calscot

Am I the only one that thinks you've got to be about as sad as it gets to think repeating something as tedious as the new club mantra which is now many years old, is even the slightest bit funny? Sorry, but even if we choose to ignore it for its patheticness, I can't see how we can even slightly credit it with anything like humour. It's about as funny as someone making a farting noise for about the thousandth time in a row...

BTW by 2000, when Rosenthal left, internet usage in the UK was apparently about 27% which, when you remove kids and old people (for obvious reasons), is about every other, working adult.

I had access to the Interent but not WWW since 1986 - starting with Telnet, Email and FTP and then adding Archie, Usenet and some other stuff. I remember in 93/94 having to use Archie and FTP to find and download Winsockets and a TCP/IP stack for Windows 3.11. After trying the text only Lynx for about 5 minutes, I switched to Mosaic which was cool but crashy. Then it was superseded by the far more stable Netscape and I didn't look back. After that I installed IRC and subsequently helped set up and moderate the two Rangers match channels - one for commentary (usually from people with it on the radio) and one for chat. By 95 there was Windows 95 (32 bit and preemptive multitasking!) which had all the networking on board and you had a choice of Netscape 3 or IE3 - which also supported Java. Then came Netscape 4 and IE 4 were next generation with Dynamic HTML built in - although by then I was using NT. By 98 there was Windows 98 with IE 4 pre-installed. Was no-one else on the old RangerList? Or IRC? The email list was about as busy as this forum in the mid 90s.

In 96 I was developing educational webpage content for the Scottish universities' 155Mb/s MAN. We were using Java, Dynamic HTML and MPEG1 video to produce interactive, multimedia material. This clearly wasn't early days. People were browsing with Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape 6 iirc. I had been using the WWW for three years at that point, and the Internet since 1986 when I went to University. I was on the Rangers supporters email list since about 92, as well as IRC during games the next year.

I get the impression Celtic have always had a bit of antisemitism about them...

I'm not sure Scandinavia is the best market as they generally don't do so well in Europe - all the best players are picked up by teams with more money than us. Eastern block is more of a risk culturally wise, but to assess that, since 1972 we've had (including Turkey and Israel): Vučkić, Žaliūkas, Jelavić, Goian, Velička, Šebo, Sionko, Pršo, Mladenović, Khizanishvili, Papac, Arveladze, Fetai, Adamczuk, Tugay, Kanchelskis, Prodan, Salenko, Petrić, Mikhailichenko, Kuznetsov, Cohen. And now Kranjčar.

I wouldn't bet too much against us doing an EEZ, and pretty much nullifying the main reason for leaving. So it might not be a problem.

We've been saying that since the early 90s...

Yep, Walker cheated and admitted it, rightly punished with two game ban - so justice served for once. Hopefully, the rules will continue to be applied consistently for all players...

Think my post was deleted during the merge...

Can't see how that was a good thing... Corruption, safety breaches and basically money stolen from the club...

I thought it wasn't so bad and of the thinking that he probably did the right thing: felt the bad twinge and went straight off for immediate treatment. Last season he played on and I think he just made it a lot worse.

Them and Alloa seem to be the bogey sides.

I prefer friendlies against teams down south. That used to be EP sides but would now settle for EC and EL1 sides. For me personally, it would be good if they chose teams like MK Dons, Northamton, Luton and Watford. A few years ago I would have included Leicester but that's probably not an option now, a very surreal situation.

