Project: Live video feeds on Banglacricket.com

Shubho · #1 January 11, 2005, 07:53 PM

I'm certain that by now all of us are at our wits' end with Willow TV, DirecTV, SGStream and the other bozos who cannot satisfy our thirst for live video of all matches with Bangladeshi involvement.

In starting this thread, I am hoping we can brainstorm ideas which will culminate in Banglacricket being able to stream video by itself (if the staff is okay with that, of course).

For now, let us forget about the financial aspect of this endeavour. Once we have sifted through all the ideas, we can discuss costs, and then funding.

The way I see it, the problem of providing live streaming video can be broken down into two smaller parts.

In particular, we first have to consider the input. We know ESPN broadcasts the matches on terrestrial or cable television. I am not certain who actually owns all the rights to the broadcasts. Question number 1 is how to obtain this input reliably (possibly without ESPN or whoever else knowing) on a regular basis and convert it into a digital, webcast-able format.

Question number 2: How do we go about streaming the video?

Do we need a bigger server?
Do we need a specialized video server?
What software do we need?
What physical equipment do we need?

The list of questions is endless, I know. But I'm certain that some of you have the knowledge to provide clear, lucid answers to all of them. So please discuss your thoughts.

Edited on, January 12, 2005, 2:09 AM GMT, by chinaman.
Reason: All-caps removed from title

Zobair · #2 January 11, 2005, 08:11 PM

Unfortunately, Banglacricket.com can not be involved in such a venture because of its legal ramifications, and we cannot take such a step in the long term interest of the site. Perhaps, in the future we will be in a financial position to buy legal rights for webcasting Cricket, but until then we are afraid, it is not an option.

Sorry Shubho bhai! and every one else

Shubho · #3 January 11, 2005, 08:56 PM

well, that was shot down pretty fast...

allrounder · #4 January 11, 2005, 09:13 PM

Which countries are able to watch this ESPN extra terrestrial channel? Any BC member living there?

I am sure BC as an entity will not be involved, but I am sure as inviduals many of us has no problems in taking initiative to do this.

CTazim · #5 January 11, 2005, 09:17 PM

Let me explore something to this end at ESPN. See there were 300 people interested in watching Bangladesh Versus Zimbabwe through paltalk. So that does not look good from a Financial point of view. Even if BC were to charge $20.00 a piece. I don't think $6,000.00 would cut it.

Is BC a Not-for-profit organization? Is it registered as a non-profit? If the answer to the second question is yes then we may want to pursue it from that angle. But there are bandwith and server capacity issues to consider as well.

Anyway, I am looking into it to see the feasibility of the situation. I agree with everyone that it needs to be HALAL.

allrounder · #6 January 11, 2005, 09:40 PM

If you thinking of halal you can forget of this project.

Plus I am sure it will not be as hard as it is now because hopefully when we have series against other teams they will probably be broadcasted in North America, Europe or Australia some way, from these places streaming will be no issue. There are groups here that streams indian cricket, I am sure they will not have problem streaming our cricket too as long as we are able to provide them with a FEED. So all we need is a FEEDER.

I know some people tried to stream using paltalk from Bangladesh to everybody, the mistake was streaming to so many users. They only need to provide 1 connection to their live feed (parent feed) and then from US we could have used that feed and be the hub for all the rest of the feed. Also from this hub we can create multiple hubs and so on to stream to unlimited users with great speed.

cluster11 · #7 January 11, 2005, 09:53 PM

Hey ya'll,
I have a company in Atlanta, USA (we do telecom stuff) for which we have multiple T1s but they never get filled. We also have a whole bunch of static IP address on those lines one of which I can assign for special occassions like live webcasting and use one of our web servers for streaming (we have servers in both Linux and Windows platform).

