Any Stream Will Do - Things I Noticed from Everton vs United on the Internet

Mockney · 20th February 2010, 18:24

In place of my 10 Things today, which I will do later this weekend - but for the whole Prem, I'd like to share my frustrations on the Everton match and the annoyance of watching football on the Internet. In rambling story form.

and don't forget, a little click goes a long way - > Any Stream Will Do - Observations on Everton vs Manchester United on the Internet. | FootballFanCast.com

After a long and frustrating phone conversation with a stupid woman at my currently to remain nameless broadband/TV company, I resigned myself to having to wait another week before I got Sky. With this in mind I decided the pub was probably the best place to watch Everton vs Manchester United but through a combination of late sleeping and extreme laziness I decided - at about 12.42 - that that wasn't going to happen and that instead I'd watch the match on the Internet.

Those of us who have watched football on the Internet before (through clearly legal and upstanding means of course) are in almost unanimous agreement that - no matter what the FA thinks - it isn't the future. After a few minutes trying to find a feed that didn't look like footage from the moon, I finally found a fairly clear one in Arabic. Arabic commentators are interesting creatures, seemingly under the impression they're delivering radio commentary for a horse race rather than aid to a visible football match. They talk constantly. Much of this is taken up by constant repetition of the player in possession's name - the longer he runs with it, the longer this goes on - just to reassure the blind or distracted that he's still on the ball. Despite this, or maybe because of it, it somehow makes what's happening seem far more exciting than it may actually be, such is their infectious enthusiasm for their job.

Eventually I found a better, clearer stream with a much larger picture and in English but not before I'd missed Dimitar Berbatov's opening goal because my Arabic one had frozen, which is a constant problem with internet streams and one of the many reasons it isn't the future of sports broadcasting along with clarity, cinematic-ness and bad posture.

Hunching over my desk, I loaded my newer, clearer stream just in time to see Diniyar Bilyaletdinov wallop in an equalizer so hard it lifted the net off the ground. The Goodison crowd roused themselves from their routine of booing Rooney and shouting for handball at every opportunity and it suddenly looked like we had a game on our hands. There was a frantic pace about it in the first half with Rooney rounding Tim Howard but failing to score and Landon Donovan attempting to copy Paul Scholes' new 'standing leg shot' trick but to no avail. United had changed their recent winning away formation of 4-5-1 (acting occasionally as a 4-3-3 in attack) in favor of that good old stalwart 4-4-2, and while it seemed to be working fairly well in the latter half of the pitch, at the back Donovan and Saha had the measure of United's weakened center back partnership. Jonny Evans didn't seemed to have recovered from essentially being shouted at by his dad in front of all his friends on Tuesday night and Wes Brown could've conceded a penalty when the ball ricocheted off his arm only for Landon Donovan to scuff his shot.

At half time I tried to think of Neville Neville jokes as he'd been shown on a couple of occasions watching his two boys captain their respective sides. The problem with Neville Neville jokes is that it seems too easy, but if you do eventually think of one that's quite funny you're sure it's probably less funny than something someone else has come up with before. After 10 minutes of trying to work out something along the lines of "Jo-Jo, Djemba Djemba and Neville Neville walk into a bar" I gave up (partially because Jo Jo was the only third person I could think of and I really wasn't happy with that) and waited for the second half to begin.

The first thing I noticed from the second 45 was that the Everton fans had hit upon a good solution to the problem of keeping former prodigal Wayne Rooney quiet - Keep quiet themselves. It finally seems to have occurred to football fans that booing an opposition player only generally succeeds in making them play better. Today they gave him a halfhearted chorus at the start but then forgot about it pretty much by the end and with seemingly nothing to rise too - and no vitriolic opportunities to badge kiss - he was relatively threat-less. His frustration wasn't helped by the removal of Berbatov, but Everton can't be denied their credit.

Leon Osman was superb for most of the match, as was Sylvain Distin and Steven Pienaar and the introduction of Gosling and Rodwell (who I always imagine as Gobbling and Rodwell, a porn detective duo from the 1970s I invented in my head when they first broke on the scene) were inspired, especially compared to Fergie's rather odd decisions to bring off a striker for a midfielder with the scores still level.

