AFL shafts Mac & Linux users again

[Bifrost]

The AFL and Telstra subscribe to the same economic model. If there is more money to be made via signing tighter restrictions which may limit consumer choice, then go for it. Money rules.

Wouldnt suprise me if Telstra have some deal signed with Microsoft.

http://www.ninemsn.com.au - owned by the Packers; deal signed with Microsoft for tech and development.

http://www.foxtel.com - co-owned by Telstra, the News Corp and the Packers.

http://afl.com.au - exclusive online control of all content for all clubs signed of by the AFL to Telstra

Happy families.

Your kidding right. It still works crap on Microsoft. Telstra is a pretend telco company. Living in the USA, I realize that Telstra is a national disgrace. I would expect the same techological standards from a telco company in Fiji.

I think Telstra runs a bunch of stuff there too (such as afl.com.au; Australia's broadband infrastructure...)

 

[AlibiMonday]

They work perfectly on my mac.

Got OS 10.4.9?

Same. But some of the features don't load in player profiles on Safari and Firefox on the AFL club sites. The bigger problem is that I would be happy to subscribe to the Telstra/AFL broadband content, but it's WMP and it just doesn't work.

 

[AlibiMonday]

It is a Telstra website. They can do as they wish.

Yeah, so what?

The AFL are Telstra's clients. It's upto the AFL to define the service standard, which is quite frankly, substandard in comparative terms to other sporting bodies. It's not a hard thing to fix technically unless Telstra has a specific contract with Microsoft to only use their proprietry technology. It's in Microsoft's (and therefore indirectly Telstra's) interest to ensure any other platforms don't work correctly by being deliberately defective by design. The AFL should standup, as customers, and demand that there is neutrality for all platforms especially when Mac and Linux users are a rapidly growing minority.

 

[skipper kelly]

Yeah, so what?

The AFL are Telstra's clients. It's upto the AFL to define the service standard, which is quite frankly, substandard in comparative terms to other sporting bodies. It's not a hard thing to fix technically unless Telstra has a specific contract with Microsoft to only use their proprietry technology. It's in Microsoft's (and therefore indirectly Telstra's) interest to ensure any other platform doesn't work correctly by being defective by design. The AFL should standup, as customers, and demand that there is neutrality for all platforms especially when Mac and Linux users are a rapidly growing minority.

Why?

They sold it off to Telstra. You are in a fantasy world if you think the AFL actually care about which platforms can be used. Im not sure if in this case the AFL are the customer. Telstra bought the AFL product from the AFL.

 

[Dry Rot]

Seems to work fine on my iMAC 0S 10.4.7, Firefox 2.0.0.2 and Macromedia Flash Player 8.

They work perfectly on my mac.

Got OS 10.4.9?

Interesting. You are BigPond subscribers and view all video?

Dosn't work for me with 10.3.9.

Why would 10.4.9 work better than 10.3.9 in this case?

 

[AlibiMonday]

Why?

They sold it off to Telstra. You are in a fantasy world if you think the AFL actually care about which platforms can be used. Im not sure if in this case the AFL are the customer. Telstra bought the AFL product from the AFL.

WTF?

The AFL still own the content rights and can demand the level of service provided! Admittedly it should have been intergral to the tender process, of which I have no idea if it was. Why am I in fantasy land to expect that 10% should be able to access the content properly?? We have disabilty access into every ground (and commercial building) around the country and that's surely less than 1% of the visiting population. It's blatant discrimination.

 

[skipper kelly]

WTF?

The AFL still own the content rights and can demand the level of service provided! Admittedly it should have been intergral to the tender process, of which I have no idea if it was. Why am I in fantasy land to expect that 10% should be able to access the content properly?? We have disabilty access into every ground (and commercial building) around the country and that's surely less than 1% of the visiting population. It's blatant discrimination.

You are in fantasy land thinking that the AFL care.

Im not sure if the AFL are in a position to demand anything. They sold/lease/whatever the site to Telstra. In this case Telstra are the customer and can do whatever they like as long as it complies with their contract/agreement/lease/whatever. Telstra are not providing the AFL with a service.

It is in the best interests of AFL supporters to have an accessible website, but it may not be in the best interests of the AFL. The AFL may be better off getting the big dollars from Telstra over upsetting a small proportion of web users.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Interesting. You are BigPond subscribers and view all video?

Dosn't work for me with 10.3.9.

Why would 10.4.9 work better than 10.3.9 in this case?

No, so it's the video that is the issue. Embedded Windows Media, as AlibiMonday says, will cause a problem. Unless you can download the file, the MAC version of WMP just doesn't launch in the browser.

 

[AlibiMonday]

You are in fantasy land thinking that the AFL care.

Im not sure if the AFL are in a position to demand anything. They sold/lease/whatever the site to Telstra. In this case Telstra are the customer and can do whatever they like as long as it complies with their contract/agreement/lease/whatever. Telstra are not providing the AFL with a service.

It is in the best interests of AFL supporters to have an accessible website, but it may not be in the best interests of the AFL. The AFL may be better off getting the big dollars from Telstra over upsetting a small proportion of web users.

