TomBobBlender Forums

As many of you may have already noticed, The TomBobBlender Show has gone experimental, trying out a different site for video streaming. Since I have had this window of free time between time off of classes before final exams and moving out in the coming weeks, I thought now would be the time to check things out. Here's what's been going on the past couple of days:

USTREAM has been slowly sucking within the past year or more. I have had more disconnects with their service lately, as well as extremely poor customer service. Within the past 3 months, I have sent out 8 e-mails to their staff through support tickets and e-mail addresses. Out of those 8, I received one response, which was only a few days ago. Their updates to their service has been subpar lately, bringing out very few positive changes (like an upside-down chat haha), and breaking or eliminating previously effective features. Our show used to be featured, and following an update over a year ago, it has not been such. After requesting information about whether the title can be restored, I still have not received information as to how or why. 'Featured Shows' on USTREAM's gaming section feature shows that have been inactive for months, yet active ones remain buried.

More recently, TTBBS has been removed from USTREAM's database through both my broadcasting options and through USTREAM's search bar. Doing a simple search of "TomBobBlender" will not pull up my stream page, but will pull up other pages that may happen to have the same tag. Over the past month, my user profile on USTREAM shows that I have 0 (zero) shows when there should have been two (2). Browsing through my USTREAM control panel still display all three shows, so they are still around in some form. I created a new show within the past week (TheTomBobBlenderShow), and now my profile says I have one (1) show, which should now say three (3). After contacting USTREAM about these issues, they responded stating that most veteran stream accounts have been affected with an unknown technical bug through a recent update, and "do not have an estimate of when it will be fixed". So, at this time, no new visitors can easily find our page, and it is absolutely impossible at the moment to even stream to their service. Cue JustinTV.

It has been recommended for over a year now to test out JustinTV for our streaming purposes. Every major show (especially video games) has moved to their site recently, and I'm sure there must have been a reason to do so. It has been hinted within these past few months that I was 'getting sick of USTREAM,' and how 'USTREAM sucks'. I even told people to start making JTV accounts soon. So pissed at USTREAM, I decided to give it a try. I have only been with the service for a couple of days, and already feel the benefits of being there. The community (especially the video gaming community) there is a LOT more social with each other and incredibly active and friendly. The services seem to cater extremely well to gamers, offering an abundant amount of streaming features and an array of channel badges (you should check out the variety that they offer. Many can only be earned if working with other broadcasters). In one day, I received close to 40 new followers (8 were of previous community members), which is about 39 more than I have received from USTREAM in the past month (probably not really, but it's pretty close). I felt new life here, and was eager to learn more about it. I even purchased a pro account to gain the best possible overall experience with the site, though its features are quite limited at the moment, but has great potential to expand. Their streaming quality is excellent, and take up much less resources than USTREAM productions. They can record my entire show every night ( a feature I have yet to even try), so people who may miss anything can always look back. They also have a 'highlight' feature, where community members or myself can highlight important areas of the video that may be significant for others to view.

As many of us are used to USTREAM's IRC, many of you are not pleased with JTV's chat. They have only recently implemented IRC and are still in their infancy with intention to grow through community suggestions. A lot of traditional IRC functions are absent, such as devoicing, mode changes, topic settings, a PM system, etc. The features that they DO have, I feel, are plenty for the average user. The only people that these really effect would be moderators, but I still feel we can adjust quite well. You can still connect through your IRC clients with no real change on your side.

We do have another option: create our own unique chat room separate from any of the streaming sites. With this option, no matter where we end up (now or future changes), the chat community will always be found in the same place. Also, for any members who needed to register a different name when logging onto JTV, the new chat will most likely not have your name registered. We would also have the freedom to customize the environment to our liking. The only drawback would be the localized separation of newcomers who would need to be re-directed to the correct chat room location. Outside of that, I think it might be a good move.

I have the ability to broadcast to BOTH JTV and USTREAM at the same time (whenever USTREAM decides to fix their end). That way, both shows will be up, and viewers can decide which show works best for them for viewing. Would that cause MORE issues for use, though, by separating communities? Perhaps, unless we had a separate chat location, as previously stated. These are all things we need to think about.

