Important News About Cathe Live

I do my Cathe Live workouts off my MAC Airbook. As of Thursday, everything was fine. Starting on Friday (1/31/20), I can't get the video to display across the entire screen. It plays in the little"Live" box and when I hit the arrows to enlarge it to the entire screen, the background goes black but the display area remains the same small size. I would say it is only about half the size of my screen so annoyingly small. Is anyone else having this problem?
 
Hi, Cathe, I posted this yesterday on FB, but I'm guessing you were busy and didn't see it. This is what I said : "I know you just updated something (the servers?) for Cathe Live and I'm wondering if that caused the problem I had this morning wth Jabs and Abs. I tried accessing on two different browsers, but it stopped and buffered over and over and it was so time-consuming that I finally switched to the downloaded version I bought from you, in order to complete my workout and get to the office. Has anyone else contacted you with this problem? Also, there didn't seem to be a choice for higher or lower quality, just the one (which wasn't the best)."

Thanks,

Annie
 
I encountered the same issue as hiho322 this morning. It the first PHA live class and it stopped a couple of times but I was able to finish it. The website only displays 2 pages of workouts and it doesn't show both low and high versions. I cleared my cache and cookies and restarted, logged out and in and it is still doing the same thing. I actually didn't see any issues all week long until this morning.
 
Hi hiho322,

Let me first answer your question about not seeing a low-quality Cathe Live video selection. Cathe Live now uses HLS adaptive streaming which means we now send out a "single" stream with seven different quality streams included in the stream. Our system will automatically detect which quality your internet speed and device can handle and will send that stream to you. If your internet speed drops or increases during the broadcast our system will switch to a different quality stream that it sends you. The idea behind all of this is to send you the best quality stream your system can handle.

As for your issue, there can be many reasons. This includes problems at our end as well as issues downstream from us, including your ISP and your device. As we mentioned previously you can expect a lot of freezing issues for about a week for many of the videos as they haven't been cached on servers worldwide yet - Let me explain:

All of the 282 Cathe Live videos have been uploaded to a an Akamai storage server. The videos will stay in the storage server until a subscriber request to play a video. When this happens the video will be transferred and cached on a server in the geographic location nearest to where they live. As subscribers from around the world make more requests, the videos they request will begin to be cached on servers around the world. Requests made from the storage server are slower and will often have freezing issues. Cached videos are much faster and will have far less freezing issues. Hence, once enough people around the world have made a request for all of our videos, all of the videos will be cached and a majority of freezing issues will stop. However, engineers at Akamai may still have to make tweaks to our delivery system after all of the videos have been cached. This is something we will be working on as we continue to monitor the performance of Cathe Live.

Also, I know last night at 11:30 pm est I was having quality and freezing issues on playing #282 and a few other videos I tried. This morning all of these videos are playing fine. So, the problem was likely a caching issue, but we will know more after a few more days. I would suggest you try playing all of the videos you want to do for the coming week now to make sure the videos get cached (this can usually take 24-48 hours or longer) and let's see if this makes a difference. Also, can you do a speed test at speedtest.net and let me know your download speed and ping? Also, what type of device are you trying to play on?
 
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I encountered the same issue as hiho322 this morning. It the first PHA live class and it stopped a couple of times but I was able to finish it. The website only displays 2 pages of workouts and it doesn't show both low and high versions. I cleared my cache and cookies and restarted, logged out and in and it is still doing the same thing. I actually didn't see any issues all week long until this morning.

Hi ebonynicole,

Make sure to read my response to hiho322 as it should answer most of your questions. But the one thing I forgot to mention in my response to hiho322 is to clear your browser's cache. If you're not seeing all of the videos on our website this should solve your issue and might help with some other issues too.
 
I do my Cathe Live workouts off my MAC Airbook. As of Thursday, everything was fine. Starting on Friday (1/31/20), I can't get the video to display across the entire screen. It plays in the little"Live" box and when I hit the arrows to enlarge it to the entire screen, the background goes black but the display area remains the same small size. I would say it is only about half the size of my screen so annoyingly small. Is anyone else having this problem?

Hi geomom, I think we have fixed this issue. You may need to clear your cache, but can you try again and let us know if it is working for you now?
 
Hi firemedic, it's probably more accurate to say we have released new versions of Cathe Live for all of our apps and everyone is on Akamai now, but we're continuing to release even newer versions to fix issues and to add new functionality. For example today we have released two more Roku upgrades that fixed an issue with about 12 videos that wouldn't play past about 20 seconds. These problems have now been fixed, but our fix may take 24 hours to automatically update on Roku. You can force it to happen now by rebooting Roku and clearing cache. We have also issued an update to our Cathe Live web app to fix an issue with full-screen view not working.

