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Comment by jrcii | Hacker News Reader

Live sports moving online would be the final nail in the coffin of the cable television industry.

Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR. In some ways it hits sports especially hard. Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly, that's something you want more often with sports. The whole smooth rewind/pause/fast-forward ability is a priority for me and would keep me on a Tivo forever. Even on a local bluray it's less convenient, with streaming it's a dealbreaker.

Also, streaming is inherently risky in the sense of random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution. For a live event, especially during a dramatic moment, that's not something I'd deal with. Twitter has no control over my network connection. I barely do.

All things that can be fixed with good software. These problems are someone's opportunity.

The hardware isn't being built with DVR-like storage and there's nothing software can do to create additional bandwidth when it becomes too scarce. Cable just works and my other devices and neighbors don't threaten it.

These problems all exist today and the needless but inevitable push for 4K is going to make them much worse.

Having to use a DVR is something specific to live cable broadcasts. Internet streaming doesn't need anything like that, since the Internet is inherently interactive.

Have you ever watched streaming sports on the Internet? Something like the MLB.tv platform, which is award-winning and used by millions of people not just for MLB but for other streaming media? It has rewind, picture-in-picture, the ability to watch multiple streams (home and away announcers) for the same event, the ability to either start from the beginning of the broadcast or start from live (and from live, rewind to the beginning if you so choose). You can also watch any game basically since baseball started being broadcast.

None of those things exist on cable. So I'm not sure why you're saying that cable is a better sports-watching medium. Why the hell would I ever need to rewind a local copy of the game?

Streaming TV is only getting better.

I only watch TV for basketball, and when the grey-market streaming service I was using for NBA games got shut down, I wanted to at least be able to see the nationally televised (ESPN and TNT) games without cable.

I tried Sling for a month and it had issues, but for the past few weeks I've been using Playstation Vue it has been practically flawless. I'm on a 25/3 Time Warner connection running at least half a dozen connected devices during peak usage times, and I haven't seen a hiccup or quality drop once. The NCAA championship game last night was without buffering and looked great on my 4K TV (not in 4K, but the quality never changed to the point where I noticed any drop in clarity). It has some DVR functions depending on the program and channel as well.

Looking at the Playstation Vue plans right now and it doesn't look like these are any cheaper than regular cable TV $55/$45/$40 a month are the three tiers. Is there something I'm missing?

Pricing must be based on where you're located, because the lowest tier (all I need) is only $30 here. The biggest benefit for me is that when the NBA season's done I will just click a button and stop paying, then click another button and start again in October.

When I gave up on cable I had to take half a day off of work and drive an hour to the central office and say "no" a dozen times to their pleas to keep me on as a cable customer.

FWIW YoutTube streaming allows rewinds/pausing/fast forwarding and it works pretty well. I far prefer it to a Tivo.

I agree with you about the network connection quality though.

I have been streaming a lot more recently using Comcast streaming. The pros is I can watch live TV, pause/stop/rewind, and catch up on shows. The cons, is that their quality is crap about 75% of the time. Lags, hiccups, poor video/audio quality, and sometimes it just outright refuses to work. The other con is that it doesn't carry the full array of their channels, but that really isn't a big deal to me.

What I don't understand is given they are a cable company and have the infrastructure in place, you would think their quality would be superior or at least equal to other services. Instead it seems they spend more time and money bitching about other services and not trying to make theirs the best.

>Streaming is inherently rewind-unfriendly

HOW?!?!?

>streaming is inherently risky in the sense of random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution.

Netflix works great for me. I've bought streaming packages for European soccer, also streamed Olympics and World Cup, so I don't know what you're talking about. It was great.

But OK, maybe you're like that guy who still has a landline because in emergencies landlines are more likely to work than a cell phone -no problem, I don't judge. For vast majority of users with residential connectivity, streaming is perfect.

-> Streaming is a poor user experience compared to cable with a good DVR.

I disagree, especially when considering how awesome MLB.tv is, and BAM (Baseball Advanced Media) in general. Any game I want (subject to a few blackout restrictions, which you can get around if you're so inclined), and I have the choice of home vs. away broadcast. I pay for 100 Mbps at my apartment, and haven't had an issue with streaming games thus far this season - didn't last year either. And the ability to watch multiple Baseball games at once is simply amazing. So much Baseball! The price point dropped this season because of an out-of-court settlement[1]. As far as rewinding....for live sports?...meh. MLB and their partner broadcasters do a pretty solid job with replay.

Every year is the same for me: I have cable up until Baseball season starts, then I cancel it and just get MLB.tv because that's all I watch anyway. I doubt this issue will go away for MLB. Eventually I think enough pressure is going to hit these local networks that they'll face more problems in the future.

So perhaps if you limit the scope of your comment to streaming television shows...maybe, but I doubt it. If I'm streaming a TV show on HBO Go/Hulu/whatever...doesn't that mean I by-definition have all rewind/pause/etc control?

[1] http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/more-details-on-t...

random pauses, buffering, dynamic drops in resolution

I get that on cable TV now, since they've gone digital. Granted less than streaming, but it does happen.

Agreed. I watch network television once a week during football season, and then never again until the following year.

I can't see any online services ever competing with cable and satellite providers over sport. It would require deep pockets to convert paying customers to a new platform, plus the Internet isn't proprietary enough to physically capture the audience.

I believed this until I saw PSVue just recently[0]. It is the first non-cable/satellite to satisfy all of my sports needs. But at those prices, we're not far off from cable/satellite, so maybe we should just say the delivery medium is open to more providers than to say online vs not-online.

0 - http://psvue.com/

> paying customers

The data readily show that young people are not paying customers [of cable services]. In the long term, professional sports organizations have to go online to maintain relevance to home/casual viewers.

most NFL games are broadcast for free over antenna

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