ManuTastic
11-30-2010, 10:02 AM
Long post, of interest only to LP Broadband customers:
I find League Pass Broadband incredibly frustrating in many ways. If you do too, please join me in bombarding http://www.nba.com/email_us/contact_us.html with emails demanding changes. I find the product is lacking some basic features:
1) Hard to jump back and forth in the video. During live games, there is at least a jump back 30 sec. button, but without a corresponding jump FORWARD 30 sec. button, it's almost useless. Here's how this works now: You see a cool play, you jump back 30 sec. (or more) to watch the play again (and again, sometimes), and then you want to go back to exactly where you were, as you can on any cable tv dvr. This is where the product fails. You cannot simply hit a jump forward 30sec. button once or twice, as you should. Instead, you can hit the Live button, but that means you are skipping over all the action that took place between where you jumped back and the current moment. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but in the NBA a lot can happen in 30-90 sec, and you don't want to miss it. Especially in a tight game.
Your other, even worse, option is to click and hold down on the little blue dot on the scrubber bar and move it forward one or two pixels to go back to where you were. However, the scrubber bar is far too crude and coarse a tool to make this happen. First of all, it's absurd to expect anyone to nudge a mouse or trackpad that precisely. Second, and even worse, the position of the little round blue dot on the scrubber bar is not at all accurate in regards to the video. It routinely happens that I hold down the button and inch it forward just slightly to try to move forward a bit, and find that I've actually jumped BACK in the video, sometimes by 5 minutes or more! I.e., the placement of the blue dot on the scrubber bar is wildly inaccurate.
The solution to all of the above is simply the addition of a "Jump Forward 30 sec." button. Voila. How hard is that? Why isn't it there already??
When watching an archived game, the problem is even worse: they remove the jump back 30 sec. button entirely! This is mind-bogglingly stupid. Why would they give you less control over an archived game than a live one? This is especially baffling when you realize that often when you're watching an archived game you already know the outcome, and are just looking for highlights, particular plays, etc. In fact, for archived games, they should add more buttons to take you directly to: start of 2nd qtr, start of 3rd qtr, 4th qrt, etc. In addition to the jump back and forward 30 sec. buttons, of course.
The overall point here is that the scrubber bar at the bottom is basically useless for two reasons: it is wildly inaccurate, and human fingers can't reasonably be expected to nudge a pointing device a few pixels at a time. If all you want to do is jump quickly from the start of a game to the end, or over halftime, then it's fine. For anything else, it's a bad joke.
And here's the real point: any decent web design company would know that. This is a beta product at best, and it hasn't changed one bit since they rolled it out two years ago. These UI elements are so laughably bad it's incredible they can sell this product. If they had any competition, they would be forced to revise this mess PDQ. Please join me in emailing the nba about these problems; if they get enough complaints, they might actually address the problems.
2) They should give you the choice to hide or show the scores for today's games, just like they do for the archived games. Why are the two screens different? I often will start watching a game about an hour after it starts, so I can skip over the commercials and halftime, but when I open the league pass window I have to cover it up with my hand so I don't see the score. Which is not a great system, to say the least. But if I click over to the archived games tab, the scores are hidden, and I can choose to show them if I want. That's how today's games should be too! If I want current scores, there are about a hundred other places I can get those, and a lot faster than firing up the LP Broadband window. Give us choices, don't make them for us.
3) Another big gripe: you can't arbitrarily resize the windows, unlike any other web video out there. You can choose between unwatchably tiny and full-screen; that's it. You can't size the video window so that it is, for example, almost full screen and therefore large enough to actually watch, but leaves some IM or email window open.
4) Also, the video quality is poor; why aren't these games in HD? What century is this??
5) The "subscription model" where viewers "subscribe" to the service into perpetuity is ludicrous. Do you think we can't figure out this is just a naked money grab? If I want to fly to LA, do I "subscribe" to USAir and pay them to fly there every year? If I want a meal, do I "subscribe" to Pizza Hut and eat there every year? It's clear you just want people to forget to cancel their "subscription" so you can charge them again. This is more like a sleazy health club membership than anything else. Shame on you; if you can't sell games a la carte, which is the best thing you could do, and must sell a full season, just charge for that season and be done with it. Don't try to trap people into this sleazy "subscription."
6) The live customer service is pathetic: you can't actually call anyone, all you can do is have a chat session with some offshore know-nothing who just says "sorry, there's nothing we can do." Come on on nba, spend some money on customer service.
