Cricinfo asked me to review the IPL youtube channel. It didn’t end well.
After a morning of watching cricket players singing on YouTube (Abdul Razzaq is my favourite) I stumbled across the live IPL stream. I was greeted with Pommie Mbangwa and Shane Warne speaking with an awkward delay. When Pommie spoke, Warne’s lips moved and vice versa. Was a nice effect.
Whispers had come back to me that the picture quality was poor on the IPL’s YouTube experiment, but the picture worked for me. You could see Dirk Nannes’ magnificent facial fuzz and Graeme Smith’s cold, dead eyes. Warne’s teeth were as luminescent as always and Harsha Bhogle’s hair was lustrous.
Clearly when they came up with this online stream no one thought of the serious problems it could lead to. The cheerleaders are harder to ogle. If the light is not on these unnecessary dancing girls properly, it leads to pixellation and the girls can look like they’re characters from Samantha Fox Strip Poker (made in 1986).
I started off by enjoying the experience, but then I realised that even though the site looked friendly enough, there was a seedy secret. After the first over I looked around the page to see what else they had. Under the video I found a live Twitter chat stream coming through that said 14 for 1 was the score, but I had seen no wicket. Three minutes later I saw Dirty Dirk Nannes get one, which took the score to… 14 for 1. We were on a delay.
I might not have worked this out without the help of this live Twitter feed directly below the footage. From then on in I watched the Twitter feed, and if someone said “four” or “wicket”, I set my mental egg timer and then scrolled up in time to watch it.
Being that I was in sunny London, I got a KP Brylcreem ad that had been made for the internet, but was put on way too loud and made my ears cry. Like Laxman Sivaramakrishnan and Michael Kasprowicz did. This seemed to be their only ad, and it was shown so much that I wanted to find the man who invented Brylcreem, dig him up, and make him watch it. Imagine if KP was batting and all you had was KP ads. You’d overdose on KP. Not how I want to go.
My cat, Spartacus, seemed confused that the IPL was on YouTube, and he never stayed long in my office. He went back to the lounge and waited for me to turn on ITV. (He is a big Mandira Bedi fan, although he was hoping she would wear an IPL logo sari).
The Twitter feed quickly became more interesting than the game to me, as most of the tweets were about illegal places to watch the IPL online. Quite often these people were saying the YouTube link was down, even though it never broke for me. Then they flogged their dodgy link.
When Graeme Smith was out, I was watching the young Ladda bowling on my screen, and he had four balls left in his over. Smith eventually was out in front of my eyes in the next over. It did annoy me, but I also felt like a cricket soothsayer, one who could sense the dismissal was coming before he saw it.
I doubt many people in the world just sit on one website when they are on the internet, so it is impossible not to go to your Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Myspace, Bebo and Friendster to know what is coming next. And that doesn’t even include Cricinfo’s genius ball-by-ball coverage (editor, is that what I was supposed to say?). The ways of being in front of YouTube are many and varied.
After getting bored with the game I started playing around and found out you can see alternate camera angles with the “fun feed”. Big mistake. I can’t believe anyone could watch more than two minutes of this. All I had was a close-up of Shane Warne watching the cricket for 30 seconds, the cheerleaders’ empty stage, vox pops of the fans in the dark as a poor interviewer just got screamed at by a bunch of young fans, and extended cheerleading shots. I can only imagine this “fun feed” is for stalkers of cricketers who love watching women dance and children yell.
Then the feed went down.
Not knowing what to do, I decided to click on one of the many illegal feeds while I waited for YouTube to come back on line. I was amazed that the illegal feeds were actually up to speed with the game. When the YouTube feed came back up, it was one full over behind the illegal feed. Does Lalit know about this? I wouldn’t want to be the one who tells him. So I stayed with the illegal feed. It isn’t quite as pretty, and you can’t even make out Shilpa Shetty (I assume it was her) from a distance. But you do get a variety of ads.
Then the illegal stream crashed. I went back to watch the YouTube stream, and saw the over I had just seen. That annoyed me, so I found another illegal feed, but the sound was rubbish on this one.
That was enough. I went back to my couch. Watching cricket wasn’t supposed to be this hard.
You got the sack yet for this horrifically incorrect and slanderous account of the IPL’s excellent and highquality coverage on Youtube?
