Anybody who paid will get refunds.
Hope you try again, guys!
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RiffTrax Live CrashesWith something like 700 folks signed on and ready to watch Mike, Kevin and Bill do a live riff of “Planet of Dinosaurs,” the RiffTrax equipment experienced what Kevin called a “a Google-scale lock up.”
36 Replies to “RiffTrax Live Crashes”Commenting at Satellite News
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yeah, it sucked. they got in the short, and it was enjoyable, then CRASHHHHHH
I hate to say it but this wasn’t unexpected.
I tried to get on the site around 8:55pm EST and the page wouldn’t even load, so I figured something was wrong. I hadn’t bought my “ticket” yet, so I just gave up. Sorry to hear about the big crash!
I’m disappointed, but honestly I wasn’t that surprised either. That’s actually why I bought the whole package. I figured that if they were having problems, or it was running choppy and slow then at the very least I could just shut it off the wait for the download to come online, and then watch it that way. Streaming doesn’t seem all that ready for something this big yet. Even the short was choppy and lost it’s audio right at the end. I do respect their decision to just pull the plug. If it was already going that baddly and the film hadn’t even started it wasn’t worth doing it. I’ll still spend my refund on Rifftrax.com and definitely pick up the VOD studio version of Planet of Dinosaurs. I feel bad if they wind up losing any money out of this whole thing, and I want to support them doing more old crappy movies like this one.
You know, as much as I want to harp on about wanting DVDs and my negative opinion of digital downloads, this *was* an interesting attempt to bring the “live” experience to a larger audience. It’s too bad it didn’t work out for those who were interested in it.
I think their problem is keeping an entire site running while they’re doing the live show, if they shut the site down for the live show it would save them a lot of lag/bandwith etc.
This has happened before, and quite often during, with the few live shorts they did in the past.
I kind of knew it was gonna happen, that’s why I didn’t buy it, sadly.
I hope that there are other more interesting things in store for their future.
They crashed at only 700? That’s odd. Didn’t one of the earlier successful live webcasts have something like 2000-3000 viewers?
I don’t think it was just because of the number of people. The person who came on and explained a little bit after they shut it down said it was a bunch of little problems including on Rifftrax end, on Ustreams end, and just some plain old hardware failures and difficulties, which all added up to a big “cluster you know what”.
I’ve never been able to attend a live Riffing because they never have them anywhere near me so last night I was all paid up and ready to laugh… :lol:
The short was funny (even with the lags) and I was ready for more when the whole thing when awry… :sad:
Last night it was mentioned that a Google snafu was part of the problem and this morning my local news station mentioned that Google’s snafu caused problems all over the place, so this was nothing they could have done anything about. It was out of their hands and I think most everyone there understood that and felt bad for the guys having their hard work come to not… :cry:
I do hope they do it again because I’ll be one of the first in line to pay for the live experience. :grin:
I couldn’t “attend” because we had to be at WDW (a friend’s birthday and Disney popped for free admission) but I’m definitely going to buy the VOD and I hope this doesn’t in any way stop them from doing more of these sorts of movies in the future, live show or not.
HAW HAW!
I assume the “Google” reason was just a joke… The Google crash was the previous day and had been cleared up in a couple of hours.
Hope they do another one. I couldn’t watch this one because I was busy at that time, but am looking forward to the next attempt…
It was lot fun chatting with people. But man it was sad to see it crash. Then we could hear guy say he was sorry the first time because there was no sound. It was funny in sad way.
*in Rocky voice* “a-GAIN?”
I still would have enjoyed a free download of the VOD version plus the extra stuff mentioned instead of the refund, but oh well.
Stop messin’ around with this webcast stuff and just release the DVD!
It’s not that their system was unable to handle the load. The first riff was so epicly funny that none of our comps could handle it.
I’m so glad that Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk could be back to troll again. I had started to miss his/her combination of belligerence and failed attempts to be funny. If only he could also now use his alt screen names to defend him against my accusation of trolling, this thread would be perfect!
>>I think their problem is keeping an entire site running while they’re doing the live show, if they shut the site down for the live show it would save them a lot of lag/bandwith etc.<<
Actually, the DID shut down the site. They had the url redirect to the Ustream page to eliminate that problem.
Didn’t work though.
I think they still should have filmed it live, and made it available as a download (which is what was supposed to be done anyhow).
If people couldn’t be there to watch it live and paid for it, they could download it later to enjoy the live riff at their convenience. People that couldn’t watch it live didn’t know the difference either way!
At least it was just a lockup and not a crash this time. Last time it took them darn near a week to get the pieces put back together. And I was so looking forward to seeing POD (not the band). Such first class cheese!!!
Apparently they were having trouble with the VOD of this as well. A couple people said the audio is off in the last few minutes. The rifftrax guys said they are hoping to fix it today.
Hmmmm…Rifftrax suffers from various crashes and Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk returns to the boards within the same week. Coincidence…or sabotage? Think about it, won’t you?
I was also not optimistic that this event would work out, even though I really hope they can get these live events to work. I was hopeful enough that I scheduled my Friday night to catch the event (and I paid in advance for the full ticket), but I was uneasy enough that I didn’t pester any of my friends to schedule their Friday night around it.
