CTV Olympic live stream - "Video Error"

[avp77]

I thought this was the best place to put this question, since it's more technical than sports related.

I haven't been able to get any of the live streams to work, though the archived highlights play fine using Silverlight. You can try out an example of a feed I'm trying here: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/videos/channel/obs5/watch/football-pool-matches.html

I just get a message that says "Video Error - Sorry for the interruption of your service, Please refresh your browser or click help if problem continues". There is, of course, no "help" button.

Everything else with Silverlight works fine (Netflix, Microsoft's Project Tuva) so it must be something to do with CTV's live stream. My sneaking suspicion is that I've only had my current cable IP for a couple of weeks, and it might not be on whatever database they're referencing for a live feed. I *am* most certainly in Canada.

So, if it's a problem of their IP geolocating not working properly, can I get that fixed in any way? Is there anyone I can contact at the CTV/Bellmedia oligopoly that is going to care that the service they're promoting so heavily isn't even working? I've tried a few email addresses, but I haven't had any kind of reply.

[mbk.2k3]

I am having problems with iphone ios app.

I keep getting "video not available"

But i attribute it to the fact that i am out of the country.
Location spoofing using jailbreak apps.

[djemzine]

Err it should not work because the Olympics is tomorrow. Isn't it?

Anyhow link works for me and all I am seeing are football games.

[mbk.2k3]

football matches have already started

[djemzine]

football matches have already started

It's seem its due to a scheduling issue or something.

[lostintransit]

Doesn't work for me on acanac at home but does at work. I am going with the bell conspiracy to limit to bell customers

[avp77]

Looks like it was a problem with the Distributel/Acanac group of IP's not being allowed (or at least some of them). From trying to access things like archived full events, which weren't working before, it seems to have been fixed now (fingers crossed).

[mofesto]

Trying to watch it today on Bell Fibe 25 and it's not working. Tells me to refresh and never works. I just finished installing Silverlight just for this - now have to uninstall that piece of crap again.

[wilsonlam97]

Looks like it was a problem with the Distributel/Acanac group of IP's not being allowed (or at least some of them). From trying to access things like archived full events, which weren't working before, it seems to have been fixed now (fingers crossed).

What can you say. It's a division of Bell Media;)

It's live on FTA though. Get a antenna everybody!

[manmanny]

Err it should not work because the Olympics is tomorrow. Isn't it?






Anyhow link works for me and all I am seeing are football games.

lmao.

[george__]

You need Silverlight from Microsoft

[wilsonlam97]

The app is even stupider. It just let's you watch ads monetized by Bhell.

[FunSave22]

Both the app and the website have been working fine for me over the past 3 days when looking at live video. Perhaps their system just got overloaded or was having temporary problems.

Or if I'm just getting lucky, I hope my luck keeps up.

[djemzine]

Saw the opening ceremonies from CTV's online stream. It didn't work before, in the sense, it kept on showing bloody news clips about Usain Bolt, etc. Missed the musician dude. Any how, the ceremony was nice. Did get two disconnects, but overall it was fine.

Apparently CTV is showcasing the rowing and something else, whilst TSN is showing something else.

[Jimboski]

Works for me fine..

[danilito613]

I'm getting no love from the CTV streams this morning.

I tested it on the website during the ceremonies last night, worked great.

This morning, when I actually want to use it, getting nothing. Every feed I try, all I have is a grey screen. Tried Chrome, IE, Firefox and Opera. Silverlight is updated. Any ideas?

[JDM_DSM]

I'm getting no love from the CTV streams this morning.

I tested it on the website during the ceremonies last night, worked great.

This morning, when I actually want to use it, getting nothing. Every feed I try, all I have is a grey screen. Tried Chrome, IE, Firefox and Opera. Silverlight is updated. Any ideas?

Same here, tried two computers and multiple browsers, but they all just give me a grey screen for any video I try to watch.

[Madchester]

+1 - grey screen of death

[FunSave22]

Still working fine for me both on my desktop machine and tablet.

I wonder if this has something to do with location? Maybe the servers for a certain part of the country are overloaded or having other problems.


You do have the most up to date version of Silverlight, correct? You can test here:

http://www.silverlightversion.com/


I have 5.1.10441.0 and I believe that's the latest.

