NBA fans cry foul as Prime Video cuts out during overtime, fails to sync audio
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"Sure, we cut equipment costs to the bone and beyond, and the techs we have left did their best with what we gave them and what they were able to beg, borrow, and steal from other departments, but c'mon...where are sports venues going to go that's any better these days? We'll just toss a few more bucks...personally...at those that sign the contracts, and we're forgiven now, right?"
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That's a really clever way to mimic the outage by eliding those last few possessions. Well done, Scharon!
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it's crazy how Amazon has unlimited tech resources and Prime Video is still one of the worst streaming experiences. Unbelievable.
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A word from their sponsor that won't let you do this. "SPORTS BETTING COMPANY".
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On the scale of all the things happening in the world, this is ... not very high up there.
But it's hilarious that Amazon can't figure out live events. I've been on the sidelines of this type of work and seen what goes into it -- impressive, but definitely within reach of any well-funded organization.
But it's hilarious that Amazon can't figure out live events. I've been on the sidelines of this type of work and seen what goes into it -- impressive, but definitely within reach of any well-funded organization.
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If I didn't know better I might think for Amazon a quality viewing experience ISN'T the goal!
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This happens with regular cable as well. ESPN's web site will have football results about 45 seconds before Cox will show them on regular cable channels.
Oh, they got a field goal. I can go to the bathroom early.
Oh, they got a field goal. I can go to the bathroom early.
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Plus, to add, this wasn't just any game, but essentially a do-or-die play-in game (loser eliminated from the play-offs). While I didn't watch it, clearly other funkiness about that broadcast. I'm on the West coast, loaded Prime at about 12:30 AM this morning, and the Prime Splash screen showed the game was still in progress, 2:35 minutes in OT. What? How many overtimes have they been in? 
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Is Dish Network considered a technical titan that underpins the entire internet?
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It's very annoying having games on Prime. It's not a service I'm regularly on, so I'm often completely unaware a game is even on.
This was an amusing hiccup during a surprisingly great game.
This was an amusing hiccup during a surprisingly great game.
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Why are they in what sounds like a Broadcast Truck?
Don't they have links directly to the internet?
Aren't THEY THE internet?
Are they broadcasting to an antenna at Amazon HQ then distributing it over the servers?
Don't they have links directly to the internet?
Aren't THEY THE internet?
Are they broadcasting to an antenna at Amazon HQ then distributing it over the servers?
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That is in no way the same thing. Broadcasts have always operated on a time delay, and with radio (which is delayed less) or internet (which has almost zero delay) you can get results before you see them.
But you have to try. Spoiling the result for people actually viewing your broadcast and nothing else is new. And awful.
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"Broadcast truck" is just a legacy term. It's still the mobile control room for the event. It takes in all the camera, microphone, graphics, replay, and communications feeds, then the production team uses it to cut the show, mix audio, build replays, insert graphics, manage timing, and send the finished feed out to the network or streaming platform. Modern trucks also handle a lot of the routing over fiber/IP.
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Does Dish have exclusive rights to a win-or-go-home game in a major sport with no other legal way to watch?
Do their outages affect every single viewer in the country?
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The only reason audio sync would be an issue is if they have separate paths for the audio and video, and rather than marrying them all together in a single production control room first (the tried and true process that has worked for decades). The control room then sends out a sync'ed stream for the public.
They're trying to save money doing as much as possible remotely over IP (not a bad thing in itself), but they're already trying to do it on the cheap, at the expense of quality. Guess that's acceptable to the bosses.
They're trying to save money doing as much as possible remotely over IP (not a bad thing in itself), but they're already trying to do it on the cheap, at the expense of quality. Guess that's acceptable to the bosses.
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They're likely doing most of it remi and just encoding the cameras and audio sources at the venue, then shipping it over the network to a remote control room for audio and a separate one for video. Hence the lack of sync.
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It really is the worst. I bought NBA League Pass this year on Amazon because it's no longer available on Youtue.tv, and it's miserable. It's a slog to navigate and a pain in the ass to even get to the games I want to watch, and then it lacks most of the quality-of-life features that other services provide. It's so weird because it's one of the older streaming services, and it's not like live sports are some sort of new thing for them.
