BvM: In the past months, Kozoom streams have suffered from frequent interruptions and frozen screens. Many Premium Pass holders were annoyed, some even felt cheated. Can you first tell us what has caused the problems?
In August, we started the migration of the Kozoom video platform. From the viewer side, there is not a big change, but it was a big one for us. The whole architecture moved to a no-flash/HTTPS infrastructure. It means we rebuilt almost everything and it's true that we had to face issues in Live conditions. It could be fixed pretty quickly when it happened in Veghel and Guri. It was the kind of issue you cannot identify in a testing stage.
In November, we decided to externalize our CDN (the network of servers distributing our content) to get more stability in Asia and improve the quality of our video with the plan to move to HD in a near future. It means we are still sending our feeds (video and score data) to our own origin server that manages score insertion, replay recordings and now, pushes the streams to other servers taking charge of the distribution. The CDN provider we chose in the beginning of November was running fine during Lausanne and we decided to go on with it in Randers. That was our mistake. Last week, there was no issue at Kozoom origin level but many disconnections occurred at the entry point of our new CDN, CDNsun. Their server faced many disconnections, mainly Friday evening and Saturday. Their support had no clue. It was very frustrating for us because our Kozoom Origin server was successfully retrying to push the stream automatically and managing score and records continuity. That's why our local encoders were working fine with almost no drop. That's why you could see so many cuts with no short-term solution available to us.
BvM: What will Kozoom do to try and prevent these malfunctions in the future?
Of course, we are working to change our CDN provider for the next event in Egypt. I cannot promise that we will not face any more problems. No one can grant that today. Even big sports with huge budgets such as Formula 1 are facing issues with their Live Stream. It's not an excuse of course and we are doing our best to improve our service. The problems we are facing today are caused by the changes made to improve our service. We feel very sorry for the frustration caused. Hopefully, the members who have been watching Kozoom since a decade are the best ambassadors to defend our cause. Kozoom will come back soon to normal with better features. The best you can expect according to the current technologies.
BvM: Can viewers take any useful actions? Are the problems related to certain browsers? Does refreshing or emptying cache help?
The best our viewers can do is to contact our support when they face issues. A clear description of the problem sent to our team will be always more helpful than bashing us. People must understand that if we would have to move our platform to a huge infrastructure such as Akamai, who can compete with the reliability of YouTube or Facebook, the price of the Kozoom Pass could double. That's what we want to avoid. We want to increase the quality of our platform with the lower impact of pricing for our members.