Issues With The Gospel Stream App?

[Ironhold]

OK. I just tried to use the Gospel Stream app, which is what we're supposed to use now to watch church videos as most of them have been pulled from the church's website. 

Well, a single session of Conference drained about 45% off of my phone's battery while also heating the battery up to a very alarming degree. I actually deleted the app as a result.

Has anyone here had issues like this when they tried to use the Gospel Stream app? 

[zil2]

8 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

as most of them have been pulled from the church's website.

Are you sure about that?  I go to the media library, and I see lots of videos in lots of categories...

10 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

Has anyone here had issues like this when they tried to use the Gospel Stream app?

I will make a point later this afternoon of watching the talk for my next RS lesson using the app and note the before and after battery and see if I can physically feel the phone temp changing.  NOTE: You could send feedback through the app, so they know.

[Ironhold]

7 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Are you sure about that?  I go to the media library, and I see lots of videos in lots of categories...

I will make a point later this afternoon of watching the talk for my next RS lesson using the app and note the before and after battery and see if I can physically feel the phone temp changing.  NOTE: You could send feedback through the app, so they know.

I've tried to watch videos through the church website, but since the app was launched all I get are error messages and "page doesn't exist" messages. 

[LDSGator]

2 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

I've tried to watch videos through the church website, but since the app was launched all I get are error messages and "page doesn't exist" messages. 

You can probably get the videos on youtube. 

[LDSGator]

I use the plain old gospel library app. Listen to it on my workouts sometimes. 

[zil2]

1 hour ago, Ironhold said:

I've tried to watch videos through the church website, but since the app was launched all I get are error messages and "page doesn't exist" messages. 

Can you give me the final functioning page in your path and tell me what you do from that page to get the error?  Then I can try it and see if I get the same error.  For example, I went to the "Just Added" category, and clicked the first video - "A Silent Night Surprise in Times Square" (which was really, really cool, for any who didn't see it.  That brought up a pane on the right side of the browser (am on Win10, in Chrome).  I click the "play" button in that pane and the video starts in the pane, with options to go full screen and such.

Then I went back and picked the New Testament Teaching Videos, Luke-John category.  Scrolled down a ways and picked one titled "School Bus".  Same results - side pane and mini video with volume, settings, full screen options....

[Ironhold]

7 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Can you give me the final functioning page in your path and tell me what you do from that page to get the error?  Then I can try it and see if I get the same error.  For example, I went to the "Just Added" category, and clicked the first video - "A Silent Night Surprise in Times Square" (which was really, really cool, for any who didn't see it.  That brought up a pane on the right side of the browser (am on Win10, in Chrome).  I click the "play" button in that pane and the video starts in the pane, with options to go full screen and such.

Then I went back and picked the New Testament Teaching Videos, Luke-John category.  Scrolled down a ways and picked one titled "School Bus".  Same results - side pane and mini video with volume, settings, full screen options....

For about a *month* when I went to the actual page for the General Conference videos on the church website I got a 404 error indicating an invalid link. Same for many of the other videos. 

I guess they finally put Conference back online, as that's what I'm seeing now. 

[Ironhold]

1 hour ago, LDSGator said:

You can probably get the videos on youtube. 

YouTube no longer allows people like me who are using ad blockers to actually see any videos. 

[LDSGator]

6 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

YouTube no longer allows people like me who are using ad blockers to actually see any videos. 

Oh okay. Sorry bro. Good luck! 

[zil2]

9 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

YouTube no longer allows people like me who are using ad blockers to actually see any videos. 

That was true for me for a while, but I can now see videos even with the one ad blocking plug-in set to allow ads for all videos, and I still don't see ads...  It's bizarre.  All my other plug-ins are working as they were before the YT changes...  Don't know what to make of it.

[zil2]

3 hours ago, zil2 said:

I will make a point later this afternoon of watching the talk for my next RS lesson using the app and note the before and after battery and see if I can physically feel the phone temp changing.  NOTE: You could send feedback through the app, so they know.