After Gosling had put the Toffees in front my stream decided to freeze again so as quick as I could I opened another - rather rubbish moon stream - in another window. The clearer stream then decided it was going to start working again - sporadically - but a good minute and a half behind the other one, so I kept flicking between the two in the hope that the good one would eventually stop freezing whilst still keeping up to date with what was going on in actual time. This meant I had to watch something I'd just watched, all be it in much better quality, and then jump a minute and a half into the future whenever it froze again, missing anything that may have happened in between. This I decided was a nice little analogy for life - "While you may think the past looks better to you, if you stay stuck in it too long you'll miss what's happening now". Happy with this insight, both my streams decided to bring me back down to earth by freezing at the same time meaning I was back to Arabic for the last five minutes where the commentator had worked himself up into such an excitable frenzy of name shouting I'd have been forgiven for thinking I'd just stumbled upon footage of the great final battle for humanity between Ninja Jesus and the King Fu Anti-Christ.

As the final whistle blew I reflected on a deserved victory for Everton and the mouth-watering prospect of getting Sky Sports next week, thus rendering my need for inconsistent and appalling quality football coverage obsolete. Except for 3pm kick offs and untelevised interesting foreign matches of course....But I still refuse to accept it's the future.

Nani Nana · 20th February 2010, 19:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockney

Leon Osman was superb for most of the match, as was Sylvain Distin and Steven Pienaar and the introduction of Gosling and Rodwell (who I always imagine as Gobbling and Rodwell, a porn detective duo from the 1970s I invented in my head when they first broke on the scene) were inspired, especially compared to Fergie's rather odd decisions to bring off a striker for a midfielder with the scores still level.

agreed, Pienaar was a different class today

kikks · 20th February 2010, 19:09

kps88 · 20th February 2010, 19:19

Mockney all you have to do is go on Myp2p and click away.

Godfather · 20th February 2010, 19:27

Love it

F-Red · 20th February 2010, 19:28

I'm sure there are plenty of match day threads to post your comments Mockney

Pogue Mahone · 20th February 2010, 19:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockney

After Gosling had put the Toffees in front my stream decided to freeze again so as quick as I could I opened another - rather rubbish moon stream - in another window. The clearer stream then decided it was going to start working again - sporadically - but a good minute and a half behind the other one, so I kept flicking between the two in the hope that the good one would eventually stop freezing whilst still keeping up to date with what was going on in actual time. This meant I had to watch something I'd just watched, all be it in much better quality, and then jump a minute and a half into the future whenever it froze again, missing anything that may have happened in between. This I decided was a nice little analogy for life - "While you may think the past looks better to you, if you stay stuck in it too long you'll miss what's happening now". Happy with this insight, both my streams decided to bring me back down to earth by freezing at the same time meaning I was back to Arabic for the last five minutes where the commentator had worked himself up into such an excitable frenzy of name shouting I'd have been forgiven for thinking I'd just stumbled upon footage of the great final battle for humanity between Ninja Jesus and the King Fu Anti-Christ..

Hehe. Cheered me up on very grumpy evening

Wonder Pigeon · 20th February 2010, 19:36

'albeit'

Eriku · 20th February 2010, 19:43

Usually my stream is solid, but today it fucked me around... having slept past the first five mins of the game, due to having been on a bus from 8 pm last night till 9:30 this morning, and failing to fall asleep straight away like a good boy, thus finding myself with about 2 hours of sleep under my belt and a website that failed to acknowledge me as a member, and as such I find myself without a stream. Once I DO get logged in, it keeps freezing and I fuck about with alternate sources a bit too.

Got to see Berba's glorious goal, but most of the game flew past me and I don't feel like getting the highlights reel, and certainly not like downloading the full match

Blah.

At least I've your observations to cheer me up, Mockers <3

Sojiro · 20th February 2010, 19:50

fantastic stuff mockney

why use a stream when the caf has a matchday thread

Mockney · 20th February 2010, 19:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by kps88

Mockney all you have to do is go on Myp2p and click away.

That's exactly what I did do...they were all shit. The good one that eventually crashed was TVoo

kps88 · 20th February 2010, 20:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockney

That's exactly what I did do...they were all shit. The good one that eventually crashed was TVoo

Tomico on Sopcast was awesome. Was watching on fullscreen.

Mockney · 20th February 2010, 20:17

I have a mac, no go on sopcast for me

F-Red · 20th February 2010, 23:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockney

I have a mac, no go on sopcast for me

Get a windows install on your Mac via BootCamp or VMWare Fusion/Parallels, it's what i did for games. Sopcast streams were pretty much the most reliable out there.

slaparse · 21st February 2010, 00:59

Having to watch a game on a stream is a nightmare, stop, start every few minutes. Been doing it all season except the joy of european games which are on terrestial. The joys of recession hit Ireland!