Our ISP in BD can also provide high bandwidth and I am thinking if BTV is telecasting a match or it is available in Dish somehow in BD or here I can try settign up something. But since I have never done this before I will need soem guidance on how to go about doing it. I can't promise it to be entirely free (we will be using resources of a running business) but at least at the test phase I might be able to provide free coverage and then try a low cost option if we get good response. If you guys provide me with more ideas on how to implement it I can give it a shot.

thanks

allrounder · #8 January 11, 2005, 10:07 PM

cluster11,

you have to be careful becuase you are involving your company is distributing something that is not allowed for distribution without legal rights especiall ESPN. apart from that we need someone from the extra terestial to give the main feed using a TV card thru from their pc and broadband internet.

cluster11 · #9 January 11, 2005, 10:23 PM

If it ESPN broadcast probably the licensing fee will be too high. If it is BTV broadcast I can try exploring some business structure although I wouldn't be too optimistic given the bureacracy. At the very least though, I wouldn't mind trying a beta test of this - maybe with couple of users from banglacricket.com . It could lead to a setup for media broadcast in general, and hopefully cricket in some cases. Anybody interested can U2U me.

Sami · #10 January 11, 2005, 10:26 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by allrounder
cluster11,

you have to be careful becuase you are involving your company is distributing something that is not allowed for distribution without legal rights especiall ESPN. apart from that we need someone from the extra terestial to give the main feed using a TV card thru from their pc and broadband internet.

Say we want to watch a match like BD v Zim which isnt getting broadcasted over the internet or to more tech advanced countries---- so if we wanna watch those matches we need:

1. someone in BD with a TV card, preferably internal (not hard to find)
2. A modest bandwidthed uninterrupted internet connection (expensive but achievable, atleast for the sake of arguement)
3. Technical know how to atleast broadcast the feed to a someone in eg. US, Canada.
4. Someone in US, canada willing to do the bulk broadcasting. (we have heard noises from quite a few interested ppl already).
4. Last but not the least a person in BD who is willing to go thru all this trouble of setting the whole deal up. (now this is the part jeikhane aishe ami atkai jaitesi)

from what I understand we dont need the bangali guy to broadcast for everyone interested. He just needs to give the initial feed to someone who is willing to take the responsibility of bulk streaming. Its definitely illegal... but lets face it guys... we wud have watched this game if we could even if we had to kill some people to do it (not to be taken literally

)...

One more thing... all being said we cannot expect all of the 300+ ppl that were on paltalk to pay to watch the match. When it come to actual paying bangali digbaji deete ostaad. So its always a risky business if someone actually thinks abt investing a good sum of money for this project.

Faceoff · #11 January 11, 2005, 10:36 PM

how abt for a small monthly fee, we get to subscribe to espn&starsports channels 24 hrs? we can watch all the cricket we want then. so plz someone in bd take some initiative to help us ,the poor souls in abroad, to watch some cricket.

allrounder · #12 January 11, 2005, 10:41 PM

faceoff

that will be too much to ask at this moment, we are not being able to even have any streaming for 1 min and thinking of 24 hrs?? hold on to your horses friend.

cluster11 · #13 January 11, 2005, 10:49 PM

setting it up in BD is not an issue at all for me, we have ppl there to do it and upload on a 64kbps bandwidth to here in U.S. (heck I know they watch cricket anyway than monitoring our systems). But of course its kinda worrisome about the legality depending on who is broadcasting (i.e. ESPN is off-limits but BTV I'm not sure given the termendous amount of BTV program piracy that comes into U.S. everyday).

I mentioned my interest because we literally have a 40% bandwidth downtime on a T1 (thats about 600 kbps available both ways) which shud be enough to utilitze for streaming. Somebody mentioned $20 per person for 300 ppl .. that is way tooo much expensive I think. 1/5th of that is a more realistic figure and certainly doable from my perspective .. I'll just have to attribute the spike in usage to corrupt database or soemthing to fool my partners .. and ahem .. laywers ..

.. (kidding)

Well lets at least keep the dialogue rolling, maybe someone will come up with a better idea.