Changing from Flash to HTML5 shouldn't take much but depends on what proprietary software they are using. Usually when you edit video for web you can export it in any container and codec you have installed, so it should take no more money to save these as MP4, H.264. Like I said the latter may incur royalty fees to A&T as it's proprietary, but there are open-source alternatives for free. They have probably invested in Adobe Creative Studio - which costs money, but there is plenty of free software that can do the job. I'm not sure in what format they receive the videos. But they can still use Adobe or license something better for the same price. They would have to change the PHP code to create doctype HTML5 instead of XTML 1.0 and then change the Flash object and embed tags to the equivalent video tag. This code should be pretty generic and some kind of regex search and replace across all files would do it. They might have to play around with the video tag, css and javascript to get the look they want across browsers. I can't imagine this would take a developer more than a week - so if in-house, £1000? I'm not a business person, I'm a developer myself so not experienced with costings. Removing the adverts should be pretty minimal work, but there would be a loss of revenue. However, I don't know how they can justify it on a premium service - it lowers the tone and quality to very low levels. It's not even so bad in adverts on a page that you can ignore, but these take time and bandwidth - and they are triggered every time, so if you have a problem, do a refresh and you'll get them again. They are also too easy to click on by mistake which wastes more time - when you might just be trying to go full screen. All in all they are pretty annoying and insulting to the subscriber - really brings the club down to a tacky level. There should at least be an upgrade to a more premium service which omits the adverts which would balance out the loss of the (minimal) revenue. However, that would also take implementation time. Making it reliable would already be mostly achieved by removing Flash and adverts - but I'm not sure why it used to mess up before (maybe it doesn't now). Making basic extended highlights I think could be done in about 4 hours, so what's that £400 a go? But then that would make a much better archive for past games. Not many have time to watch full games, and brief highlights really don't show you how the game was played. Getting the navigation right might mean a bit of revamping the site but it shouldn't be hard and is massively crucial to having a professional website that is a pleasure to visit. I really don't know how they have messed this up so badly. Usually all I wanted was to find videos from the latest game - and the obvious links just wouldn't take me there and neither would a search. Removing adverts would be a start in making it easier to go to full screen - but also having a large button to do so would cost almost nothing in addition to the work moving to HTML5 and be a big help. I think a download option would mean bringing technology to do this which could cost something, but it would really help people with limited download (as they can use free wifi when out and about and then view at home, which is something I do with Amazon Prime) or slow connections (which sometimes happens to me at peak times). I don't know how much it would cost but would probably be a one-off payment that would pay for itself over time by increasing the potential subscriber base. An app could help with all this but would be expensive to develop - what we need is to club together with the rest of the clubs to produce something we can all use. That is, commission an app for the SPFL where you pay for your team. I agree the last would be the most difficult and expensive, but the rest I think is peanuts.

I'm really not sure what you're getting at other than people in the UK shouldn't be allowed to make valid complaints. You don't seem to be showing much empathy or understanding of said complaints. A guy in a desert might be very grateful just to get any water but in the UK we're going to complain if it's not very clean from tap or tastes horrible. It's a fallacy to dismiss the latter due to the former. I live 450 miles from Ibrox and as I'm in the UK, I can't even subscribe to the service you have. You might just be grateful for any way of watching RTV but that doesn't excuse them from using outdated technology which makes it difficult to use on modern platforms. It wouldn't cost much to change from Flash to HTML5 and it would seem unprofessional to not do this so long after the technology they are using is defunct. The only hiccup I can think of is that using H.264 might require royalties but there are open-source ways around that. Watching live is much different from trying to watch it at midnight when the level of service means you finish about 2:30 in the morning. Spending two and a half hours Watching the whole game the next day doesn't appeal to many when you already know the score. You also might be happy with the quality but then some people still have a CRT TV while others upgrade to 4K (mine is normal HD). It depends how discerning you are. I'm happy enough to watch on my 4.7" phone screen, but then it needs to be clear without too much compression effects and not stuttering. But in the end my complaints are not about what you are experiencing - which is a different package, so I really don't get your criticism. It might be a work in progress but it's pretty slow going - and I'm not sure it needs any money diverted from players to improve. I think making it attractive will allow it to pay for itself and some of the stuff would cost nothing - like say charging an extra pound a month or something to remove adverts as there is no way their going to make much from them - especially seeing as how irrelevant some are. These kind of things are a deal breaker on premium services - especially when they also often break the service. And just how much does it cost to give the correct information as to when a match is available? Is that really going to cost us a centre half? There is nothing spoiled about wanting a paid service to do what it should be doing.

I've emailed them twice giving similar feedback. They just said they'd take the feedback on board.

The faff is that I click on a link and it doesn't work, so I have to select part of the address on a touch screen, press and wait a bit to click select all, wait a bit and then click copy, go to apps or home screen, find Puffin and open it, wait, then press on the address field, wait, click paste and then click go. Wait. Watch. I didn't say it was incredibly hard, just a faff and touch screens are very faffy for copy and paste. I'd rather just click on the link in any browser which would happen with HTML5 - and we'd lose all the disadvantages of Flash into the bargain.