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The control room is already elsewhere compared to the mics and cameras. Each one has a timecode device attached, and the streams they put out have the timecode included so you can sync them up automatically. If you ship the data to Indonesia you get some additional latency, is all.
Failing at this is pure amateur hour.
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More of a how, than a why, but it seems to me the OTA wasn't available, because this shit was exclusive to Prime since Amazon paid them a boatload of money for that exclusivity. If it was OTA, it would have been free , and probably would have resulted in the local network stations being burned to the ground by angry fans if they lost signal that way. ALSO, they typically didn't have the means to record live that way, which is why it was "live" to begin with.
Otherwise, you're just watching an OTA recording, which they could have simply paused until they got back on the air and resumed from when the signal died.
So, lots of how there. Not so much why, though.
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Look on the bright side. At least it didn't switch over to a broadcast of Heidi.
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Dark Pumpkin
Ars Scholae Palatinae
A delay of a minute or so for live events isn't too bad, as long as the audio is synced properly and it doesn't cut out randomly, as happened on Amazon's stream. Preventing delays in live streamed video is actually a very difficult task. It's honestly extremely impressive that they can get that delay down to a minute with how many sources of latency there are.
For example, have you ever wondered how they are able to beep out swear words in live events? The only practical solution that I'm aware of is to have a delay that is long enough for someone to quickly edit in a beep before the video gets sent out.
I don't know how much that specific issue factors into the delay, but I can't imagine it causes less than 15 seconds of delay.
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Given the length of the outage I would bet it was a core router or switch that died and VRRP took ~20 seconds to kill the dead unit and elect the live one as primary and then a few seconds for the buffers to fill back up. The timing sucked, but every system has some component that if it dies is going to take some time to recover, even life critical systems like airliner main computers can take a bit to figure out a unit is dead and decide who to trust.
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An "also" would help: "player who also won two previous championships", since he most recently won one with the Lakers. One word for a more accurate impression, without having to mention the fourth one when he returned to the Cavaliers, after his stint in Miami.
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I should hope so, because it happened again.
https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/amazon-employees-work-around-corpse/
That's right, this is happening multiple times, and this time was even worse because someone was BEGGING to be allowed to save a life and was told "get back to work". Even the manager giving the order seemed to realize how evil it was.
I gotta say... if you have life saving skills, don't even ask. Just use them. Your boss doesn't actually have the rule of law behind their orders. You are free to disobey. That boss too was free to disobey. I know it's hard. I've had to get in arguments over much less egregious and serious violations of my ethical code before. But, do it, in the name of humanity do it.
My decision to start using Amazon as nothing more than a catalog to find products and then buying them elsewhere seems better by the day.
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Oh you children and your ten billion movies, tv episodes, and other events available for streaming 24/7 to pretty much everywhere on earth!
Some of us remember Dad falling off the roof fixing the TV antenna during a hurricane so that we could watch the 1968 Olympics. (He succeeded with only a hairline ulnar fracture, which he refused to have treated until he had seen men's 200 meter winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos banned for life for raising their proud black fists on the podium.)
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Do you have a source on that? Your link does not include those details..
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SMPTE? Simple 32 bit binary linear timecode... Seems like someone isn't doing any redundant syncing somewhere. Sync generator in the studio working off the atomic clock. (more for the audio delay than anything else!)
*I'm a little out of my depth on the technical reasoning, DAW software would just quantize the audio tracks to the closest 1/16th note based on beats per minute. Like a click track for live performance establishing the count-in.
*I'm a little out of my depth on the technical reasoning, DAW software would just quantize the audio tracks to the closest 1/16th note based on beats per minute. Like a click track for live performance establishing the count-in.
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Those details come from an interview I'd heard about on a youtube video with the person in question. Let me see if I can find the original source.
Ah here we are, near as I can tell this is the original source of the more detailed reports.
https://moneywise.com/news/top-stories/amazon-oregon-pdx9-facility-incident-worker-death
I don't know about you, but hey people just die all the time. So unreliable. Really the bigger crime was that guy who torched a warehouse, a whole property. THAT'S the true unforgivable sin. We can't even order people to work around that!
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Given how long it takes for most of these games to get through timeouts, commercials, reviews and free throws I'm a little surprised a whole 22 seconds were lost.
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