They had done some major upgrades since the previous attempt at a live event, and they had also done a minor public test of how well the pieces would work together. So there was certainly some reason to think this would go much better, but, well, it didn’t.
I hope they keep trying to beat the problems, and that they can make these live events happen.
Unrelated to the problems with the live event, they did also put together a “studio” VOD of the same movie, and had that available after the live event melted down. The movie is pretty ripe for riffing, and they have a lot of funny lines for it, but there were also a variety of problems with the videos for download. Those problems should be sorted out and fixed sometime this week.
“Hmmmm…Rifftrax suffers from various crashes and Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk returns to the boards within the same week. Coincidence…or sabotage? Think about it, won’t you?”
I’ve been around here and there, but sabotage is definitely not my thing. I much prefer to sit back and watch as Rifftrax’s sales dwindle as more and more people realize just how lame it truly is.
I was looking forward to it, but in the confusion and delay of the show that never went on, I did some wandering around the site and found some things I didn’t even know existed–like the iRiffs. My friend and I had a project JUST LIKE IT we were sitting on and so submitted it. (We’re ‘The Incredibly Strange Riffers’, in case anyone’s interested). We’ve decided to get into the iRiffing business ourselves… so I guess something good came of the unfortunate tech. difficulties…
I have to admit that I’m extremely disappointed by this experience.
TorgosPizza did a “test” for the live show a couple of weeks ago. That “test” consisted of him telling the board members that they were going to do a live riff of a short in a couple of hours. I can’t imagine that more than 100 people showed up for that.
Of course it ran smoothly and TorgosPizza declared the live show a success. That’s why they set up this Planet of the Dinosaurs live riff.
Since that’s the only field test they did I’m extremely disappointed in them. Having a couple more tests with larger audiences could have let them see this problem before going ahead with this PPV live riff.
Of course, I overlooked that leading up to the live show. Like an idiot, I trusted them, and told my friends to buy tickets because “It won’t crash like it did last time.”
Oh well. I won’t be as naive next time. I’m never buying a ticket to one of their live shows again until they do one that actually goes smoothly.
BTW, please don’t take this as any kind of attack on Rifftrax. I’m simply venting while trying to add some kind of constructive criticism (in regards to more tests).
If you break your arm, the bone heals back stronger than before. Therefore, Rifftrax will have the best darn set of servers ever conceived! Google who?
It’s kind of a blessing that these crashes happen now when live events are still in an experimental phase.
Jesus #25 – How do you know Rifftrax sales are dwindling? I’m not being vindictive, but as an active iRiffer, I’d like to know why you think the ship is sinking.
I hope they try again. More live shows would mean more public domain movies and more public domain movies means more old cheesy ones!
I hope they can get this working. I didn’t pay for a “ticket” but the sample of “Planet of Dinosaurs” looks hilarious! I would like to see it on DVD… I just ordered the Shorts Vol. 2, Plan 9, and Carnival of Souls DVDs. If they can get it all up and running smoothly, I would definitely partake in their live offerings, though.
I attended Saturday’s Cinematic Titanic presentation of “Danger on Tiki Island” in Atlanta, which was fantastic! However, as mentioned by William B! in the thread for the Atlanta CT shows, The Rifftrax site crash made it into a riff in the CT show. When one of the character’s in the movie was frustrated at one point, Frank quipped, “Dammit, the Rifftrax site is down again!” or something like that. There were groans and laughter, but it was a fun moment for the fans. I laughed, even though I’m a huge fan of all the MST3k alumni. I like both CT and Rifftrax (mostly the shorts and older cheese though)…
I’m just sorry that the people who paid $14.99 get the same package (VOD and gift certificate) as the ones who only paid $6.99. Seems like the folks who shelled out a considerably higher amount should get something more.
Has anyone gotten their refunds or free files yet? I’m still waiting for mine, and I’m still waiting to get the Planet of Dinosaurs VOD that I paid for on Friday since the version I downloaded then only has the riff audio and no movie audio. I was hoping that they’d at least have the corrected version of that up for downloading by Tuesday.
ummmm my two cents thrown in…..I much prefer a dvd in my hand vs something hidden in my computer that may not be retreveable or gets corrupted at a later date…
@Big61AL
This is actually a major advantage that our product has OVER a DVD. If your DVD gets scratched or stolen, nobody is going to replace it for you. If you accidentally delete a RiffTrax or your computer crashes, you are free to redownload them at any time.
We have added $10 gift certificates to the accounts of everyone who purchased a ticket to the live show. We will be adding the Planet of Dinosaurs VOD files tomorrow. But the fixed versions have been uploaded, so you can buy them if you already haven’t or redownload them from your My Files area if you already bought them.
Thanks for your patience as we dealt with all of this, hope you enjoy Planet of Dinosaurs!
All gift certificates and video files have been credited to people who bought a ticket to the live show. Thanks again for your patience. Now go watch some dinos!
“Jesus #25 – How do you know Rifftrax sales are dwindling? I’m not being vindictive, but as an active iRiffer, I’d like to know why you think the ship is sinking.”
I actually do not know if this is the case. It was an assumption based on the fact that I was originally one of the few people who spoke out on their distaste for rifftrax. Now you see several people who are tired of the lame attempts at humor by Mike, Kevin and Bill. Hell, even my 6-year old son doesn’t find Kevin’s constant barrage of fart jokes funny.