Who with me?:ihit
I find League Pass Broadband incredibly frustrating in many ways. If you do too, please join me in bombarding http://www.nba.com/email_us/contact_us.html with emails demanding changes. I find the product is lacking some basic features:
1) Hard to jump back and forth in the video. During live games, there is at least a jump back 30 sec. button, but without a corresponding jump FORWARD 30 sec. button, it's almost useless. Here's how this works now: You see a cool play, you jump back 30 sec. (or more) to watch the play again (and again, sometimes), and then you want to go back to exactly where you were, as you can on any cable tv dvr. This is where the product fails. You cannot simply hit a jump forward 30sec. button once or twice, as you should. Instead, you can hit the Live button, but that means you are skipping over all the action that took place between where you jumped back and the current moment. Maybe that doesn't sound like much, but in the NBA a lot can happen in 30-90 sec, and you don't want to miss it. Especially in a tight game.
Your other, even worse, option is to click and hold down on the little blue dot on the scrubber bar and move it forward one or two pixels to go back to where you were. However, the scrubber bar is far too crude and coarse a tool to make this happen. First of all, it's absurd to expect anyone to nudge a mouse or trackpad that precisely. Second, and even worse, the position of the little round blue dot on the scrubber bar is not at all accurate in regards to the video. It routinely happens that I hold down the button and inch it forward just slightly to try to move forward a bit, and find that I've actually jumped BACK in the video, sometimes by 5 minutes or more! I.e., the placement of the blue dot on the scrubber bar is wildly inaccurate.
The solution to all of the above is simply the addition of a "Jump Forward 30 sec." button. Voila. How hard is that? Why isn't it there already??
When watching an archived game, the problem is even worse: they remove the jump back 30 sec. button entirely! This is mind-bogglingly stupid. Why would they give you less control over an archived game than a live one? This is especially baffling when you realize that often when you're watching an archived game you already know the outcome, and are just looking for highlights, particular plays, etc. In fact, for archived games, they should add more buttons to take you directly to: start of 2nd qtr, start of 3rd qtr, 4th qrt, etc. In addition to the jump back and forward 30 sec. buttons, of course.
The overall point here is that the scrubber bar at the bottom is basically useless for two reasons: it is wildly inaccurate, and human fingers can't reasonably be expected to nudge a pointing device a few pixels at a time. If all you want to do is jump quickly from the start of a game to the end, or over halftime, then it's fine. For anything else, it's a bad joke.
And here's the real point: any decent web design company would know that. This is a beta product at best, and it hasn't changed one bit since they rolled it out two years ago. These UI elements are so laughably bad it's incredible they can sell this product. If they had any competition, they would be forced to revise this mess PDQ. Please join me in emailing the nba about these problems; if they get enough complaints, they might actually address the problems.
2) They should give you the choice to hide or show the scores for today's games, just like they do for the archived games. Why are the two screens different? I often will start watching a game about an hour after it starts, so I can skip over the commercials and halftime, but when I open the league pass window I have to cover it up with my hand so I don't see the score. Which is not a great system, to say the least. But if I click over to the archived games tab, the scores are hidden, and I can choose to show them if I want. That's how today's games should be too! If I want current scores, there are about a hundred other places I can get those, and a lot faster than firing up the LP Broadband window. Give us choices, don't make them for us.
3) Another big gripe: you can't arbitrarily resize the windows, unlike any other web video out there. You can choose between unwatchably tiny and full-screen; that's it. You can't size the video window so that it is, for example, almost full screen and therefore large enough to actually watch, but leaves some IM or email window open.
4) Also, the video quality is poor; why aren't these games in HD? What century is this??
5) The "subscription model" where viewers "subscribe" to the service into perpetuity is ludicrous. Do you think we can't figure out this is just a naked money grab? If I want to fly to LA, do I "subscribe" to USAir and pay them to fly there every year? If I want a meal, do I "subscribe" to Pizza Hut and eat there every year? It's clear you just want people to forget to cancel their "subscription" so you can charge them again. This is more like a sleazy health club membership than anything else. Shame on you; if you can't sell games a la carte, which is the best thing you could do, and must sell a full season, just charge for that season and be done with it. Don't try to trap people into this sleazy "subscription."
6) The live customer service is pathetic: you can't actually call anyone, all you can do is have a chat session with some offshore know-nothing who just says "sorry, there's nothing we can do." Come on on nba, spend some money on customer service.
Who with me?:ihit