
BBC Olympics streaming stats - rohit89
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html
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lusr
Very interesting. I'd love to know how many viewers were using proxy servers
to view the Olympics from outside the UK. I'd also love to know why
intelligent people insist on using 3D line graphs (and why product designers
choose to implement them). They are almost impossible to interpret correctly
without great effort.

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ig1
Because interpretability may not be the key concern, attractiveness might be a
more important criteria for the creator.

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mbell
I was really hoping for a stat regarding how many streams were sent to
datacenter vs consumer IPs. In other words, how many people outside of the UK
were watching the feeds by using a proxy or VPN service?

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josephlord
Hmmm... And I'm sure the BBC want to tell the IOC (and the world) that they
massively failed to meet their contractual requirements to limit distribution
to the territories they have licences for.

Edit: PayUpPal below claims to be BBC employee and says not contractual terms
were breached. I would have expected there to be requirements to effectively
secure the content to the territories the IOC sold the rights too. Maybe
specific security measures were required and applied. Either way indicating
massive international access may lead to stricter conditions next time.

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mootothemax
Personally, I think the IOC is missing a trick by not offering to partner up
with the BBC and letting people pay, say, 50 gbp, or the equivalent USD or EUR
to watch the streams online.

Plenty would pay just to avoid the hassle of setting up and/or the occasional
proxy timeouts/pauses.

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josephlord
But you also need to consider the other side of the equation - how much less
would be paid by the existing broadcasters if they weren't buying exclusive
rights.

The sums may balance one day but I wouldn't bet on it doing so now.

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mootothemax
Thanks, that's a very good point, and sadly I think you may be right.

It does make me wonder at what point - if ever in our lifetimes - we'll see
global market broadcasting rights being offered. Wonder what the disruption
will be that causes it.

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waterlesscloud
For reference, 19 million households have internet access in the UK. The
population is about 63 million.

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josephlord
Additional reference information.

Connected TV in these stats is probably principally games consoles. At least
the PS3 had all the streams.

All 24 streams were available on FTA satellite (Sky, Freesat and general
satellite receivers should have been able to get it) and cable although these
won't have been captured in these stats. Two of the streams were also
available by terrestrial.

Aproximately 11 million homes have satellite (10M Sky and 1M Freesat and
other). 4M Virgin cable and maybe 500K using telco IPTV. Terrestrial
(Freeview) is the main service in about 10M homes and is used for second TVs
in a number more.

There may be some double counting in these figures and they are from memory
and it hasn't been my job to know them for over a year.

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dm8
Looks like iPad/tablet was the "preferred" device for watching olympics
(source - <http://bbc.in/PdDBtY>). If you need some solid data that tablets
are going to rule for consuming entertainment then here it is. We are in a
major shift of computing and tablets are becoming "default" PCs.

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josephlord
If I was fully concentrating I would have used TV/PS3 in the living room but I
used the iPad/iPhone around the house for things I wasn't concentrating fully
on.

I may not be typical but the nature (live) and the quantity of content
available may be factors exaggerating tablet use compared with a Netflix type
service.

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jacques_chester
I think the BBC underestimated the amount of traffic they'd be doing. I
watched a lot of the weightlifting (as that's the sport I participate in) and
it paused about every 30 seconds.

And I heard a lot of complaints from other BBC viewers too.

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epo
One anecdote deserves another, I watched a lot of it and don't remember any
pauses. Perhaps your internet connection or your computer is crap.

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jacques_chester
I thought so, too. But I was talking to people on IRC all over the world,
including in the UK, and they were all saying the same.

It might be related to sport -- more popular sports getting more bandwidth,
perhaps?

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onehp
What I find most interesting is that the second highest trafficked event was
in the middle of the UK working day. A lot of employers must have seen some
big productivity anomalies during the Olympics.

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RossM
On the contrary, many believe it improved morale. We had the BBC playing 24
hours a day (working shifts atm) for the Olympics. During the day many of us
would break for a few minutes to watch a Team GB athlete, but I definitely
found myself not dozing off, as I tend to do when it gets quiet.

What could be an issue is the number of London-based employees who decided to
stay away from central London for the duration. Many worked from home or took
annual leave, anticipating travel issues.

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mmcnickle
To put this is perspective, the ALICE experiment produces 2.5GByte/s of data.

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mythealias
on the side note whoever is plotting those graphs needs to do a better job.