Start battery: 77%

Ending battery: 75%

That was for one 12:24 video (Elder Renlund's GC talk).  I can let it go longer, @Ironhold, if that will better match your experience.  I was playing the video at 1.5x, which in my experience, is more resource intensive, but the phone temp didn't seem to change.  Let me know how long let it run and I'll give that a shot.

Given that it's a new app, I wouldn't be surprised if there were bugs and inefficiencies yet to be worked out.

[JohnsonJones]

16 hours ago, Ironhold said:

OK. I just tried to use the Gospel Stream app, which is what we're supposed to use now to watch church videos as most of them have been pulled from the church's website. 

Well, a single session of Conference drained about 45% off of my phone's battery while also heating the battery up to a very alarming degree. I actually deleted the app as a result.

Has anyone here had issues like this when they tried to use the Gospel Stream app? 

Not necessarily with the App, but with the church's streaming services.  I had great difficulties with it during Conference. 

I thought it may have been that everything they were streaming was trying to be in 4K and didn't want to stream in anything less?  Or at least extremely high Def?

That takes a LOT of bandwidth and/or processing power.

I've noticed that both BYU TV and the church's streaming stuff seem to be having difficulties recently with the internet, or at least the internet in my area.  When I watch their videos via Youtube or other resources they do just fine.

It may be area focused???  Company we get our data or streaming from?

I've had some problems similar to the First Post as well in the past two to three months.  It also seems to eat up a lot of energy...not sure what is causing it, so I'm not good at giving a solution. 

Edited December 6, 2023 by JohnsonJones

[Carborendum]

In the APP, I will have no quote of the day.  It may have something to do with my new phone.

My old phone had no problems.  Only every once in a while was there a quote or scripture not available.  But with the new phone, it is rare that I get a quote of the day.  Others look on their phones, and they see quotes.  But mine... none.

Any idea why that would be?

 

[Ironhold]

11 hours ago, zil2 said:

Start battery: 77%

Ending battery: 75%

That was for one 12:24 video (Elder Renlund's GC talk).  I can let it go longer, @Ironhold, if that will better match your experience.  I was playing the video at 1.5x, which in my experience, is more resource intensive, but the phone temp didn't seem to change.  Let me know how long let it run and I'll give that a shot.

Given that it's a new app, I wouldn't be surprised if there were bugs and inefficiencies yet to be worked out.

It was a full two-hour session of Conference, the Saturday morning session from October 2021. 

I regularly use radio apps like iHeart and TuneIn, and neither one is as intensive in regards to energy usage or phone heat. 

The only thing I can figure is that whoever in Salt Lake designed the app presumed it would be used on high-end bleeding-edge devices with top-of-the-line specs and so bogged it down with high-end everything. 

[zil2]

On 12/6/2023 at 7:03 AM, Ironhold said:

It was a full two-hour session of Conference, the Saturday morning session from October 2021. 

So, I never use my phone to watch video (I've never understood why people punish themselves with a micro screen and keyboard when they could use a computer), but wouldn't you expect two hours of video to drain your battery like there's no tomorrow?  (2 hours of YouTube running at 1.5x to 2x on my computer certainly cause the cooling fan to work overtime after a while.)

On 12/6/2023 at 7:03 AM, Ironhold said:

I regularly use radio apps like iHeart and TuneIn, and neither one is as intensive in regards to energy usage or phone heat. 

For video, or just music?  I wouldn't expect music to be half as intensive as video.  (I don't know those apps.  As the above may have implied, I don't use my "phone" (which isn't a phone, just an Android wifi doohickey) for this sort of thing.)  Now you've got me wondering if Gospel Stream has an audio-only "channel".

On 12/6/2023 at 7:03 AM, Ironhold said:

The only thing I can figure is that whoever in Salt Lake designed the app presumed it would be used on high-end bleeding-edge devices with top-of-the-line specs and so bogged it down with high-end everything. 