I've stopped subscribing so no idea about what's in HTML5 but it never used to be and I tried to watch the 90 in 90 last night, and it was a Flash error. I could have watched on Puffin but it's a faff when you're already in bed and tired. They might be, but I've listed the improvements I'm looking for and I don't think they are unreasonable or infeasible. In fact I think most of it wouldn't take much effort at all - some of it less (like not adding adverts).

Maybe I'm naive in thinking that if they did this well it would make money instead of being subsidised. The costs are mostly fixed and so becomes much more viable and profitable with greater numbers of customers - although an increase in viewers means more server bandwidth required, but the cost is low compared to the increase in subscriptions. I think it's actually a different niche to live streaming and so could easily compete in its own domain with pirate websites as long as the quality and quantity is high enough and cost low enough. Whether there is enough market penetration to make a profit is something I don't know - but I'm interested in such a service. One of the most annoying things about streaming is that you can't record it and so have to eschew Saturday or Sunday prime daylight hours or a Friday night to watch it. That's ok now and again but not every week for me when it's not actually attending the event and so time becomes fungible. So good highlights that let you see how the team played without seeing all the faff, is something really I miss, and seems to have fallen off the radar of the media providers. I just want something like the old SportScene or ScotSport (without the shitty presenters), available by about 10:30 or 11pm. I'm sure many others must think the same (of an age to remember it). But outwith that they've made a service which is just too annoying to bother with at all. You don't pay for stuff you don't use, and are more likely to say pay over the top for something that is actually useful and enjoyable. If nothing else, there is no reason not to give a decent service to fans that at least breaks even, if there is the demand. Keeping fans engaged with the club is something that pays long term dividends. I'll see what I can do but I usually write fast, so writing well takes a lot more time... It's also a subject that's difficult to make very interesting reading - I read the op back to see if it made sense and it did seem a bit dull... Thanks for the interest.

PS I forgot to say that you can actually use Puffin on Android devices to watch it, but not many people know about that, and it's a faff.

I tried to watch the 90 in 90 on Rangers TV on my smart phone but was once again reminded that their videos are still in the now defunct technology of Flash. This has never been supported in IOS devices and has not been supported in Android since 2011. Even desktop browsers are increasingly switching off plug-ins which means you have to configure them and then click yes to the warnings, and soon they will not support them at all. Youtube have been providing HTML5 alternatives for many years and fully switched to that technology in 2015. It hasn't been supported properly for years and is fully of security holes, and is a big cause of devices crashing, and it crashes itself quite a bit. So come on Rangers TV, what are you playing at? [a bit technical] I used to be a Flash developer, but even about 5 or 6 years ago, we new it was coming to an end due to Apple, and spent a couple of years trying to decide what to switch to. It took that long for the favourite, HTML5, to become mature enough and browsers to actually support it. We switched to that technology in late 2012 and have been converting Flash assets ever since as well as developing new stuff. But the things is, streaming video doesn't require any code conversion - in fact it just means encoding it in the MP4 container to start with instead of FLV - and the normal H.264 codec in MP4 is far higher quality than the usual VP6 used in FLV. The whole point of HTML5 Video is that there is not much coding to do to stream it. [/a bit technical] So I can't think of much excuses except for a lack of professionalism - or just common sense. [a bit of a rant] Whatever is lacking it permeates throughout the start, starting with the totally illogical and unfathomable navigation. Just try finding highlights to the latest match and it's not easy - and you'll click on the most obvious links and get taken nowhere sensible. This ignore the fact that by midnight there should be plenty of time to do 30 minutes of extended highlights - as who is going to watch the whole game till about 2:30 am? And I really mean 2:30 if you start at 12:01 as it takes a while to get it going, get past the incredibly annoying (and totally out of order for a paid service) commercials, then have it crash, so you start again, and have to go though the adverts again - and then past all the fluff of the introduction. Fast forwarding though that and half time etc, isn't exactly facile either, and you end up crashing and running into the same problems as the start. Then to cap it all, they can't even do the simple, simple stuff right - and that is to tell us the correct time that the games are available. Instead you faff around for half an hour, trying to get it to work as it says it's available after midnight and then gives you a non-informative error - usually that you are not authorised to view it. You complain and find out that it's not available until something like one and a half days later due to the SFA and so it out with their control. BUT telling us is entirely within their control. I really want to continue to subscribe but it's really, really not fit for purpose, and very expensive when you see the quality of picture and service, and compare it to similarly priced services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. It even makes the TV licence look cheap. I know the money goes to Rangers but it's 60 quid a year, which might not sound that much but who would want to pay that premium to Rangers for a football top if we were getting a fair share for it - so say 80 quid when you start to add in the cost and profit to the producer and retailer? (By the way, I've already told them all this, obviously to no avail.) [/a bit of a rant] Time for them to get their act together. [What I'd like to see] 1. Switch to HTML 5 and increase the quality with H.264 2. Remove all adverts from video - download bandwidth is precious and so is our time - and when it breaks you see it again and again. This is incredibly insulting to subscribers - more fair for free content but still it makes for a poor and unreliable service - just try watching All4 compared to Channel 4 stuff on Netflix. 3. Make it reliable 4. Good 30 minute highlights - should be easy to do, just cut out most of the stuff where the ball is not in play plus some of the boring spells. Or just do the former even if it's down to about an hour. I'm also wondering that if they do highlights they could possibly negotiate to make it available a bit earlier - even say 11pm, and so watched by midnight. 5. By the next day they could have a programme on the analysis of the game by pundits - like they had on Rangers TV on Setanta (with live games on proper TV for just 40 quid more a year). 5. Simple navigation that is intuitive and pretty much does what it says on the tin 6. Accurate information on when footage is available - no brainer 7. Easier to switch to full screen (no adverts would help this) 8. Allow download like Amazon and iPlayer do, giving you a certain amount of time to watch it - requires an app but probably off the shelf these days. This means that if their servers are not coping or your internet is slow, you just wait a while and then watch it without stuttering or frequent buffering - and crashes. [/What I'd like to see]

