Participant Observations 7/3/18 - The season is just 15 days away!!

Let me start by saying how excited I am for this new season. While I'm the first to admit that it's unlikely to be as compelling and as even as last year, I nonetheless am keenly waiting to see the players back in action and the best game on earth getting underway again. Some recent observations over the summer:

1) The summer has been good as far as AFL goes. i actually really liked the AFLX competition, and I think a franchise model run into Hong Kong for 2-3 weeks over the summer is an awesome idea. Retired players, young guys who otherwise wouldn't get a chance, in a new country is awesome. yes, some tweaks need to be made, such as turning down the glitz, and some rule tweaks, but overall I loved the free-flowing movement.

2) The AFLW has gone up a notch and is far more watchable this year. Still plenty of room for improvement, but I know a lot more of the players and have even watched the one panel show on Fox Footy occasionally.

3) The JLT pre-season has been less impressive. i love the fact they play the games on regional venues, but the quality - from what I've seen - has been horrendous. But I'm also glad it's only 2 weeks of competition. Heaven forbid if we had to live through 3 weeks of this shIt.

4) I've noticed that when watching Fox Footy via chromecast the vision is ok, despite suffering fidelity issues (as mentioned previously), but when I watch it via my gaming computer, there's an issue with frames dropping. This isn't restricted to Fox Footy - it happens on other channels as well. I'll need to do some more testing, but from what I've seen online, it may be because I'm using a HDMI cable to connect the PC to the TV screen. This is disappointing from Foxtel, because my other streams on the PC do not have this problem.

5) I found this thread online, where people seem to share ideas about getting AFL without having to pay for it. Might be worth keeping here in case I ever want to go back to it:

https://discourse.bomberblitz.com/t/watching-afl-on-a-tv-without-foxtel/3932/88

Interestingly, one of the posts says: "Also, side note, this is one of the most regularly visited pages from Google." But It's somewhat recent, but it does cover many of the options I've looked at before, such as using a VPN to access Watch AFL, the CrownBet option, and so on. One option that may be worth investigating is this Kodi service: 

https://kodi.tv/about

6) Also saw this advertisement on TV today - really interesting that it personalities the piracy experience. Effective tool! I have no way of arguing with this - yes piracy might be overstated by the industry, but creativity wants to be paid!

But in summary, let me return to my starting point...I CAN'T FUCKING WAIT UNTIL THE SEASON STARTS!!! WOOOOOO...I'm just gonna leave this here for now:

Participant Observations 13/2/18 - Foxtel Now in HD via PC

Just a quick blog post with some positive news about getting a HD picture via the Foxtel Now app.

Previously, I thought that I could get the best picture for sports on Foxtel Now by Chromecasting it from the app on my iPad. My previous testing with a computer resulted in a pixtellated, dark picture with lots of latency.

However, I recently tested the picture again on my gaming PC, and I'm really pleased to say the picture is much improved. I still think it's only about 720p HD, and not the full 1080p or better, but it definitely is better than what I was seeing via the app, especially for Fox Footy (which is what it's all about really!!).

There are one or two other issues such as picture degradation around players when they're running, and some ghosting/flickering of the ball as it moves through the air, but I'm relatively confident I can fix these by adjusting some of the smoothing options on the TV itself, rather than it being a problem with the quality of the signal.

I don't mind running it through the gaming PC, although there may be some loss in functionality as I need to use the mouse instead of having the iPad, which is good for when you are lying on the couch and want to use it like a remote control. But there are other benefits as well - the PC version of Foxtel Now has much better channel information, such as showing what's coming up next, and I can also go back up to 30 minutes on the active channel, which you couldn't do on the app and still cast to the television.

So this is a very pleasing development to discover only a few weeks out from the AFL season! I think it starts in only 37 days or something....

Participant Observations 7/2/18 - Foxtel and the $39 a month HD Sports Pack

I think this is a great initiative from Foxtel, and I think is true recognition that the sports fan demands a different set of criteria than other consumers.

Firstly, it's in HD!! Clearly HD is significant to the sports watcher.

$39 a month for only sports is a pretty good deal, especially as Fox Sports have announced their going hard after sports rights (i.e., cricket) in the near future.

This possibly mimics the strategy of News corp more broadly, who are selling down their non-news and non-sport assets to focus primarily on those two areas, and they must see it as central to their business model going forward in some respects.

No lock-in contract is good. No equipment fee is good.

But here's the rub...

After the first 12 months, the price reverts to $65 a month!!

Details: https://www.foxtel.com.au/shop/packages/sports.html (Note: offer ends 28th March)

It's still not enough to drive me back to getting a satellite subscription, given I get all the other channels for $65 a month anyway, and also given that I'm now paying more for my internet - why would I want to pay more money for Foxtel when I get everything I need through the internet?

Nice work Foxtel - now if you could just deliver your OTT service in 1080p HD instead of 720p I would really be a happy sports fan.