Successful · 21st February 2010, 01:13

Totally unacceptable that a stream you pay for is as bad or worse than the "illegal" ones.

I agree with you totally. It's not the future! It's actually worse than sitting in a caravan with a 10" screen trying to get the picture right. Digital crap.

Anderson Searl · 21st February 2010, 07:02

Read this earlier, well done Mockey, good stuff.

Name Changed · 21st February 2010, 07:04

Good stuff mockney.

Baby Faced Assassin · 21st February 2010, 07:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mockney

I have a mac, no go on sopcast for me

I have a Mac to but I use Parallels, you could also dual boot. But I have sky so yesterday it was all HD. Good read nonetheless.

20th February 2010, 18:24	#1 (permalink)
Mockney Not the only poster to be named Poster of the Year twice Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Bangerang Posts: 29,040	Any Stream Will Do - Things I Noticed from Everton vs United on the Internet In place of my 10 Things today, which I will do later this weekend - but for the whole Prem, I'd like to share my frustrations on the Everton match and the annoyance of watching football on the Internet. In rambling story form. and don't forget, a little click goes a long way - > Any Stream Will Do - Observations on Everton vs Manchester United on the Internet. \| FootballFanCast.com After a long and frustrating phone conversation with a stupid woman at my currently to remain nameless broadband/TV company, I resigned myself to having to wait another week before I got Sky. With this in mind I decided the pub was probably the best place to watch Everton vs Manchester United but through a combination of late sleeping and extreme laziness I decided - at about 12.42 - that that wasn't going to happen and that instead I'd watch the match on the Internet. Those of us who have watched football on the Internet before (through clearly legal and upstanding means of course) are in almost unanimous agreement that - no matter what the FA thinks - it isn't the future. After a few minutes trying to find a feed that didn't look like footage from the moon, I finally found a fairly clear one in Arabic. Arabic commentators are interesting creatures, seemingly under the impression they're delivering radio commentary for a horse race rather than aid to a visible football match. They talk constantly. Much of this is taken up by constant repetition of the player in possession's name - the longer he runs with it, the longer this goes on - just to reassure the blind or distracted that he's still on the ball. Despite this, or maybe because of it, it somehow makes what's happening seem far more exciting than it may actually be, such is their infectious enthusiasm for their job. Eventually I found a better, clearer stream with a much larger picture and in English but not before I'd missed Dimitar Berbatov's opening goal because my Arabic one had frozen, which is a constant problem with internet streams and one of the many reasons it isn't the future of sports broadcasting along with clarity, cinematic-ness and bad posture. Hunching over my desk, I loaded my newer, clearer stream just in time to see Diniyar Bilyaletdinov wallop in an equalizer so hard it lifted the net off the ground. The Goodison crowd roused themselves from their routine of booing Rooney and shouting for handball at every opportunity and it suddenly looked like we had a game on our hands. There was a frantic pace about it in the first half with Rooney rounding Tim Howard but failing to score and Landon Donovan attempting to copy Paul Scholes' new 'standing leg shot' trick but to no avail. United had changed their recent winning away formation of 4-5-1 (acting occasionally as a 4-3-3 in attack) in favor of that good old stalwart 4-4-2, and while it seemed to be working fairly well in the latter half of the pitch, at the back Donovan and Saha had the measure of United's weakened center back partnership. Jonny Evans didn't seemed to have recovered from essentially being shouted at by his dad in front of all his friends on Tuesday night and Wes Brown could've conceded a penalty when the ball ricocheted off his arm only for Landon Donovan to scuff his shot. At half time I tried to think of Neville Neville jokes as he'd been shown on a couple of occasions watching his two boys captain their respective sides. The problem with Neville Neville jokes is that it seems too easy, but if you do eventually think of one that's quite funny you're sure it's probably less funny than something someone else has come up with before. After 10 minutes of trying to work out something along the lines of "Jo-Jo, Djemba Djemba and Neville Neville walk into a bar" I gave up (partially because Jo Jo was the only third person I could think of and I really wasn't happy with that) and waited for the second half to begin. The first thing I noticed from the second 45 was that the Everton fans had hit upon a good solution to the problem of keeping former prodigal Wayne Rooney quiet - Keep quiet themselves. It finally seems to have occurred to football fans that booing an opposition player only generally succeeds in making them play better. Today they gave him a halfhearted chorus at the start but then forgot about it pretty much by the end and with seemingly nothing to rise too - and no vitriolic opportunities to badge kiss - he was relatively threat-less. His frustration wasn't helped by the removal of Berbatov, but Everton can't be denied their credit. Leon Osman was superb for most of the match, as was Sylvain Distin and Steven Pienaar and the introduction of Gosling and Rodwell (who I always imagine as Gobbling and Rodwell, a porn detective duo from the 1970s I invented in my head when they first broke on the scene) were inspired, especially compared to Fergie's rather odd decisions to bring off a striker for a midfielder with the scores still level. After Gosling had put the Toffees in front my stream decided to freeze again so as quick as I could I opened another - rather rubbish moon stream - in another window. The clearer stream then decided it was going to start working again - sporadically - but a good minute and a half behind the other one, so I kept flicking between the two in the hope that the good one would eventually stop freezing whilst still keeping up to date with what was going on in actual time. This meant I had to watch something I'd just watched, all be it in much better quality, and then jump a minute and a half into the future whenever it froze again, missing anything that may have happened in between. This I decided was a nice little analogy for life - "While you may think the past looks better to you, if you stay stuck in it too long you'll miss what's happening now". Happy with this insight, both my streams decided to bring me back down to earth by freezing at the same time meaning I was back to Arabic for the last five minutes where the commentator had worked himself up into such an excitable frenzy of name shouting I'd have been forgiven for thinking I'd just stumbled upon footage of the great final battle for humanity between Ninja Jesus and the King Fu Anti-Christ. As the final whistle blew I reflected on a deserved victory for Everton and the mouth-watering prospect of getting Sky Sports next week, thus rendering my need for inconsistent and appalling quality football coverage obsolete. Except for 3pm kick offs and untelevised interesting foreign matches of course....But I still refuse to accept it's the future.