JRod, I thought you were smarter than this.. IPLs youtube feed in UK is delayed by 5 minutes because of their television deal with ITV. :)
The game, This might surprise you, but I don’t follow the details of TV and Streaming deals within cricket. I was asked to review the feed as a fan, and most fans don’t know about TV deals and so forth. At the bottom of the site it says that it is delayed in India. But, whether I, or anyone, knew about the delay or not, having a twitter feed with live scores and wicket information straight under the video sort of ruins the fun of watching it in the first place.
Thegame, I think Lalit knows everything.
Hilarious. Wish you’d have included my one-word review of the feed as well.
Keep ‘em coming.
.-= Rohan´s last blog ..Drinking culture =-.
You are actually right in pointing out that the delay can be a bit of nuisance for the average online viewer.
I was just reacting to your “Does Lalit know about this?” comment. Perhaps you had written that in good humor. Never mind, it is not a bid deal.
Anyways I am a huge fan of your blog. Carry on the good work!
I am really happy you brought out the illegal feeds in your post. The concerned ppl will understand that introducing 5 mins/30 mins delay will only drive their viewers away from youtube and onto the countless feeds available. Really not a big deal.
Also, the live twitter/facebook feeds on youtube and cricinfo are good hunting grounds for 1. Trolls 2. Spammers 3. Advertising illegal feeds. I dont think they serve any other purpose! If they think allowing live user feeds will keep more users hooked up to the site, it might only drive a few away. Besides, I found chatbox next to a feed to be very effective and entertaining while watching a game.
Positives from IPL youtube sites: Highlights package! Absolutely love the concept. Anytime I can check out highlights without having to search on the Internet.
cb
I don’t mind the delay so much, I believe it also helps the stream to maintain a fairly high quality image when bandwidth is bursty.
I’ve been using SkyPlayer since the last Ashes and the IPL youtube feed is not only a hell of a lot cheaper, it has much better reliability and quality.
You still get a delay with SkyPlayer but you also have worse quality and drop outs all the time. When I listen to Test Match Sofa I have to run the audio through a channel on my interface with a 50 second delay (approximate, as it changes on each use) to synchronise with the video action.
I have also experienced the feeling of being an all-sentient god who knew exactly when that twat broad was going to bowl a wide before it happened!
I’d be much more prone to moaning about the lack of sync JRod experienced during the Warney interview.
Can’t put it better than this.. “Online streaming cricket was better in my days” Neil Harvey
.-= Mock Wah´s last blog ..DLF IPL 3.0 DareDevils tame the Zintans =-.
Even cricinfo was faster than youtube by an over!!
Hey Neil, was cricinfo lagging youtube streaming in your days?!
I gave it try, it was mainly buffering and then repeated itself in parts. Unauthorised streams are still better.
.-= Wes´s last blog ..••• The Legsmith heads North =-.
New ways to avoid being fined, if your complexion doesnt work, that is:
http://www.cricinfo.com/bdeshveng2010/content/current/story/452195.html
Oh, the feeds, fuck in desh we anyway get a delay thanks to low bandwidth. I thin Lalitbhai is just trying to even things out for the rest of the world.
I dont know, watching cricket with a mouse and keyboard accessible is not fun – it should be a completely absorbing experience – which the machine will not permit.
I think people complaining about feed down could be due to lower bandwidth. The illegal are not just for the ones looking to avoid the delay, but also for the less fotturnates in US of A. There is no live streaming of you tube IPL in USA :(. I have not heard why though. So I was waiting for highlights and full relay of the match. First couple of days it looked like there will not be any relay option. But then it took such a long time to post it. It takes about a day to get the full replay available. I normally wouldn’t watch the whole replay but wanted to see Pathan’s 100/37. The match happens live during morning hours in US. Even when I check in the night, (after 10 hours) there is no replay video posted. Common you tube, in todays world 10 hours is eternity. They should post it atlast after 2 hours after the game.
I tried using some IP diverting and tried to match “vitually from Europe” but the speed was so bad it kept breaking.
The last point is, they have some non-match videos like SRK, Shetty in 720P but the highlights are only 480P. I think they should have the option of 720P of highlight for the once who want to see it in higher quality.
To summerize, the quality of the service is par below what I expect from You tube which is owned by Google
@Joe
The highlights on youtube are now available in 720p since the last couple of days. Regarding highlights, I found them 2-3 hours after the game by searching in youtube. Even I wondered why they were not put up under the highlights section. Nevertheless, search should work.
cb