[Kesslord]

I was able to watch ceremonies, videos after, and live events for a couple hours. Now, I cannot access anything :( I thought I somehow screwed up my silverlight, because it stopped working after i was done trying to get nbc streams working (via ModHeader and Proxy Switch! extensions in Chrome). After reinstalling silverlight and graphics drivers, Im not sure wtf is going on now...

[FunSave22]

NBC is restricting their streams only to people who pay for a cable or satellite package that contains NBC. So just using a US proxy won't get you access, you have to show you pay for NBC, although I honestly don't know how they are checking.


If you have just screwed up Chrome, have you tried with another browser? Or have you modified the proxy settings for your whole computer?

[icemasta]

Cannot get the CTV Olympics Android app to load any of the video's. On my Galaxy Nexus and Touchpad, all I see is the swirling circle and on my Nexus 7 I can see the ad then it jumps back to the Video's page.

[djemzine]

CTV is showing women's soccer, Canada of course (go figure). On NBC they're covering pretty good stuff.

[harrisjr]

Is there a landing page on the CTV site where you can access all the live feeds?



I thought this was the best place to put this question, since it's more technical than sports related.

I haven't been able to get any of the live streams to work, though the archived highlights play fine using Silverlight. You can try out an example of a feed I'm trying here: http://www.ctvolympics.ca/videos/channel/obs5/watch/football-pool-matches.html

I just get a message that says "Video Error - Sorry for the interruption of your service, Please refresh your browser or click help if problem continues". There is, of course, no "help" button.

Everything else with Silverlight works fine (Netflix, Microsoft's Project Tuva) so it must be something to do with CTV's live stream. My sneaking suspicion is that I've only had my current cable IP for a couple of weeks, and it might not be on whatever database they're referencing for a live feed. I *am* most certainly in Canada.

So, if it's a problem of their IP geolocating not working properly, can I get that fixed in any way? Is there anyone I can contact at the CTV/Bellmedia oligopoly that is going to care that the service they're promoting so heavily isn't even working? I've tried a few email addresses, but I haven't had any kind of reply.

[FunSave22]

Is there a landing page on the CTV site where you can access all the live feeds?
The 15 live feeds can be found here (below the 9 network feeds): http://www.ctvolympics.ca/viewers-guide/index.html

Just click on an event that is live, and it should take you there.

[Kaitlyn]

Wow... I had no idea CTV/TSN even had completely free streams/live streams.. that's pretty good!

[mparsons]

Anyone get the android app to work? Both phone and tablet all I get is the pulsating circle. Monitoring the bandwidth I can see nothing is streaming, so it doesnt even look like is trying. :(

I can get streaming to work in windows fine.

[djemzine]

Wow... I had no idea CTV/TSN even had completely free streams/live streams.. that's pretty good!

Welcome to the world of CTV Olympic streaming hehe :)

[will888]

Anyone get the android app to work? Both phone and tablet all I get is the pulsating circle. Monitoring the bandwidth I can see nothing is streaming, so it doesnt even look like is trying. :(

I can get streaming to work in windows fine.

Try mxplayer. Arguably one of the best android media players. I tried a few of the links and they all work.

[mparsons]

Looks like all the streaming is done via a host that is normally 'blocked' out if you have something like adfree installed. So if you have something like that on your android device, try unisntalling it or reverting back your hosts file.

After I did that it works fine, but man, enough ads??

[oldpro]

Some are OK, some have "error" - BUT when it works, it's so "choppy" like a slide show. Are your feeds choppy or smooth ?

Thanks.

[will888]

Some are OK, some have "error" - BUT when it works, it's so "choppy" like a slide show. Are your feeds choppy or smooth ?

Thanks.

Video quality sucks generally. No substitute for watching on a HD channel.

[Kaitlyn]

Video quality sucks generally. No substitute for watching on a HD channel.

The streams all go to what appears like pretty darn close to HD after a minute or two...

[DougO]

Beach Volleyball as an Olympic sport? Hercules must be rolling over in his grave...though I think he'd approve! :lol:

[FunSave22]

The streams all go to what appears like pretty darn close to HD after a minute or two...
I agree. The streams start off as low quality, but very quickly it appears they determine you can handle higher quality and the switch is made. It's usually under 15 seconds for me.

The streams I'm getting say they are at 3.5 Mbits per second. I have no clue if that qualifies as HD, but either way it's still pretty good quality.

[oldpro]

The streams all go to what appears like pretty darn close to HD after a minute or two...