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20th February 2010, 19:09	#3 (permalink)
kikks Reserve Team Player Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I do not know the answer. Posts: 2,685

20th February 2010, 19:19	#4 (permalink)
kps88 First Team Regular Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 12,176	Mockney all you have to do is go on Myp2p and click away.

20th February 2010, 19:27	#5 (permalink)
Godfather First Team Sub Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Austria Posts: 9,942	Love it

20th February 2010, 19:28	#6 (permalink)
F-Red First Team Sub Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Over there Posts: 5,714	I'm sure there are plenty of match day threads to post your comments Mockney

20th February 2010, 19:36	#8 (permalink)
Wonder Pigeon 'Shelbourne FC Supporter' Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Forza Shelbourne Posts: 18,956	'albeit'

20th February 2010, 19:43	#9 (permalink)
Eriku First Team Sub Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Ørsta, Norway Posts: 8,659	Usually my stream is solid, but today it fucked me around... having slept past the first five mins of the game, due to having been on a bus from 8 pm last night till 9:30 this morning, and failing to fall asleep straight away like a good boy, thus finding myself with about 2 hours of sleep under my belt and a website that failed to acknowledge me as a member, and as such I find myself without a stream. Once I DO get logged in, it keeps freezing and I fuck about with alternate sources a bit too. Got to see Berba's glorious goal, but most of the game flew past me and I don't feel like getting the highlights reel, and certainly not like downloading the full match Blah. At least I've your observations to cheer me up, Mockers <3

20th February 2010, 19:50	#10 (permalink)
Sojiro Formerly MST3K Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: "Sometimes you're not sure about a player," Ferguson says. "Sometimes you doubt. Sometimes you have to guess. Sometimes..." he waves an arm in the direction of the 18-year-old Rafael, "you just know." Posts: 4,246	fantastic stuff mockney why use a stream when the caf has a matchday thread

20th February 2010, 20:17	#13 (permalink)
Mockney Not the only poster to be named Poster of the Year twice Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Bangerang Posts: 29,040	I have a mac, no go on sopcast for me

21st February 2010, 00:59	#15 (permalink)
slaparse Banned Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: somewhere in the wicklow hills Posts: 685	Having to watch a game on a stream is a nightmare, stop, start every few minutes. Been doing it all season except the joy of european games which are on terrestial. The joys of recession hit Ireland!

21st February 2010, 01:13	#16 (permalink)
Successful Straight Guy Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: On top of the league Posts: 4,625	Totally unacceptable that a stream you pay for is as bad or worse than the "illegal" ones. I agree with you totally. It's not the future! It's actually worse than sitting in a caravan with a 10" screen trying to get the picture right. Digital crap.

21st February 2010, 07:02	#17 (permalink)
Anderson Searl Reserve Team Player Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: :lol: Posts: 16,412	Read this earlier, well done Mockey, good stuff.

21st February 2010, 07:04	#18 (permalink)
Name Changed weso26 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Dublin Posts: 22,087	Good stuff mockney.