off arguing with a brick wall.

Also, because you are clearly incapable:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=remote+surgery

 

 

beat me by that much....and also lmgtfy.com is one of the best sites ever!

[leave it to deever 17,511]

On 6/9/2016 at 9:25 AM, old dee said:

I think what we are seeing is the Mr. Murdock paid too much for the rights last year and now News is having trouble making a profit.

That is what this is all about MONEY.

Who sees what and when is secondary for the AFL.

Good point. Rupert got caught with out with Netflix and foxtels streaming service is a joke

[Je Roos Salem 661]

Every attempt at online streaming the AFL does is awful. The smart replay thing is an insult to modern technology, the Telstra pass thing is only handy if you want to watch footy when out and about. If I really want to see a non FTA game I just look for a stream (usually not great quality) but for interstate Dees games I'd rather go to a venue with other supporters. With even more ads snuck into FTA coverage these days, the future looks pretty grim for coverage. 

[Adam The God 30,259]

On 6/9/2016 at 2:08 PM, jnrmac said:

Exactly. When 20yo's get asked if they want the fastest internet they all say yes. But no-one wants to pay up for it. 

It's not free and in fact is ridiculously expensive. Need to get a return on the $70b that it is costing us.

It is the biggest white elephant this country has ever built - except of course for Canberra.

That's absolute rubbish. Get with the program jnr. Having fast internet allows our businesses to compete and as the world is built around the internet (from the home, to the school, to every bloody business), Australia needs faster internet in order to compete and function properly. It's okay, we'll pull you into the 21st Century eventually.

The internet is a service every individual uses (aside from some very, very remote communities). So everyone's taxes should go to pay for it. If the Liberals hadn't stuffed it up with NBN lite, it would have been implemented properly by now for the projected $40 billion. Instead, we're left with an inferior short term copper solution - that has now ended up costing more than the original $40 billion independent projection of Labor's NBN system - that will need to be replaced - there's billions and billions of dollars gone again. It's a disgrace. The Liberals have cost us literally billions and billions of dollars. As Choke says, this should be seen as country's biggest blunder in the 21st Century (aside of course from this government's asylum seeker policies leading to the UN's listing of these policies as a violation of the Convention Against Torture). And what's more bewildering is that anyone with half a brain could see this coming 2.5 years ago.

Edited June 10, 2016 by AdamFarr

[daisycutter 29,616]

Just now, AdamFarr said:

That's absolute rubbish. Get with the program jnr. Having fast internet allows us businesses to compete and as the world is built around the internet (from the home, to the school, to every bloody business), Australia needs faster internet in order to compete and function properly. It's okay, we'll pull you into the 21st Century eventually.

The internet is a service every individual uses (aside from some very, very remote communities). So everyone's taxes should go to pay for it. If the Liberals hadn't stuffed it up with NBN lite, it would have been implemented properly by now for the projected $40 billion. Instead, we're left with an inferior short term copper solution - that has now ended up costing more than the original $40 billion independent projection of Labor's NBN system - that will need to be replaced - there's billions and billions of dollars gone again. It's a disgrace. The Liberals have cost us literally billions and billions of dollars. As Choke says, this should be seen as country's biggest blunder in the 21st Century, possibly longer. And what's more bewildering is that anyone with half a brain could see this coming 2.5 years ago.

adam, you're dreaming if you think labor would have had fttp installed by now for $40b, but you gave me a good laugh. it would have been heading north of a $100b and further behind. 

[Adam The God 30,259]

14 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

adam, you're dreaming if you think labor would have had fttp installed by now for $40b, but you gave me a good laugh. it would have been heading north of a $100b and further behind. 

Well that's not what independent experts are saying right now.

Take a look at these clowns. "The man who invented the internet in this country...". Are you serious?

http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/the-project/extra/season-7/who-to-blame-for-the-nbn

Edited June 10, 2016 by AdamFarr

[BAMF 4,353]

I just cant believe the government wasted so much money on those telegraph poles and wires! Its a white elephant I tell you!

We had a perfectly good system going with the post men riding horses to deliver the mail! Why would you spend that much money just to communicate a little bit quicker!

Now there are no jobs for the poor posties! They took our jobs!