Owen Franks, who was dropped from the All Blacks squad at yesterday's live announcement. Photo/ file.
Owen Franks, who was dropped from the All Blacks squad at yesterday's live announcement. Photo/ file.
One Spark Sport viewer complained to the Herald that Owen Franks' omission from the All Blacks' 2019 Rugby World Cup was no surprise - because the telco's "live" stream was 90 seconds behind other media.
Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Spark Sport raised the possibility that the 90-second figure could be a "gut feel" that was longer than the actual lag, and raised the possibility that there could be a device issue involved.
But she also confirmed that some degree of delay is just a fact of life for Spark Sport viewers.
"There is always a delay between live-action and streaming broadcast, due to the time it take to convert video to an internet-ready format for playback across a range of devices," she said.
"We expect to see delays of between 20 and 40 seconds on live broadcast – and the team assures me that this was proven out today [with the All Blacks' squad announcement]."
Earlier Spark Sport head Jeff Latch outlined that there would be a delay of around 30 seconds for Rugby World Cup coverage as a satellite feed from Japan had to be processed at TVNZ, sent to Spark's streaming platform partner in the US (iStream Planet) then delivered back to New Zealand by Akamai.
A 30-40 second loop: RWC video will be beamed via satellite to TVNZ then up to the US to streaming partner iStreamPlanet, which will hand off to Akamai, which will deliver content to Spark Sport.
Keen followers of the streaming debate will note that although Latch has talked about working with Akamai and others shorten the delay, the upper limit being mentioned has in fact been creeping upwards.
And forty seconds - or even half that - is plenty of time for spoilers via social media, live blogs or radio.
Broadcast TV has always been a few seconds behind the actual live-action - but up to 40 seconds is a bit of a gulf.
And the delay issue is not unique to Spark Sport, but inherent to streaming - and the need to encode video for multiple species of device. Sky says its new Sky Sport Now stream is around 30 seconds behind the play.
Return to full-blooded video
Some better news for Spark: its streaming service is returning to full-blooded video.
Earlier this month, after some fans complained about what they thought was degraded video quality, Spark Sport admitted it had downgraded its video stream from 60 frames per second to 30 frames per second.
The rationale was that the lower video quality was less likely to cause grief on older laptops, and older models of Google's Chromecast widget - which is used to stream pictures from a computer, phone or laptop to a TV.
But some users howled about the move on social media - and it was a bad look given that Sky was able to launch its upgraded Spark Sport Now app at 60fps.
But this afternoon comes some good news for Spark Sport subs.
The service will be returned to 60fps at full high definition (1080p HD) within a week, Latch says.
Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang of Arsenal celebrates after scoring his team's second goal during the Premier League match against Burnley. Photo / Getty
The increase in video quality - or return to top quality - will come in part from Spark putting more grunt behind its service (the bit rate will increase to up to 7 megabits per second from the previous top bit rate of 6Mb/s, if your internet connection can take - most should be able to).
Spark has also tweaked its service so it can better auto-detect the best quality video for any given connection and device.
In a less positive development, Latch said Spark Sport will not now be available on LG TVs before the Rugby World Cup.
"Spark Sport will soon launch on 2019 LG TVs. However, despite extensive collaboration between Spark Sport app development and the device manufacturer, the Spark Sport app experiences significant issues playing on 2017 and 2018 LG TVs, so the app will not be made available on these devices before the Rugby World Cup," Latch said.
"People with older LG TVs can still watch Spark Sport on their existing TV, by using a streaming device such as an Apple TV, a Google Chromecast or a Freeview Smart VU. This is the same situation as pre-2017 models of Samsung TVs, Sony TVs and Panasonic TVs and any model of smart TV that are not one of the four brands that Spark Sport supports."
AB's announcement lag
Spark also copped some flak over the delay on its livestream of the All Blacks' World Cup squad announcement at midday today, with one viewer pinning the lag at 90 sceonds.
A Spark Sport spokeswoman said, "There is always a delay between live-action and streaming broadcast, due to the time it take to convert video to an internet-ready format for playback across a range of devices. We expect to see delays of between 20 and 40 seconds on live broadcast – and the team assure me that this was proven out today."
Latch earlier said there would be a delay of up to 60 seconds for Spark Sport's live Rugby World Cup stream - a gap long enough for spoilers on social media, radio or liveblogs.
Meanwhile, Spark Sport stuffed out with a key English Premier league game on the opening weekend of the season (Manchester City vs West Ham) and had problems on the second weekend with the Arsenal-Burnley clash.
But for the third weekend, the service reported no problems, and all was relatively quiet on its social feeds.