Participant Observations 7/2/18 - AFL Evolution

A few weeks ago, before the AFLW started, and before AFLX had debuted, I decided I needed to get my AFL fix on.

With little else to turn to, and now that gaming has become a regular part of my entertainment, I decided to get the only recently available AFL game, AFL Evolution.

Firstly, the game is NOT cheap. It was US$50, so about $70 Australian.

The game obviously lacks the polish of many sports sims made in the US or Europe, such as NBA 2K, F1, FIFA, golf, rally, etc. The music soundtrack is VERY limited, and the menus are not as slick as other games. The commentary is sub-par, and the graphics are ok without being wildly exceptional.

But...

I fucking love it. I admit, the game-play has some quirks. It's really hard to mark, playing on can be a problem, as can getting the right camera angles. But as I texted to my friend when I told him about it, I still shout at the TV when I'm controlling Buddy Franklin and he dobs one on the run from outside 50!!

I haven't tried the online options yet - mostly I've just played single games against shitty opponents while I get used to the controls. But I've found that if you set the camera to end-to-end, and get a knack for stringing together handballs and kicking to leads, it's really good fun.

One other feature I've explored for the first time last night as the career mode. So I created a player vicariously in my image in the game that I control:

It's hilarious. My first game, I was best on ground with 22 disposals and a goal, but I then was suspended for 2 games after I cleaned up an opponent in the game, and my appeal against the suspension was unsuccessful...

And of course I embellished my players characteristics. He's a rover, like me, but he's the maximum size (215cms) and built like a truck.

I guess, during all of this, the process reminded me of a question I had from someone at the CSAA Fan Studies Conference in Wollongong late last year. After my presentation, they asked me what fans do during the off-season - do they create fan fiction, or anything similar. At the time I spoke about how the AFL attempts to stretch the season out over 12 months to cater for these fans, but I think this is more in line with the type of questions she was asking.

This game is more for the hard-core fans - the lack of polish and difficulty in playing the game will not attract the casual fan - in fact, while researching the game, many reviews said much the same thing - that the game will only appeal to the rusted-on fans because of the flaws.

But I really like the game.

Participant Observations 12/1/18 - Not a happy new year. One little blackout and the NBN is fucked???

So it's not been a great way to start the new year. On Monday night here we had an electrical storm, that, while being spectacular, resulted in a blackout in my area for about 4-5 hours on Monday night. No big deal. However, when the power was restored, the NBN went down.

So I tried resetting the modem without any luck. Called Internode on Tuesday morning, and was on the phone for about 35 minutes with them as we went through a factory resent of the modem, only for them to say that the fault must lie with NBN, and that a ticket had been lodged with them and it would take around 48 hours for them to fix it.

In the meantime, I also spoke to my neighbour, and found out that she was also on the NBN (with Optus) and that she had the same issue. So at least that indicated that it wasn't just me that had the issue.

So I wait 3 days, just to make sure, and still no internet. Call internode back, and they say that NBN had fixed some issue in the system, but it hadn't resolved the issue at my address, so now they need to send a technician out to look at it in the home. So the earliest time they can get here will be 8am-12pm on Tuesday, so the whole weekend will be without the NBN. And even when the technician gets here, there is no guarantee that they can fix it.

In the meantime, I'm running a portable hotspot on my phone, and drawing down all my data on my phone plan, which is only 5GB per month. Fortunately, it monthly period finished on Tuesday, and so I've just restarted for another month, but in the space of 2 days I've already used 1.2 GB of my monthly 5GB plan.

This demonstrates two further points to me:

1) How fragile is the fucking NBN if all it takes is for one fucking electrical storm for it to cripple a system for at least a week, and what will, in all likelihood based on my previous experience, take well more than that. I understand an electrical storm can do major fucking damage, but it should be this fucking hard to restore the system. And if it wasn't for me chasing it up all the time, would it get fixed at all? I've said this before, but heaven help an elderly person or someone form a non-English speaking background that would have to go through this. Seriously, WTF???

2) I've become acutely aware of how reliant I am now on the Internet for the delivery of my information and entertainment. This outage has reduced my capacity to get regular internet and email, but it's also stopped my gaming, and has obviously halted the delivery of my Foxtel Now, Netflix, and Amazon Prime (which I signed up to recently). I've really sort of put all my eggs in one basket in this respect, and is probably one of the dangers of trying to be an early adopter of OTT services. I always wanted to put as much load on the NBN as possible, as my way of forcing the NBN to try and get their shit together, and to also force companies like Foxtel to improve their customer service and content delivery, by forcing them into realising that this is where consumption is heading, but if the fucking NBN can't get their shit together, seriously I sometimes wonder, what's the fucking point?

If you can't already tell, I'm really annoyed and frustrated with this outage.