I agree. The streams start off as low quality, but very quickly it appears they determine you can handle higher quality and the switch is made. It's usually under 15 seconds for me.

The streams I'm getting say they are at 3.5 Mbits per second. I have no clue if that qualifies as HD, but either way it's still pretty good quality.
Thanks. So, it looks like the "choppiness" is on "my side": My little netbook or my Bell DSL ? Something to have fun troubleshooting, I guess :)

Thanks and cheers.

[FunSave22]

Thanks. So, it looks like the "choppiness" is on "my side": My little netbook or my Bell DSL ? Something to have fun troubleshooting, I guess :)

After the commercials are done, if you expand the video to full screen, there is a box directly to the left of the full screen button that will show you the current bitrate. The pictures become HD-like when the bitrate reaches 3.5 Mbits/second. (at least for me).

It's possible your netbook isn't powerful enough to process the HD-like picture so it's not sending you the full bitrate. Or maybe it is sending it, but your computer can't process all of the info which is causing stuttering or a low quality picture.

[oldpro]

After the commercials are done, if you expand the video to full screen, there is a box directly to the left of the full screen button that will show you the current bitrate. The pictures become HD-like when the bitrate reaches 3.5 Mbits/second. (at least for me).

It's possible your netbook isn't powerful enough to process the HD-like picture so it's not sending you the full bitrate. Or maybe it is sending it, but your computer can't process all of the info which is causing stuttering or a low quality picture.
Thank you sooo much for this :):)
So, here is what I get: Max. rate: 4.5MBits/sec Current rate: 150KBits/sec. So if you can help me here: Is my low bit rate of 150kbpsis limited by CTV.ca and if yes, is it because of my poor little netbook ? But how does ctv.ca know that I have this slow netbook ? As a note, when I watch streams from say Global's Young and the Restless, the video is totally smooth !?

Many thanks.

[FunSave22]

Thank you sooo much for this :):)
So, here is what I get: Max. rate: 4.5MBits/sec Current rate: 150KBits/sec. So if you can help me here: Is my low bit rate of 150kbpsis limited by CTV.ca and if yes, is it because of my poor little netbook ? But how does ctv.ca know that I have this slow netbook ? As a note, when I watch streams from say Global's Young and the Restless, the video is totally smooth !?

My guess (and this is only a guess) is that Silverlight has the ability to check what quality video your netbook can handle and it's incorrectly reporting you can't handle much. Silverlight is the Microsoft tool being used to display the video, in case you weren't aware. It's similar to flash.


You might want to check if you have the up to date version of Silverlight if you already haven't.
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/ctv-olympic-live-stream-video-error-1207175/2/#post15107345


And about the only other thing I can suggest is seeing if the video drivers for your netbook are up to date.

[oldpro]

My guess (and this is only a guess) is that Silverlight has the ability to check what quality video your netbook can handle and it's incorrectly reporting you can't handle much. Silverlight is the Microsoft tool being used to display the video, in case you weren't aware. It's similar to flash.


You might want to check if you have the up to date version of Silverlight if you already haven't.
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/ctv-olympic-live-stream-video-error-1207175/2/#post15107345


And about the only other thing I can suggest is seeing if the video drivers for your netbook are up to date.
Many thanks, again. I think that you might be right on suggesting that Silverlight may be the culprit in my case. As I mentioned, the videos from other stations that use Flash are smooth. My drivers are the latest (well, 2 years ago was the last update, lol) and I just installed Silverlight yesterday.

[george__]

the online viewing quality is pretty horrid but meh it's free

[Kaitlyn]

the online viewing quality is pretty horrid but meh it's free

I just quickly took a shot with my phone of my laptop screen... Sure it was a commercial, but same quality

https://www.dropbox.com/s/97jgb53a3v7ilwo/hdctv.jpg

You can even read the small text, despite being taken with my phone

again, I'm quite, quite happy with the quality. Had it on in the background for some time and it's "stuck" once, maybe twice...

[djemzine]

I just quickly took a shot with my phone of my laptop screen... Sure it was a commercial, but same quality

https://www.dropbox.com/s/97jgb53a3v7ilwo/hdctv.jpg

You can even read the small text, despite being taken with my phone

again, I'm quite, quite happy with the quality. Had it on in the background for some time and it's "stuck" once, maybe twice...

I see you're also a fan of Dropbox eh? Nice nice.