The only know current app issue is that you can not add or remove favorites on our Fire Tv app. Everything else should work on Fire Tv. We will issue an update shortly on this.

We will now turn our attention to making sure the quality of our stream is working correctly and that users don't experience freezing or quality issues. A lot of these issues will resolve themselves on their own once the videos have been cached on Akamai cloud servers. This may take several days to happen. Akamai will also do some testing starting tomorrow and may tweak our settings and do some other things to help make our streams as trouble-free as possible.
 
I did the latest Live workout via the Firestick this morning. It stopped more than a few times and the quality would get really bad in spots.

Thanks.
 
I too did the latest live and other than in the beginning, it was a little less quality, it did not stop on me once and the picture was perfect. Now yesterday I did a older one, from 3-2016, and I had issues with pausing and quality, but I expected that since that's what we were told to expect for a week or so. I also use the firestick. My favorites were there but thanks for letting me know that I cannot add to my favorites right now.
 
Hi jacmar, it could be you're playing a video that hasn't been cached yet. But also make sure to reboot your Firestick and clear the cache. We were having some quality and freezing issues on our Firestick this morning too, but after rebooting and clearing cache the problems went away.
 
I have noticed a couple of issues with Cathe Live. First, the newer workouts (above 230 or so) are not showing up at all. Second, when I tried to play 215 Total Body Blast with Step and Ball, the workout kept freezing and then it went to a blank black screen.

Any idea when the newer workouts will show up? For instance, I am missing the Love Me Some Kickboxing 57 minute workout.
 
Hi enj412, Are you not seeing the newer Cathe Live workouts on your computer's browser? You should see all of the Cathe Live workouts. If not, you probably just need to clear your browser's cache.
 
AH! I just went to do an older cathe live workout and and they are all gone and so are my favorites. I've cleared the cache and have unplugged/plugged back in my firestick to reboot. I just
 
I had the same problem with my firestick and all my favorites were gone. I uninstalled and re installed the app and then my favorites were back. My problem now is, I just finished a workout and I cannot log out. When I try to get the sign out highlighted to sigh out, it just takes me back to the live page with all the workouts.
 
I’m really frustrated with this new system. So does this mean I have to prewatch any videos on Cathe Live before I do them so that I don’t have issues with freezing and quality? I tried this morning to do a #280 and the quality is awful. It’s blurry and keeps freezing. I have a google mesh in my room so I know there isn’t an issue with the strength of my wifi. I’m trying to play it on my Apple TV.

Please give us an update on the quality and freezing issues and confirm whether or not we need to watch a video before doing it.
 
Hi MelanieC, the only reason we have asked people to pre-watch is to speed up the caching of the videos. Caching only happens when at least one person makes a request for a video in their geolocation. Hence, we want to speed this process up and make sure everyone is watching a cached video.

However, this is not the only issue we're facing and working on. We're also working on tweaking the web player or replacing it with another player. But this shouldn't affect what you see on Apple Tv. I'm actually watching #280 on Apple TV right now and I'm about a third of the way through it and the quality is excellent and I haven't seen any freezes or issues so far. You might need to close the app and try again. It's also possible that nobody has selected this video in your area and it has not been cached on a server in your geolocation. Hence, I'm not seeing any issues because I'm watching a cached #280 and your having issues because the #280 your watching is not a cached file. If you can try this video again in a day or two and see if the quality problems go away. I've done this for several videos and usually in a day or two the video becomes cached and my problems go away. Hope this helps.
 
Hi MelanieC, the only reason we have asked people to pre-watch is to speed up the caching of the videos...You might need to close the app and try again. It's also possible that nobody has selected this video in your area and it has not been cached on a server in your geolocation. Hence, I'm not seeing any issues because I'm watching a cached #280 and your having issues because the #280 your watching is not a cached file. If you can try this video again in a day or two and see if the quality problems go away. I've done this for several videos and usually in a day or two the video becomes cached and my problems go away.
Sorry but I’m still not understanding the benefits of moving to this system. From what I understand you’re saying that people in my area need to watch a Cathe live video so that I can get a good quality video? Honestly there are mornings when I start my workouts at 6:00 am and just want to spontaneously choose a Cathe live workout. I don’t want to worry about whether or not the video is cached or whether people in my geolocation have watched the video I’d like to use.

Quite frankly this doesn’t make any sense. I’ve paid in good faith for my membership and I should be able to expect a product that works when I want it to and not have to wait a few days for it to work again.
 

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