I have noticed that the Android Gospel Library team expect this - they're the most out-of-touch, blame-the-user team I ever encountered.  I only update the app when the content will no longer update in the old one.  If the same person is in charge of both teams, then you could be right.  But I think it more likely that the new app isn't polished and they need user feedback (including device info) to help them do said polishing.

FWIW, my "phone" is a Moto G Stylus running Android 11 that I bought in 2021 (explicitly because my older device, though working just fine for everything else, wouldn't run the new version of Gospel Library and the old version wouldn't load new content).

Edited December 7, 2023 by zil2

[zil2]

Can't find an audio-only option or setting, so video it is.  Starting Saturday Morning session of GC, at "normal" speed.  Took forever for it to even load the start...  First feedback I'll send when it's over is that the video controls go away once the video starts, so I can't adjust the playback speed, CC, or anything else in the middle of the video - that's annoying.  It's also starting and stopping, which makes me wonder if it's streaming HD even though my phone is in portrait mode and the display can't possibly be showing more than 720p...

Hmm, there's the controlls - app kind stinks I see there's an option for the audio to set to "auto" or "mono, 0.13Mbps".  I wonder if the mono wouldn't be faster, but then I'm guessing that's the only thing streaming, so that's what "auto" is using.  Video is still starting and stopping.  My WiFi isn't *that* bad.  Still no video quality setting.  OK, well, I quit fiddling with settings and put the phone next to the router.  Will check it in a couple hours.

Battery is at 73%.

[zil2]

The session is almost over.  The phone is a little warm.  I've taken it away from the router, in case that was part of the reason it's warm.  It looks like we're on the last talk.  OK, session is over.  The phone is a little warm, but not in any way concerning.

Battery is at 56%, so 17% use for 1 hour 58 minutes.

Don't know if that helps, and I didn't actually watch it, so I don't know how much starting and stopping there was, but it couldn't have been much because of the time it actually took to reach the end of the video.  (My guess is the initial start and stop was for buffering and once the buffer was full, it was able to play without issue.)

FWIW.

[Ironhold]

On 12/6/2023 at 11:07 AM, zil2 said:

The session is almost over.  The phone is a little warm.  I've taken it away from the router, in case that was part of the reason it's warm.  It looks like we're on the last talk.  OK, session is over.  The phone is a little warm, but not in any way concerning.

Battery is at 56%, so 17% use for 1 hour 58 minutes.

Don't know if that helps, and I didn't actually watch it, so I don't know how much starting and stopping there was, but it couldn't have been much because of the time it actually took to reach the end of the video.  (My guess is the initial start and stop was for buffering and once the buffer was full, it was able to play without issue.)

FWIW.

To me at least, that's still a bit alarming that an app can get a phone hot. 

And 17% is nothing to sneeze at. 

So even though you likely have a newer, better phone than I do, it still suggests that perhaps the app is too high-performance for its own good. 

[zil2]

1 minute ago, Ironhold said:

To me at least, that's still a bit alarming that an app can get a phone hot. 

Well, mine was only warm, and I don't think it's in the least alarming - video uses about as much of the processing power as a phone has - internet, video, audio - only the touchscreen is unused (unless you're touching the screen a lot during playback).  Video is known to be very intensive on computer resources.

That said, I think there's a fair chance that the app isn't as efficient as it could be - it's too new.  I imagine they'll be needing a lot of feedback (or perhaps beta testers if they don't have enough) and multiple iterations before it improves.  I think I mentioned that I saw no option for video quality - if they're streaming higher quality than my phone can display, that's a waste all around.  But even if not, it would be nice if they'd let me lower the quality so that I can save bandwidth / reduce demand on the phone's resources.  I mean, it's not like I need a high res view of the GC speaker - it's mostly audio I need.  Perhaps later they'll add an option for audio-only, too...

Anywho, sorry it's hammering your phone, hopefully they'll fix that.  And if you're willing, I think it would help to reinstall the app long enough to use its feedback option to tell them about it.