[Kaitlyn]

I see you're also a fan of Dropbox eh? Nice nice.

I'm a fan of 24GB free online storage with syncing :). If anyone else comes with something better, I'll hop on over to that...

Especially since it's synced as a master windows folder... incredibly easy to move elsewhere :)

[SKYMTL]

Video errors are still all over the place.

[oldpro]

Video errors are still all over the place.
Same here. And the video bandwidth varies from 150 KBPS to 3.5GBPS. At 3.5 GBPS looks like HD quality, but unfortunately my little netbook is choppy :(

[wilsonlam97]

Same here. And the video bandwidth varies from 150 KBPS to 3.5GBPS. At 3.5 GBPS looks like HD quality, but unfortunately my little netbook is choppy :(

GBPS? This is Canada. We have only mbps eh. You mean 3.5mbps eh?

[Wallboy]

Can anyone full screen any of the streams? Every time I try to click the Expand button, I get the application error. Tried in Firefox, Chrome, and IE. And I'm on latest Silverlight.

[Redfrog1]

Video errors are still over there. what a pity.

[wilsonlam97]

Video errors are still over there. what a pity.

The videos suck. Don't sorry your not missing out on anything. There are so many ads.

[FunSave22]

The video on full screen or small screen works fine for me. It seems it works nearly perfectly for some people and other people are getting a lot of errors.

[Kaitlyn]

I've yet to experience a single issue with the videos on ctvolympics. Maybe it's your computer/network or silverlight plugin? Everything works consistently for me across computers on my network

[rems]

I'm having issues but it's with the audio. The video is fine and shows up nice and clear but there's no audio for the live feed. I get audio in the ads and when the stream starts, dead silence...
Is there an audio codec that I might be missing?

[spawn582]

no issues here on my computer using chrome. great way to catch some events while working.

even watched some swimming yesterday on my iphone on 3g w/ minimal buffering.

[mkerian]

I've yet to experience a single issue with the videos on ctvolympics. Maybe it's your computer/network or silverlight plugin? Everything works consistently for me across computers on my network

There's no commentary for most of the events if that's what you mean. It seems there's only commentary for the recap at 7pm or CTV or TSN feeds during the day, if anything.

[oldpro]

You mean 3.5mbps eh?
Of course - thanks for the clarification :)

Cheers

[Darkhawk]

My problem is the "Expand" button doesn't work at all. I click it, the screen stutters for a sec, and then it just returns to the regular screen/small window. Anyone else having difficulty getting widescreen?

[FunSave22]

My problem is the "Expand" button doesn't work at all. I click it, the screen stutters for a sec, and then it just returns to the regular screen/small window. Anyone else having difficulty getting widescreen?
One possibility is that Silverlight is detecting that your computer or video card is too slow to run full screen. (Although I don't actually know if Silverlight does that).

Here's another website with HD Silverlight video. You could test to see if this one works for you.

http://wwwns.akamai.com/hdnetwork/demo/silverlight/default.html

[oldpro]

Here's another website with HD Silverlight video. You could test to see if this one works for you.

http://wwwns.akamai.com/hdnetwork/demo/silverlight/default.html
Wow, thanks for this site - amazingly, my little netbook runs their sample video in full screen ALMOST perfectly smoothly, while CTV stuff is a slide show :(

[FunSave22]

One possible difference between that site and the CTV site is that there is probably no DRM protection on the akamai site.

I assume the CTV site is using DRM, which likely means the stream is encrypted and needs to be decrypted on your computer. This will cause more strain on the CPU, although I don't know how much. So that may account for the difference.



Or it might just be that the CTV site is a bit screwed up and not handling your computer properly.

[oldpro]

One possible difference between that site and the CTV site is that there is probably no DRM protection on the akamai site.

I assume the CTV site is using DRM, which likely means the stream is encrypted and needs to be decrypted on your computer. This will cause more strain on the CPU, although I don't know how much. So that may account for the difference.



Or it might just be that the CTV site is a bit screwed up and not handling your computer properly.
Thanks again - boy I'm learning so much from such great guys/gals on RFD.

[LynnAnneP]

have had no problems with it now that I downloaded Silverlight from Microsoft

[_Allan_]

I have had no problem WATCHING the streams, it's HEARING the streams.
I've turned the stream up to max, turned the speakers to max, and turned the system to max, and it's barely audible.