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To: B. A. Marlow who wrote (7652)	4/20/1999 9:38:00 PM
From: Sam Sara	Respond to of 17679

Is TVW's site as bad as you say it is? Some comments: 1) I have a 28.8 connection, and am not bothered by the "slow-loading" of the site. The site is constructed so that the nongraphics portion loads first, so that you can "click-through" if you know where you are going. The entire site loads in 15 seconds (vs. 18 seconds for the link to realguide you have provided), which is not bad. Your comments make me wonder how much of the loading speed is due to site design and how much is due to net location/congestion. I live in the Washington DC area, and would not be surprised if my ISP connects to the PSInet backbone that TVW uses- hence, my experience with the site could be quite different from the experience of a person living in, say, Boston. You like the realguide layout, which seems to pay homage to the text-motif of Yahoo (not a bad thing to imitate, I suppose, given its success). I personally prefer TVW approach, which is to load text first, and graphics later. In the end, neither of our opinions matter- gotta make the masses happy, and I don't know what makes the most people happy. 2) For TVW- is there a way to detect the speed of the enduser connection, in the same way that you can tell which browser a person is using? If this is possible, then it would be nice to design different sites, based on the bandwidth of the recipient? If it is not possible now, then some smart guy should figure out how to do it, since many web sites would find this to be useful. 3) Like others, I have had trouble connecting to live webcasts, and have had to rely on archived material. This is not a problem peculiar to TVW, others have had this problem, including Broadcast.com. Nonetheless, this is another technical issue: is there a way to record the number of "failed connections" during a webcast? I get the feeling that this data is not available, but if not, the same bright guy that figures out the answer to problem #2 should work on this one. Heck, invent it and license it out- there will be plenty of takers. If you knew how many failed connections there were, you could ramp up server capacity in real time, or at least not make the same mistake again.

To: B. A. Marlow who wrote (7652)	4/20/1999 10:11:00 PM
From: Carl R.	Respond to of 17679

Not having been to either site in quite some time, they should have been uncached. It took 40 seconds to download the page from Real Networks, and 1:26 to download the home page for TVoW. I am in Nebraska, using Netcom at 28.8. Carl

To: B. A. Marlow who wrote (7652)	4/20/1999 10:28:00 PM
From: killybegs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17679

Hey, thats what makes a market and good debates. Its your opinion the TVW site is terrible. I think it serves its purpose well for now. I find the Real Networks site hopelessly jumbled and confusing. Sites of this nature should be designed for the average consumer not Netizens.