c't stream game 1: c't and Christoph Gerlach explained well for newbies / techies, with the exception of minor rules mistakes in the explanations.

Ke Jie stream: I could not watch because Flash failed to work. Flash is a security risk anyway, so it was a terrible decision to use it. According to short translations by Laurent Heiser, Ke's comments must have been very good for dans. Too bad that they used the wrong software, as if they had never heard of HTML 5.

Other Asian streams: I was too busy with the other sources to try them.

Redmond stream: punctual, full coverage, good pronunciation, on average below my level but partly something to learn for me. It was announced that the stream would also be for beginners, so I simply tolerated the level, however, the positional judgement might as well have been entirely omitted and the gained time used for other topics. Garlock was simply needed as co-speaker so that Redmond need not speak for several hours nonstop. The special guests were fun watching. The waiting music could have been better. The press conferences are a topic of their own.

Kim stream: one hour delay, breaks technical difficulties, co-speaker posing cute questions. Kim exhausted at times, weak English pronunciation, emphasising manners of the program too much, not knowing well how bots think, mostly reasonable positional judgement even with a few good hints at dynamic aspects, average to good sequences for dans unless (see before), quitting seconds before the resignation. Rare, short i terventions by Hyehyeng [?] very good sequences. In conclusion, difficult to watch but on average better learning for dans than in the Redmond stream.

KGS Tictactoe: good for current position watching but overrun, so kibitzing would not be much fun. 1 move missing but otherwise easy SGF saving.

There have also been a few blogs, mailing list, private emails, web news etc. but those are other topics.

All in all good live access to the event with mediocre commentaries from a dan POV. The best in Asian streams was not universally available. Thanks to the self-organisation of all us watching it was possible to find out the URLs of the Western streams just barely in time.

The Kim Myungwan commentary was unwatchable - I find his voice grating, and the whole thing was painfully amateurish by comparison.

I thought Garlock was pretty terrible in the first two but improved after that with the feedback he received which was excellent to see and I'm sure he'll do better in future because of it.

The art of good commentating is appreciating that silence is valuable. Throughout, it felt that Garlock would try to fill any semblance of silence with whatever rubbish floated into his mind at that point. This is a pretty common flaw though; most sport commentators are very similar. It's much easier to overtalk rather than to undertalk .

And yes, it was cringe/silly when he started talking about if AlphaGo might put two stones on the board on its interface to resign, lol. That's exactly the kind of irrelevant overtalk stuff I mean.

In the USA sports TV world most of the commentary is repeating in words what just took place in the game, as though it was a radio broadcast rather than TV. Maybe Garlock was using that as his model for announcing.

try listening without watching the screen. Kind of makes you long for the days of radio.