I will try and speak to my neighbour again to see if they are having the same problems again, as they may also need a technician to come out as well. How the fuck does that happen? Can't the NBN see that two fucking addresses right next to each other are having the same fucking issue, and yet have to solve each one separately? What kind of fucking redundancy is that??

It also made me revisit an idea a mate of mine had about the poor state of the NBN. He once said that the shitty NBN will drive people towards black-market internet, and there might be something in that. If there was a private or black-market internet service I could access that guaranteed high speeds, I would definitely consider getting it, considering the shitty experience I've had with the NBN so far.

Amazon Prime is ok - good program on there with Aaron Paul called The Path, about him wanting to leave a cult. Obviously The Grand Tour is on there. NFL was on there for Thursday Night Football, but the regular season is over, so no more NFL games there. I'll see if I like it, or if anyone else wants to share my logins, otherwise I might have to chuck it so I'm not paying for too many services at once.

C'mon NBN. Fucking get your shit together...

Participant Observations 12/12/17 - Returning the Fox Box

I just had a really funny conversation with the woman at my local newsagent. I'll explain how it came about:

So I got an email from Foxtel this week, saying the voluntary account suspension of my satellite service was about to end, and that they would start to charge me for it again.

Having been with the Foxtel OTT service now for about the same length of time, and not particularly unhappy with what I'm getting, I decided that I would terminate the satellite service. So I called them up, and cancelled the service, but not before they again tried to pitch to me some deals to stay with them. Iit was too late for that.

So they sent me an email with details about how to return the Fox Box. I printed off the label that came attached in the email, packaged up my Fox Box, and walked it up the road to the designated dispatch point - my local newsagent. (For those who didn't know, getting a Foxtel Subscription does not buy you the Box - you effectively only rent it during your subscription)

I walked into the newsagent, and said, "I understand I can drop this off here to be returned to Foxtel?"

"Yeah, that's right," she said. She then took the package out to some back room. On her way back to the counter, a thought flashed through my mind.

I asked, "Do you get many of these dropped off here?"

She looked at me in a knowing kind of way, and said, "Yeah, we get heaps. Probably 6 to 7 a week, ever since Netflix and all them other ones came along."

I said something like, "Fair dinkum. They must get a lot of churn I reckon."

She countered with, "Yeah, they have to do something about their pricing or something to stop it."

It was an informal yet fascinating validation that the traditional Foxtel business model is in crisis. It in turn led me to two other thoughts:

1) A comment one research participant said in an interview, where they said Foxtel's business model used to be about just bombarding people with as many content as possible, literally 100's and 100's of channels. It probably also reflects an ideology of "Content is King", which I think may no longer be the case. It's been said to me more recently that "User experience is now King." Which now seems more apt.

2) It also reminded me of the 5 weeks I worked as a telemarketer for Austar (which became Foxtel) waaaaay back in 2002. One of the selling points of our pitch, we were told, was to talk about the number of channels we had, year round.

But the conversation with the newsagent lady was an informal validation of the changing media landscape. Sometimes I fucking love my research and where it leads me.

Participant Observations 10/12/17 - Fan Studies Network Conference

The Fan Studies Conference in Wollongong was a really interesting and reward experience. Some takeaways:

• I felt that the paper presentation went well. I tried to get it to follow a logical progression, and integrate the key concepts of the Produser and the Informal Media Economy clearly.
• Because Fan Studies is not an area that I'm too familiar with, it forced me to explain some concepts that I probably take for granted, such as what OTT and anti-siphoning is, which is I think a good grounding experience.
• Rehearsing for presentations is always helpful. It forced me to really tighten up the literature review, and it allowed me to get my presentation down to 20 minutes, almost exactly.
• Rehearsing also made me change the order of the material so that it made the logic easier to follow. After the intro and literature review, I looked at regulation, which led into the AFL Case study, and the outcomes of Illegal vs Legal consumption, then the introduction of key concepts, which then led to a look at AFL Produser consumption practices, and finally some conclusions.
• The conference also made me restate why an Interdisciplinary approach to study is important - most people had little to no consideration of industry at the conference, and I felt that a real strength of my presentation was that it did involve direct data from an industry source.
• I think the presentation was well accepted. There was some good comments posted on social media, and most of the comments seemed to stem from Smith's observation that sports fans experience the same neurological patterns as those people that are undergoing a deep religious experience. This shouldn't be too surprising I guess.

But otherwise the conference was ok. It was only small with probably 30-40 delegates there, but was well run.

It was also probably a bit like going to ComicCon! most of the presentations focus on particular fan communities, especially around TV shows or Films and so on. But it was compelling nonetheless. 

The two keynotes were also helpful I think in terms of understanding new ways to look at Fandom, that moves away from a high culture-low culture binary to more of a quadrant pattern. I'm not sure if this could be applied to sports fandom and AFL fandom, but it might be something worth considering.

And met some interesting people as well, which is always nice!

Now, I need to see if I can get the paper written up and published somewhere!