Okay, so after receiving a grand total of zero responses on this post, I decided I'd do my bit for society and purchase a one-day pass on rugbyzone.com in order to provide everyone on here with feedback.
I purchased the pass this past Satruday (8 May 2010) as there were a bunch of S14 tests lined up throughout the day. Saturday's are also usually the preferred playing days for international tests so this would be the day of the week most of us would use this service if we were planning on watching the games live (which I prefer).
Vital info:
My line speed: Telkom 4mbps. My download speed is usually somewhere between 400kBps - 450kBps on a good day.
ISP accounts: MWeb 4mb uncapped account and a prepaid Afrihost account
No other download apps/clients were running in the background. Windows updates were switched off.
Nobody else logged into the router
Wired LAN connection used
Findings:
After paying the princely sum of US $9 for the day pass I log in to watch the Brumbies / Highlanders game. Now when you browse the streaming section before paying it shows two streaming options 300K and 1000K. What they fail to mention is that live matches can only be watched at 500K - no other options available. Problem, as I average 450K on a good day. I try it anyway and the result is completely predictable - a few minutes spent buffering followed by 20 seconds of streaming. Rinse. Repeat.
I decide to watch the earlier game (Chiefs/Waratahs) as older games are available at 300K and 1000K. I obviously opt for the 300K option. Results are exactly the same as above. Buffering hell. I test the live and archived streams throughout the day using both my ISP accounts but never once did I achieve more than 20 - 30 seconds of continous streaming. I continually test other streams (youtube, spvod, sopcast, etc...) as well - all of them perform well enough to avoid the constant buffering situation.
Conclusion:
This is not a streaming service suited for South Africa as far as I can tell. Don't waste your money.
I wish I could have tested on an unshaped account as well but I wasn't planning on spending even more money on this experiment. I doubt that it would have made much of a difference anyway - especially if they're streaming live matches at 500K - that's at the theoretical speed of a 4mb line. I read a number of complaints on international websites as well regarding rugbyzone. People with much better line speeds than our own are experiencing problems and speculate that it may be due to an inadequate streaming server infrastructure.
There are ofcourse two other official avenues:
1. DSTV: I have to choose between internet and this. I choose internet.
2. Supersport.com streaming: I've tested this over countless weekends and experience the same thing here - buffering hell.
