May 5th: The BIG update.

[VReel-Eoin]

Before we kick off with what is definitely an extremely overdue update, let me start by saying that I'm personally sorry for the lack of updates and slow response time from myself and the VReel Team lately. I'm hoping that once you've finished reading this thread, you can happily state that we weren't sitting on our hands for the past couple of weeks - but have been preoccupied with events that we couldn't bring to the public light any earlier than this.

Last month, we completed successfully negotiating an investment for VReel. In the months preceeding this, I have drawn up the architecture to take VReel back to our "glory days", as the largest HD Video portal on the planet. Along with our new funding, our investing partners have given us resources that were previously impossibly unobtainable - allowing us to provide you with the absolute best service possible. There's a massive amount of changes coming at VReel, which I've gone into detail on below;

1) Zango Removal
As I'm sure you're all aware, financial constraints forced us to re-enable our Zango product gateway to support us over the past few weeks. With our new cash injection, we can now comfortably remove this gateway, and allow uninterrupted access to all of our users.

2) Content Delivery
We have had a fantastic relationship with Edgecast Networks since relaunching our Beta v2 - and I'm sure all of you will agree, their video delivery service was top notch throughout. While we intend on keeping Edgecast on board as a backup network, we have successfully negotiated a server & bandwidth deal from Level-3, WorldComm, MFN, Internap and AT&T - and will be using their services as our primary method of delivery. Level-3, WorldComm, MFN, Internap and AT&T are worldwide companies, who specialise in providing ISP Bandwidth. Leasing Tier 1 bandwidth from these partners is of course the next best thing to owning the physical fibre lines themselves - allowing us to deliver our content at the same high speeds, but at a lower price to ourselves. We will begin shifting our content within the next 2-4 weeks to our new delivery servers. we do expect some minor hiccups - we'll of course be on hand around the clock to action any issues which you encounter.

3) New servers, and lots of.
We will be moving our servers from Germany, back to the United States. Previously, we were working with a highly optimised 3-server load; One main webserver, one main video upload server, and one shared video server/database server, running from 10mbit/s switches. Our new server farm plays home to 10 highly powered servers, all capable of pushing out 1Gbit/s. This should see a dramatic increase in Upload speed, while also allowing for an overall improvement in pageload times. This switchover will also take place within the next 2-4 weeks.

4) On-page ad reduction.
While also being able to provide a much better service through our new architecture, we are also now running at a fraction of the cost - allowing us to reduce the amount of advertisements served through VReel. As of today, all of the following advertisements have been removed:

Pop-up advert
Pop-under advert
Pre-roll advert
Full-page advert
Float-in advert

This will of course allow for a more uninterrupted viewing experience for everyone involved. We expect all of these advertisements will be switched off for one month at a minimum. While we do believe that some adverts may temporarily need to be switched back on, we will be doing everything to ensure that there will be an overall massive reduction in the amount of advertisements on any page at VReel at any given moment in time.

We have also switched to using a smaller banner advert for our board header, to improve the overall aestethic feel of our forum.

5) Free embedding
At very long last, we are very proud to state that VReel will be returning Freely Embedded DivX HD content to the web. Our free users will now be able to take advantage of embedding our content onto their websites. This content will be supported by one pre-roll advertisement, and will contain a linkback to VReel underneath the video window. This is to ensure that we can cover the costs of our content delivery, while also improving our traffic (and community) at home. In an event of one video causing extreme server stress (i.e: using more than 1gbit/s of bandwidth on a constant basis), this video may be switched to a temporary linkback to its video page on VReel until its popularity decreases. This is to ensure that our global video load does not exceed such a point that it may hamper VReel's overall service.

6) Premium embedding
Premium embeds will remain as-is; ad-free and linkback free. However, there will be an increase to the maximum bandwidth allowed to our premium customers. Gold accounts will now be entitled to one terabyte of bandwidth, wheras Platinum accounts can avail of 5 terabytes of bandwidth. While it is possible that we may need to temporarily disable some Premium embedded content, this is highly unlikely - and we will be doing whatever we possibly can to ensure that this does not happen.

7) SurfTheChannel linking
I can happily say that we will be reinstating our video linking partnership with SurfTheChannel, once we have switched over to our new server farm. VReel has had a successful past relationship with SurfTheChannel, allowing their users quick access to our HD library - while providing us with millions of visitors per month. We look forward to an "event-free" and continued relationship with the SurfTheChannel audience.

8) Forum changes
I will be the first to throw my hand in the air and state that we could have run the forum a little better over the past couple of months - and I intend on making a lot of changes around here to improve our user friendly approach.

8a) Firstly, all non-swear wordfilters have been removed. However, we will still moderate any obvious attempts at self-advertisement etc.

8b) We have renamed our "Video Dump" to "General Online Video". This will be split into two subsections; General Video Host Discussion, and general video linking. We have recently installed a modification which will allow you to embed DivX and Flash Video content from various portals online. Our Video Host section will require post approval on all new threads to avoid this service being spammed. Our Video links section will be unmoderated for the most part - save for any trouble users. You may use this section to link to any non-pornographic & legal content you wish under DMCA guidelines.

8c) Introduction of "The land of the forgotton" - a general board for random content which normally would not fit anywhere else. Threads such as Forum games will be moved here. This board will also be loosely moderated.

