Thank you for the correction, Kshahdoo. The odd bird that I am, a
paying subscriber, I'm not quite up-to-date regarding those sites.
I seem to recall it used to be a .ru domain earlier on, but then they switched to .tv.
I now have evidence that the fault was on the side of the KHL.ru stream, and had nothing to do with my Internet connection. (I'm not sure if my optical fiber line is 100 Mbps or 250 Mbps, but it's one of the two.) Guess what... even if you
now launch the stream of the Slovan vs. Medveščak game from the
archives:
http://video.khl.ru/events/207413
... it's buggy in exactly the same way (in exactly
the same moments) as it was when they streamed it live!
That is, even in the archived stream, there are the exact same hiccups, constant buffering and freezing and skipping during the 1st period, as they were there live. Which goes to show that the stream itself was faulty, and not its transmission to me, because it would be impossible to reproduce exactly the same hiccups 10 hours later. In the archives, just as it was live, the game only becomes watchable around the start of the 2nd period.
Also, as I mentioned, during the 1st period of Slovan game, while watching it live, there was the switch from HD to SD broadcast, but the stream was unwatchable even after switching to SD. From approximately the 2nd period onwards, the HD switch disappeared (it's also missing in the archives), and the game became watchable in acceptable quality.
As to the
Jokerit vs. Minsk game, it's posted to the archive just as it was shown live, as well: it starts with the final 5 minutes of the game in Astana. Whoever posts those games to the archives (perhaps it's fully automatic) must be praised for speed -- there seem to be no wait-times in the archives this season -- but they also don't seem to be checking
what exactly they're posting to the archives. In the archived stream, now also on the iPad, the stream switches to the game in Helsinki after a few minutes. When watched live, though, the coverage from Helsinki was only available in the Adobe Flash stream (on regular computers). The
mobile stream (MOV or MP4 or HTML5, I guess) from Helsinki was never shown live today, and it instead kept generating the error message captured in the iPad screenshot above.
I also received a prompt reply from KHL.ru tech support, but it did not resolve the issue. It reminded me of my experience with KHL.ru tech support from 2 years ago. Namely, whenever I asked them about some
specific problem, they politely and promptly replied, but in the most
general terms, without really addressing the
specific issue I was asking about. The same thing happened today. Perhaps I should have emphasized that it was
simultaneously that I was able to watch the other streams, while those from Bratislava and Helsinki were not working. And so, the reply I got from tech support today was that my Internet connection speed on the iPad was probably insufficient, with links to KHL.ru's general Help webpages, etc., so I learned nothing about how the issue can be resolved -- although I made it clear in my query that the 2 specific streams weren't working properly on a
regular computer, either, not just on the iPads.
Another problem with reporting issues to KHL.ru tech support is that there seems to be no easy way of getting back to them. You receive a reply from them via email, but apparently that's it. If their reply didn't resolve the issue, you seem to have no way of letting KHL tech support know about it. In your profile on the KHL webpage, there is a list of issues submitted by you, going back several years, but only the issue areas are shown: you can't display any of the previously reported issues in order to review them (let alone update them!), re-read tech support's replies, etc. All you can do is submit a
new query, even if the previous query is still unresolved.
I think back in 2012 I tried posting a follow-up question as a reply to the email I received, but received no further reaction -- the reply-to address of those emails is generic, and perhaps any replies sent to them via email do not even reach the proper recipient. I'll give it another try next time, though, should it become necessary.
As to Russian versus English, the English webpage for webcasts was for the first time ever launched only a few days ago, so in previous KHL seasons, I thought it safer to talk to KHL tech support in Russian. It takes me considerably more effort to type in Russian than in English, but I don't mind practicing.
Although there are bound to be errors in my Russian, I'm still confident I'm capable of clearly describing the issues I'm reporting to a Russian-speaking tech support staff.
Well, let's forget about this nightmarish Day 1.
Perhaps none of these issues will reoccur for the rest of the season. As mentioned, similar "opening the season" hiccups are not unknown for NHL Game Center and HockeyStreams, either.
The situation calmed down over the next few days.