Faceoff · #14 January 11, 2005, 11:03 PM

The reason I was saying, whoever wants to set it up in bd may be more interested if its a consistent bases rather than making it a one time deal!!

real123 · #15 January 11, 2005, 11:12 PM

What about all of us sign a letter requesting foreign minister and prime minister of Bangladesh to do something about this. Just an idea...

cricket_pagol · #16 January 11, 2005, 11:43 PM

Cluster11 bhai... If you can broadcast live video with a reasonable quality then i sure tons of people be willing to pay.

But the most important thing is that we don't want you to get into trouble because of this.

CTazim · #17 January 11, 2005, 11:50 PM

You all are missing the point of broadcasting rights in the U.S. That is something I need to look into.

ESPN in Bristol, CT gets ESPN Star feeds so I am going to find out, but I need to know if Bangla Cricket.com is registered as a non-profit organization. Then I can ask to see if there is a way to broad cast for members only. Where members only would be defined as paid members. We can call it as a membership drive to raise funds or something.

That's my 2 cents.

Faisal · #18 January 12, 2005, 12:24 AM

CTazim... thats a good idea... try everything.... hope you will be sucesseful...
If you need any help... im with you bro...

Also my friend, and me trying again... even though we failed once... why not try again?? may be this time successful.... who knows... lets see

rafiq · #19 January 12, 2005, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by real123
What about all of us sign a letter requesting foreign minister and prime minister of Bangladesh to do something about this. Just an idea...

Holy Cow!!

Mridul · #20 January 12, 2005, 12:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by rafiq

Quote:

Originally posted by real123
What about all of us sign a letter requesting foreign minister and prime minister of Bangladesh to do something about this. Just an idea...

Holy Cow!!

lol rafiq bhai

Failure soccer player · #21 January 12, 2005, 11:10 AM

Hi,
I've contacted a live video steaming company, vitalstream. For a one time event they want us to pay $2500 for upto two weeks of live video (may be we can negotiate for 17 days to include all the ODI's). What they will do is give us an website where we can upload the video, and then they will have other website where people can show. They can also have system to authenticate the viewers with password. However any collection of money has to be made by us and we may have to full or a part of payment upfront. If Faisal can upload the video I can forward him the contact address. And if we think we can go ahead with it let's decide an amount and donate it before hand so that Faisal can pay it upfront.Let me know as soon as possible. If you think we can do it I'll try to negotiate (or Faisal, Riad and Gun bhai can do it) to see if we can extend it for 17 days instead of 14 days.

Amitava

Failure soccer player · #22 January 12, 2005, 11:14 AM

Forgot to mention, they will give us a 500 GB bandwidth, for an estimated 100 users. However if the video rate is 284 KBPS (Sg stream was doing that) then we can have more than 1500 viewers with that bandwidth. Also we can have a choice between windows media player, real player or Flash video to play the streamed video (only one has to be chosen upfront.)
Amitava

Shubho · #23 January 12, 2005, 11:55 AM

Ooooh, so close. 2500 dollars is definitely a very reasonable price.

If we charge 3 bucks per day of the test match, and five bucks per ODI, and assuming that we have at least 100 viewers, then our revenue would be $4000 dollars!

To break even, we only need between 60 and 70 viewers on each match day! Very, very doable.

Okay, now if Faisal can check the input, and if you techies can do a test run, we can go for the fundraiser asap.

So, let's ensure that the feed is working properly first. Faisal and Amitava and Faisal's friends, please act fast.

chinaman · #24 January 12, 2005, 12:16 PM

While all these sounds promising, it remains to be seen if a company will allow "private uploading of commercial events for public viewing and profiting".

kingroach · #25 January 12, 2005, 12:20 PM

broadcasting would not be issue, but the issue is bandwidth. Bangladesh is most suitable place to broadcast this videos since there is almost no copyright laws ( there is but never inforced) in bangladesh. If "cluster11" can provide bandwidth, and we need someone with a cable espn feed. that will go to pc tv card, and with windows media encoder, its possible to broadcast a live event. Videolan also can broadcast live events from pc tv card.