Participant Observations 15/6/18 - The World Cup

I stayed up last night to watch the start of the 2018 World Cup from Russia, to see on what devices I could watch it, what the quality was like, fidelity, lagging, and so on. Here are the observations:

- The best quality of image I found was streaming the game through the SBS website on my gaming PC. There was a little lag, but only a few seconds compared to the FTA broadcast. This is also the most robust signal.

- The FTA coverage was ok, but because of where I live, the signal is not strong, so if I turned on another device, such as the gaming PC or the space heater, the signal could drop out.

- The game could be streamed via the SBS On Demand app or the SBS World Cup app, and then cast to the television. However, this offered the worst image with frequent degradation and pixelation, and the worst lag, often about 20 seconds compared to FTA. There was no difference between the two apps in terms of lag or quality.

- The Freeview app does not allow you to stream the World Cup at all.

- The only option where you don't have to create an account and sign in was the FTA option. This was a little bit unfortunate, because I didn't really feel like I should have to create an account to watch the World Cup, but on the positive side, the login details could be used on both apps and the wensite, and it also demonstrates the SBS On Demand app, which I previously didn't think would carry live streams, was in fact able to do this.

- The fact that there was very little lag watching online or through the app showed that the Foxtel Now app still suffers from considerable lag issues, but that it can be solved. Online, as mentioned, the lag was really only about 4-5 seconds behind the FTA, which really is very small and tolerable, while the lag casting through the app was still only 20 seconds, which is waaaaaay less than casting the Foxtel Now app. Clearly this is a technological issues that isn't being addressed by Foxtel.

Basically, it looks like I'll be watching most of the world cup when I'm at home through the gaming PC - I was kind of hoping this might be the case anyway, as I actually prefer to get most of my content this way now anyway, instead of terrestrial broadcast or satellite. It's really the way we will be watching most of the content in the future, and the system needs to be stress tested to account for this type of increasing behavior.

It also showed that the system could deliver a high quality image - better than the HD signal on FTA, although I would imagine I'm still in the minority of people to get their content this way, so who knows what the signal would be like if everyone did this. I did find that the OTT delivery platforms took a while to load, and it felt like this was because of the demand on the entire SBS/Optus system as people tuned into watch it from a server. But generally, one online, there was little to no buffering, and actually the user experience if much enhanced because of the annotating of the signal. You can call up highlights, see substitutions, free-kicks etc., quite easily.