My experience: The debate is practically unwatchable online

[Old Crow]

I don't have a TV so I'm watching online at the ABC Live News Stream. Every 5-10 seconds the video and audio freezes or skips and repeats. It is practically unwatchable.

I can hardly believe this. A debate the Saturday night before Christmas and the live feed is so lame I can barely follow the debate.

WTF.

Update at 9:49p EST: I'm about to give up. It's like a four-year-old keeps switching the live stream on and off every other sentence. I may try to listen in on public radio. I can't sit here shouting "OH, COME ON!" at my computer monitor any more.

Update at 10:00p EST: I'm out. It's a chopped up, garbled video salad and my nerves are shot. Point of information: I had no difficulty whatsoever watching the previous Democratic debates or watching the last Republican debate. This is beyond frustrating.

[virtualobserver]

1. maybe the viewing audience is much larger than they expected

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. You are not missing anything.

Whenever they get to something good, moderators bring it back to themselves. It's a clunker.

[TCJ70]

3. Yeah, it's bad...

...but hey, so was the timing. Maybe it's a theme!

[peacebird]

4. DWS is so happy! She thought most folks would watch the NFL game, but, ever resourceful DWS

made sure the video strreaming totally sucked....

[brooklynite]

10. ...so people can't see how well Clinton is doing?

[NurseJackie]

16. *

[RedCappedBandit]

5. Barely watchable.. In stream quality and moderator quality

[AZ Progressive]

6. I never trust live streams

Too much reliance on good enough servers. Technology in this regard is still not a good enough solution.

[bklyncowgirl]

7. Better on Chrome than I.E. but not by much.

[restorefreedom]

8. tytnetwork.com

young turks. audio only but good

[yeoman6987]

9. That's why I will never give up cable.

[MADem]

11. I think the WESTWOOD ONE radio network is carrying the audio feed

That is how I listened to one of the GOP debates when I was away from TV. Helps to focus on the commentary.

[mrdmk]

12. The stream was unwatchable, I have 100 meg download that works

ABC does not have their act together

[cwydro]

13. That's why I keep my TV and cable service.

I find computers to be too unreliable in a pinch.

[Live and Learn]

14. We had the same experience. Shame on ABC. nt

[ljm2002]

15. Yes it was AWFUL...

...thumbs down to ABC's attempt to stream the debates. I had to reload when the screen froze up, which it did every 30 seconds to (once) 4 minutes --usually about 2 minutes between freezes. It would not restart itself, so I would reload the page, and every time I did that I had to sit through a 30-second or 1-minute ad. So really I was missing the debate and getting very frustrated.

I switched over to TYT coverage with audio of the debate, and TYT commentary -- which was also a bit irritating since they sometimes talked over the debaters. But still, I caught most of it, unlike with the ABC feed, so it was a definite improvement.

ABC is a giant media organization. They blew it bad. Misjudging audience size is no excuse, we have been able to watch other debates streamed by other organizations.