As of now, I am very pleased with my experience at JTV and would love to stay here. Yes, we have an almost-three-year relationship with USTREAM but, much like any relationship, why would I want to stay if I feel ignored, abused and frustrated? We might lose community members by switching sites, but that would only be the fault of their own laziness, so I have NO sympathy for that, especially after all of the time-consuming effort I have provided to getting things moved over as smoothly as possible.

I decided to do this on my own with very little help from the community. While I rely on the communities suggestions on much of the shows functionality, I feel this was something I had to do myself until I understood it without bias. I am now ready to hear what YOU have to say about it, whether positive or negative.

Something you MUST understand: I am not quitting USTREAM. They have quit me until further notice. Instead of sitting around waiting for them to get their acts together, I have moved on. Our spot on JTV "could" be our new permanent home. Could. I really like it. If you're going to whine about IRC, reconsider specifics and try to focus on the positive features. Do your research before judging, and give things a chance. USTREAM was far from perfect when it first started, and … well … is far from perfect now lol.

Thanks for reading and being patient with recent unfortunate events. The show must go on!

<3 TomBob

My only real initial concern about moving to JustinTV was that Banon wasn't working in the JTV chat. To me, Banon is as much a part of the TBB experience as we, the community, and Tom himself. It looks like that issue has been dealt with and Banon is working fine. JTV is a bit heavy with their censoring, but we can all work around that.

Like I've said to Tom before, this is HIS show and he should do what is best for the future of it. I do like that he wants our input. It shows how much he cares about the community that he has built. Others may have cut and run and forced their audience to accept the changes without any input, but Tom's cool like that.

Me personally, I will go where the show goes. I love the show and the community. I've met good people here, made good friends, and have had some great times that I'll never forget. I hope for many, many more in the future!

Also, if needed, I'll help in any way possible. I'm always here for the community. =D

LONG LIVE TBB!!! <3<3

WillSerenity wrote:Like I've said to Tom before, this is HIS show and he should do what is best for the future of it. I do like that he wants our input. It shows how much he cares about the community that he has built. Others may have cut and run and forced their audience to accept the changes without any input, but Tom's cool like that.

Me personally, I will go where the show goes. I love the show and the community. I've met good people here, made good friends, and have had some great times that I'll never forget. I hope for many, many more in the future!

Also, if needed, I'll help in any way possible. I'm always here for the community. =D

LONG LIVE TBB!!! <3<3

What he said

I may not support every decision made here, but I will accept and deal with whatever I must.
However, allow me to express why I am pushing towards a real IRC server as opposed to JTV's custom one.

JTV runs a custom IRC server. Although this allows them to have complete control over their entire chat system, it lacks heavily in features.
Their number one problem is that they are trying to keep things too simple. As Tom said, the only real changes will be seen by the moderators and that's just it: We need more control over the chat environment to successfully do our job.

In the past with ustream's chat service, we've made it a point to try not to ban IPs and hostmasks from the chatroom because we don't know who lives with who or who might be at the same household. On JTV's chat, when a user is banned, so is their entire internet connection. That means that any account connecting from your connection cannot get on. While this is good because it prevents evasion, it can lead to people asking why they can't access the chatroom which may lead to a needed breach in privacy to troubleshoot. I know Tom is pro-privacy so this would be hard to overcome. Besides that, we have methods for dealing with ban evasion. I don't think we really have to worry much about that.

Another issue that strikes us is usermodes and channel modes; There are NONE. Absolutely NONE (aside from +b). In the ustream chat, we had a variety of modes that ranged from one that made it so only voiced users could speak to one that would slow the chat down at whatever rate we wanted it (though we all agreed it should never be used again). On JTV's chat, we can't even take a user's ability to speak away. The only way to change the chat environment is through their client. That might not be a big issue, but look at it this way: If I ever wanted to turn on slow mode for the chat, I'd have to open the JTV page, wait for the chat, and hit the slow mode button. On ustream, turning on slow mode, for 30 seconds for instance, is as easy as typing "/mode #tombobblender +Z 30". It's a quick execution from the IRC client that makes the difference. If something happens where we need to adjust the chat features, we have to run through the JTV client. Yes, it's an inconvenience and such a need may never arise, but nonetheless a problem that makes our job harder and slower to execute.