Well he does have a world cup runners up medal...

In football there's always a chance of a bit of contact, which does not necessarily mean a foul. But to deliberately go down rather than from the contact as the reason, is certainly cheating to me. If the rules differ, then I think the rules are not in the spirit of sporting behaviour, and therefore not fit for purpose.

I'm not sure I'd blame the defence too much for the dropped points in the last game. I think losing an average of one goal a game is a reasonable number and so passable for the defence if they achieve no more than one. However, that means the attack needs to score at least 2 goals a game, and that's where we didn't meet the bar. However, the defence has never really looked solid under Warburton, and I think perhaps a good part of that is down to the pressure they are under due to the system we play - but it still means we need players who are capable of playing in that system. All systems tend to need high quality in certain key players to work - for Walter's wing back system, the quality was needed in the wing backs and that's where we often had the likes of Clelland and Bollan... I think our system requires a lot: very high quality and mobility in the centre backs, a very decent holding midfielder, and a centre forward who has a high conversion rate. We may have one out of four in the midfield (and cover there too), but we're lacking in the other two areas. But then the problem is that we need high quality, niche players who are high in demand, but we don't have much money to spend, and an unattractive league. All we have is a certain level of wage and the Rangers factor to attract players. The Rangers factor is something a player has to get and includes a lot of things - first class facilities, an amazing, huge stadium full of a massive number of passionate supporters, the pleasure of winning the majority of games and a good chance of winning trophies with their medals, as well as a great chance of experiencing playing in Europe (these days for players who might otherwise not do so if they otherwise choose lower Premiership or any Championship side). Although it also comes with some negative with the Scottish football goldfish bowl, the inexplicable antipathy towards us, the sectarian issues and our recent history and its accompanying residual problems, as well as the generally negative Scottish football factor. So I'm thinking perhaps the reason we haven't filled those roles is not a lack of trying or willingness to stump up a certain amount of money; I think the quality and attributes of the players we need are so hard to secure, that we might just be struggling to get them in, and have the realisation that compromising in quality just to get someone, anyone in, is not an option due to the whole crucial nature of the positions. It wouldn't make any sense. The problem might be more easily solved if we spent £5m on each player and put them on 40k a week wages, but that's just not sound business sense at the moment. The problem is that we don't even have the means to bring in the likes of a Cuellar and a Jelavic who were complete bargains. Maybe in a couple of years...