8d) We have added a "Thanks" system - signified by a thumbs up icon at the end of every post. Clicking this will "thank" the user for their contribution. Go ahead, try it out

Below, I have listed our long-term changes coming to VReel in the near future;

1) The VReel Player
As is to be expected, we finally have an update on our VReel Player. We have decided to abandon the currently model of our VReel Player, and opt to build our own from the ground up. Unfortunately, we have found far too many difficulties in working in an open source environment - the largest of our concerns being that we would need to make constant security updates due to the fact that our source code would be so widely available. The VReel Player will be redeveloped under a closed source license, and will be fully capable of DivX, XviD and h.264 mkv playback. We will release more information on this in the future.

2) Redesign & Redevelopment
In my opinion, VReel is a little messy - and can be confusing to a new user. We will be working on redesigning VReel to still remain indepth, but also much easier to manage as a newcomer. Our frontpage & profile pages will be amongst the first pages to be redesigned. In terms of development, we will be adding several new features to VReel - the most major being a user application API, allowing the tech-savvy amongst us to program their own applications to run on VReel. This system will be similar to Facebook's proven model, and will allow for a shared revenue model for any interested developers.

3) Merchandising
One of the longest requested items on VReel has been to allow for our users to purchase VReel merchandising - this unfortunately proved prohibitably expensive as a start-up in the past. Over the upcoming months, we will be reviewing the situation, and hopefully make our wares available to purchase.

We will continue working as hard as we always have to provide you with the best online HD experience possible - and already have two competitions lined up to celebrate our continued growth.

Our first competition is "Project Renaissance" - we want to show off our new services, and want you on board to help us out. We want you to invite your friends, family, and total strangers to join us here at VReel - you'll find a link under your profile which will mark your invitation to other users to join VReel. The more successful signups you get, the bigger a chance you have at winning. We've got five prizes to give away:

5) One month free gold account
4) One month free gold account
3) One month free platinum account
2) three months free platinum account
1) Playstation Portable & three months free platinum account

This competition will run for 28 days, and will be starting as soon as we switch over to our new server farm. We will be making a seperate thread once this competition begins.

Our second competition is aptly titled "Im an artist". We want you to fire up photoshop/mspaint/pen and paper/drunken doodle on a napkin and show us what you want the new frontpage of VReel to look like. The winner will earn themselves a free six month platinum subscription along with an iTouch, while the runner up will get themselves a free six month gold subscription.

Both competitions will have their own threads started in our General VReel Discussion boards.

The upcoming months are going to be huge for us - and I personally can't wait to see what's in store. I'm personally shocked at the commitment that has been on display over our rough and tumble history. We all hope to make this up to what I believe is a hardcore fanbase by providing you with an unbeatable video delivery, social networking and community service.

I'd also like to take a moment to personally thank all of our premium subscribers - without you, we would not have lasted long enough to secure our now long term position in the market. Give yourselves a well deserved round of applause.

We'll have another update early tomorrow - with another nice suprise to throw at you.

Here's to ourselves, VReel, and a bright future. Let's do what we do best, and get things moving.

- Eoghan

[arges]

I must be dreaming, please don't wake me

good job guys

[dsinghdahiya257]

H()ly WoW

Nice job Vreel.

[badboy2k]

all sounds good eoin especially the removal of zango as a hell of alot of people who i have spoke to on here including alot of long term members have refused to use the site because of it.

i agree the layout needs revising as it is confusing like groops should be channels and the current channels should really be videos to make it more user friendly so i see you have had a good think about the layout you have so far

anyway over all this update sounds fantastic and im looking forward to seeing the improvements taking hold!

[Krinkle]

Great news !

All that we could imagine and what we could not have imagined possible came true. *speechless*

[infinityloop]

these are just awesome news!
i hope that vreel now has the required funds to keep this project going without returing to the ad-system we had here.

i have the feeling that usercounts might explode soon.

Originally Posted by badboy2k

all sounds good eoin especially the removal of zango as a hell of alot of people who i have spoke to on here including alot of long term members have refused to use the site because of it.

bingo. i am back now as well and will getorder a new premium membership asap.

Originally Posted by badboy2k

agree the layout needs revising as it is confusing like groops should be channels and the current channels should really be videos to make it more user friendly so i see you have had a good think about the layout you have so far

absolutelly.
i am looking forward to the new design.

[dtvPaulie]

It's always the quiet ones that make big waves......

[Totz]

Excellent news. I'm particularly excited by the addition of an API and the redesign. Maybe it could be a little brighter..? =p

[badboy2k]

Originally Posted by infinityloop

these are just awesome news!
i hope that vreel now has the required funds to keep this project going without returing to the ad-system we had here.

i have the feeling that usercounts might explode soon.


bingo. i am back now as well and will getorder a new premium membership asap.


absolutelly.
i am looking forward to the new design.

good to see you back infinityloop i reme,ber you saying you wheren't gonna use vreel because of zango and your not alone just to list a few people who refused to use it where you, lee and okokins just to list the ones i knew off the top of my head!

i hope the site stays zango free as they are one of the worst add companys on earth and even admit they sometime advertise unplesant sites!

but anyway this update is good for everyone!

ps: also recently in chat over the last few days the people who have came in saying there gonna try find somewhere else for online videos i have been telling them to wait and be patient as from your twitter updates i figured that ZANGO was going bye bye from your something expensive free to all statement!

[Mictlan]

Really good news Eoin! This just made my day... I am happy about all of it and I'm looking forward to see what is coming up in the following months!