iFollow - first impressions

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Leckyfan
Posts: 143
Joined: 15 Feb 2016, 21:37
Found myself out of the country for opening match against Crawley, so decided to try iFollow.

Good points:

- video is now available on a per-match basis (USD 7.00), no need to subscribe for the whole season;

- no need for a permanent non-UK address and bank account (despite what it says in the FAQ); I used my regular (UK) credit card, and address of an American friend;

- video feed was generally high quality, and any glitches were probably down to limited bandwidth of my hotel free WiFi, rather than inherrent failings jn the service;

- audio feed also available to me at no extra cost (just paid USD 7.00 for the video) - I watched the video on my iPad, and played the audio on my iPhone (having downloaded the iFollow app to both devices).


Bad points:

- video feed includes crowd noise from an effects mic, but no commentary. (Actually not quite true, effects mic was just about catching the voices of Matthews and Halliwell, but mostly too faint to hear clearly);

- audio feed delayed maybe 10-15 seconds compared to Twitter goal flashes (unsurprising);
video feed delayed by an additional 30 seconds, so my combined iPhone (audio) and iPad (video) lash-up was not particularly effective;

- the “elapsed time” shown on the app included the half time interval, so the second half started at around 60 minutes (not 45 minutes) and full time was due at about 105 minutes, not 90 minutes (very confusing!);

- BIGGEST COMPLAINT: the video feed dropped about 10 minutes before the end of the match, and was replaced by a “we are experiencing technical difficulties” caption. Given the timing issue noted above, I can’t help wondering if they miscalculated what time the match would end, and rented the line for too short a time!!

- while the video feed was down, and Cheltenham were losing 0-1, the score on the app changed (for several minutes) to read 1-1. Cue frantic check of Twitter feed to see if Cheltenham had equalised while I was closing and restarting the app trying to get the video feed back. Alas, they hadn’t (but iFollow had given me false hope!) :-(

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Overall impression - not bad for day one of the new season, hopefully glitches can be ironed out soon. Would I use it again? Almost certainly. Ability to pay just USD 7 for one match was the thing that swung it for me.
THECHOIRBOY
Posts: 900
Joined: 20 Nov 2009, 10:15
Similar scenario for me and even where i am staying with very bad wifi it held up pretty well.

I had it on android and had both audio and video playing through the app for 6 euros which i felt was fair. However, like you say the balance between crowd mic and commentary was wrong so we didn't really use the sound.

We had the technical issues too and it came back just in time for the final whistle.
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