You may be right Skip about "Telstra are not providing the AFL with a service", but I would be highly surprised that the AFL would be this hands off. If you are correct then the AFL has reliquinished a duty of care, yet this does not admonish their responsibility to rectify the media standards to be compliant beyond one proprietry technology - which is what I've been arguing. They obviously don't give a **** and never have - but this is got to change.

 

[Dry Rot]

No, so it's the video that is the issue. Embedded Windows Media, as AlibiMonday says, will cause a problem. Unless you can download the file, the MAC version of WMP just doesn't launch in the browser.

Thanks. So it won't work on a Mac on any browser?

 

[skipper kelly]

You may be right Skip about "Telstra are not providing the AFL with a service", but I would be highly surprised that the AFL would be this hands off. If you are correct then the AFL has reliquinished a duty of care, yet this does not admonish their responsibility to rectify the media standards to be compliant beyond one proprietry technology - which is what I've been arguing. They obviously don't give a **** and never have - but this is got to change.

I agree with you. Im quite sure the Telstra/AFL deal has a no bagging the AFL/Commision/Umpiring/New Rules/Catering/18,000 other issues that give supporters the shyts clause written into it.

I believe that several moons ago the AFL reliquinshed its duty of care to its supporters. One only needs to look at how hard it is for the average Joe Blow to get a GF ticket for them to see how much the AFL GAF.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Thanks. So it won't work on a Mac on any browser?

I haven't spent much time on this problem. According to Microsoft, WMP9 should work with embedded content. As they have dropped IE for MAC I assume this is only meant to work with Safari. No one I know has got this to work.

However, after a quick search I have found this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

Worth a shot I reckon.

 

[Hawkamania!]

Open source (xvid) , closed source (.wmv .mov).
Tel$tra/Micro$oft = .

 

[Dry Rot]

I haven't spent much time on this problem. According to Microsoft, WMP9 should work with embedded content. As they have dropped IE for MAC I assume this is only meant to work with Safari. No one I know has got this to work.

However, after a quick search I have found this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx

Worth a shot I reckon.

Thanks, but tried that before. Failed, in both Safari and Firefox.

Also it stuffed streaming radio played on WMP so I had to uninstall it.

Edit: Just downloaded and installed bloody Netscape 7 of all things. Didn't work on this either.

 

[bad80shair]

You'll find that it's not a problem with how it's encoded, but how it's streamed.

They come out over the rtsp protocol instead of mms. I don't think mac browsers recognise the protocol to launch quicktime.

 

[Corpuscles]

Attention all Geeks & Nerds:

IT is an advertising site. Does not work well on MS either. End of story.

Telstra & AFL ... DNGAF!

 

[Markthirtytwo]

Thanks. So it won't work on a Mac on any browser?

I downloaded Firefox and it works perfectly now.

Also have a software called Parallels where you can also have Windows format without booting your imac. The best of all worlds.

 

[RizzoTheRat]

Thanks, but tried that before. Failed, in both Safari and Firefox.

Also it stuffed streaming radio played on WMP so I had to uninstall it.

Edit: Just downloaded and installed bloody Netscape 7 of all things. Didn't work on this either.

Thanks DR, saved me trying it when I got home tonight.

Can you give us the details of our machine Markthirtytwo? What do you have installed?

 

[flanktwo]

who cares macs, and linux is **** get with the times.

Getting with the times is exactly why this thread was started.

 

[kahuna71]

Sign up to for life or on a flexible 96 month plan with Telstra and bundle your phone, broadband BIGPOND, FOXTEL, mobile, 3G and other thingamajigs Telstra will come up....

I've bundled my phone, broadband, Foxtel, mobile, car, wheelie bins, toaster, washing line, whipper snipper and wife under Telstra's 'All-In' 11 year plan.

It's tops.

 

[Milkman]

Interesting. You are BigPond subscribers and view all video?

Dosn't work for me with 10.3.9.

Why would 10.4.9 work better than 10.3.9 in this case?

No, I don't watch the video and no way in hell would I subscribe to Bigpond again.

I don't know why or if 10.4 would work any better, but it does improve overall performance and compatibility.

 

[Mooney_d'King]

Seems to work fine on my iMAC 0S 10.4.7, Firefox 2.0.0.2 and Macromedia Flash Player 8.

I've also found that it works with Firefox on the Mac. I haven't tried the whole site though and there's no way I'd subscribe to Telstra to see the video footage.

It hardly works at all with Safari though.

OS 10.4.9, Firefox latest. Intel chip at home, G5 here at work.

Also, check out this Windows Media compatibility stuff, very helpful. Makes WMV play in Quicktime:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=windowsmedia

 

[aquila]

For those of you who got it to work could you state whether or not you had pop-ups blocked, used wmv player or not and if you used wmv player what settings you had enabled and disabled (in the system preference).

Thanks.

 

[Mooney_d'King]

For those of you who got it to work could you state whether or not you had pop-ups blocked, used wmv player or not and if you used wmv player what settings you had enabled and disabled (in the system preference).

Thanks.

I just tried the video in Firefox and it failed. Tried it on IE in Windows and it worked. There must be ActiveX controls or something like that in it that makes it Windows compatible only.

 

[duncan]

who cares macs, and linux is **** get with the times.

Piffle - Linux had a 64 bit OS 10 years ago - It took years for Microsoft to catch up.

Regardless - I`ve never had any problems viewing any AFL content under Linux.