Elite TV/Studio66 - Live Webstream

Hi - thanks for you feedback, I'll pass your comments on to the technical team to have a look at. An update on the streaming issues:

* Running live streams is far more complex than running video-on-demand services - as you're doubtless aware.
* In order to isolate the issue we are addressing each area - as Jamie says, currently the streams share the bandwidth with users in the Elite offices and the first step is to partition this off so that the streams run on dedicated, uncontended bandwidth. We hope to have this in place next week - dependant on delivery of a new router.
* We will also be putting variable bit-rate streams in place in the future - though this is more intended to support very low bandwidth connections (such as viewing on smartphones) rather than broadband web connections. Where sufficient bandwidth is not available, the player will automatically degrade to a lower bandwidth stream.
* It's important to bear in mind that viewer's broadband connections can cause issues - home broadband in the UK typically ranges from 500 kb/s to 8 mb/s theoretically, however these are contended connections (shared with others on the local loop) and can get congested at busy times. This congestion would typically not be apparent when watching video on demand (eg. YouTube), as these services buffer many seconds ahead in order to manage interruptions and connectivity blips, however it is obviously not possible to buffer with low-latency live streams (increasing the buffer time and latency would degrade the experience for viewers who are talking to the girls on the phone). Anyone still on 500 kb/s - of which there are many - is almost guaranteed to have problems with the stream.
* Posts on the forums also cite the fact that we are running the streams for another channel (ChatGirlTV) which experiences similar issues, deducing that this must therefore be an issue at our end. Unfortunately the ChatGirlTV stream is running over a very low bandwidth broadband connection which simply doesn't have sufficient capacity to serve a decent stream - something which is outside our control but we are working with them to resolve.

We're as eager as you are to deliver a faultless stream (and we're proud of the picture quality we achieve given the bit-rate used) - and we expect to get to the bottom of these issues over the next week or so through a process of elimination and more robust connectivity from the Elite studios.

Any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Will