One thing the users may have noticed already is that the JTV chat has no channel topic. This means we have no place to provide static information other than on the stream itself or on the forums. If we want any information passed, we have to constantly tell people about it.
Another troubling concern is their policy on private messages: IRC client users can only private message IRC client users. Our moderation policy relies on warnings and bans. We issue a private warning then ban if they don't follow our warning. With JTV's private messaging policy, this makes it nearly impossible because for every warning we issue, we either have to do it in public or send them a private message through the user message submission form on their website.

My last gripe with them is Vaughn. Vaughn is JTV's chat bot. It sits in every chatroom on their service. My problem with Vaughn is he can't be removed from the channel. He's just a nuisance and he's useless. All he does is provide stupid and spammy commands for the users and useless moderation features. At least with Ustream-Bot, it had the decency to leave as soon as you set a ban on it.


Tom mentioned that JTV is open to suggestions. If they truly are, I suggest they move to some real server software like UnrealIRCd or Plexus IRCd. Ustream uses UnrealIRCd so we know how flexible it is. They can write their own bot service for it and have Vaughn running around on it if they do so desire and it certainly wouldn't stop them from having a censor list or link censors. Besides that, it's open source. If they really wanted to, they could even write a method through which their existing chat clients would work. If they've got the resources, why not?

I'm not saying I don't support JTV, but I am saying their chat could do with some major changes.

Whatever you decide, Tom, I will work with, but if we have to give some of our major features up, it'll take some adjustment.

EDIT: It's clear that some of the chat commands are broken and that the vaughn thing is inescapable. Giving someone a "time out" doesn't work, leaving us with bans only which is the last thing we want to do because, as stated before, it bans the IP too.

It's terrible that ustream is deciding to take their time in trying to fix things for their veteran users. It seems to me like they want people to move elsewhere. As I stated in the chatroom the new format looks like a tag-board format that I and probably many other may have used in the early 2000s. The log in process seems easier than to typing /nick in the chat to get the log in window but I notice people still are entering and exiting the room.

For Justin, I don't remember how long I've had an account since I joined their service to watch gaming streams. They've always had a good video quality that I did not have to refresh the stream as often as I did with Ustream. Though I was not able to use MIRC with Justin until recently because of the whitelist that they had I never noticed that moderators/admin commands do not work when using the commands given by Justin on how to timeout, kick, or ban someone. The only commands that I can see that work is the color change for your name and clearing the chat comments.

For Vaughn there has to be a way to get rid of "IT". I probably have to check other streams more, but I believe there is some of them that do not have Vaughn in their chatroom. There is even a command to get Vaughn to join your room by going to its channel and type "!join" so either he leaves eventually or does not come back on his own at times. I was wondering if a mod or admin would type /ban vaughn without using the MIRC but the actual justin tv page chat would prevent "it" from entering the chatroom.

I have to admit, i'm a little bit biased, since I never ever use ustream and stick to IRC. i haven't really had much experience with JTV, other than i know about the problems with it being different from the other chat (the modes, problems, for instance). whatever you decide to do, tom, i fully support it. though it may be a little bit before I can join you regularly again (still working out the computer issue), but I am always willing to do whatever I can to help. i have fun doing it :3

(also, i apologize for my behavior the last couple times i was there ^^; i was having a very, very bad week and didn't mean to bring my problems into the chat)

i may not personally like it but ill deal with the change when i get back from vacation nothing better than taking Walt Disney world vacation to not think about ustream or jtv and as for dedication to tombobblender i will make jtv account maybe when i get back so i can at the very least i can say hi to you guys in the chat and see what is going on since ustream broadcast isn't an option right till they fix everything they screwed up that being all said im not leaving forever just temporarily while thinking about making an account jtv or get the irc client tom recommended in any regard i will need to do alot of stuff behind the scenes for my boss kwing though i don't work for him on forum board anymore there is alot of other things that need to be done gdub does know some of it like wiki and wikia and a new forums banner for whenever the tech guy gets around to putting up a new forums board for it.