Cycling TV
Comments
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You're not alone - I just popped over to see if coverage is on yet but keep getting internal server error messages.0
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Yes, can't login. It was ok until about 1.15.Winner: PTP Vuelta 2007
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How can it possibly be that cycling.tv's website has got worse this year? If something starts out as really, really, REALLY bad, then surely it must be monumentally hard to get badder.
But apparently it has, so there we go.
It's a shame, because when it works, it's really good.0 -
It is hard to believe what a terrible website it is, the navigation is diabolical!!!
Certainly won't be renewing subscription this year!!
Adverts every couple of miutes, does my head in.
Was looking forward to watching this afternoon..........have to take my wife to the shops instead now!!0 -
And they have a monopoly
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Hooray, it's finally working for me. Picture quality is good at 800kbps too (miles better than the ToC).0
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still having problems - soooo frustrating..0
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afx237vi wrote:How can it possibly be that cycling.tv's website has got worse this year? If something starts out as really, really, REALLY bad, then surely it must be monumentally hard to get badder.
But apparently it has, so there we go.
It's a shame, because when it works, it's really good.
I did not renew my subscription this year due to the presence of consistent badness - if it is now badder than the previous level of badness it must be badbadbad.0 -
I wasn't happy when they tried to automatically take money off my credit card on the run-up to the anniversary of my previous payment. Thankfully the card had expired as I saw comments on their forum about people being charged but not getting their subscription because the price has gone up (and still chasing to get their money back).
I've sent various emails to them this year and not had one response (again I've seen comments about the same problem from others in the forum).
I held off re-subscribing until today but given the apparent problems on the site I'm seriously considering whether to bother in the short term.0 -
Cycling tv, what a load of rubish! Twice they emailed me this week to advertise that they were showing the races from Belgium, I bet they won't be sending me an apology for not being able to watch it :x0
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Their customer service is even worse than the website and I know that's hard to believe!
I took out a subscription last year and things were not too bad until they changed the website and after that I couldn't be bothered using it.
I didn't think anymore about it and I'd no intention of subscribing again, but in January they decided to lift money from my account. I couldn't believe they'd kept my account details and then withdrawn funds without permission, but I stupidly thought I'd give them another chance with the Tour of California coming up.
Anyway, on the day of the TOC Prologue and after about an hour and half of trying to get the site to work I discovered that I didn't even have an up-to-date subscription.
I've spent the last 2 weeks trying to get the money refunded and am still waiting!0 -
Having finally got onto the site, I get a message telling me that coverage won't start until 12:50 GMT! Funny how the ads for Zipp wheels and Ironman DVDs have no problem being transmitted.
What did work was the click through to Paypal where I've just cancelled my imminent subscription auto-renewal.
How long before someone is along to blame it all on our own ISPs?'This week I 'ave been mostly been climbing like Basso - Shirley Basso.'0 -
Managed to get it through a link on the innertube eventully. I saw the last 28km and missed all the helling.Winner: PTP Vuelta 20070
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what subscription would you sugest for Cycling.tv considering in the summer we get most on eurosport.co.uk?
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I was very anti-cycling.tv for a long time. The user interface sucks more than any other on the web, which is saying something. But after a lot of fannying about, I got the hang of it.
As far as connection speed is concerned, I've got a 3Mb connection which in practice rarely reaches half that. But today I watched het Volk at the max speed available on cycling.tv and it was almost as good as telly. I watched it on my 40" Bravia and enjoyed it immensely. No adverts. The higher quality streams are better, and are what make it worth paying for. better sound quality too. Martin Thingybob has improved and isn't quite as breathlessly annoying as he was a year or two ago. Brian is as good a reader of the race as it gets, up there with Sean Kelly.
So, despite my rabid diatribes against them I'm now converted.
Why pay £30 when you can get Eurosport? Cos they show some races that ES don't show, and the streams are kept online if you can work out how to get them. I have ES and ES2, and soon will be able to get ES International. cycing.tv is just another way to watch cycling.0 -
Hi there.
I've got mixed feelings about this. Technically Cycling.tv is a shambles. The website is abysmal, and their bandwidth allocation is definately insufficient. On the rare occassion i have managed to access a live race at a decent data rate, the connection dropped out as the race got towards the end, presumably because everyone else was logging on to see the end too.
Now I just save the races up and watch them on demand. Usually when I'm on the turbo or rollers - which is generally a mid week evening. I find when I watch the races on demand i have no problem either with bandwidth or connectivity.
Think back a couple of years though to before cycling.tv existed. There was zero coverage of these races in the uk. If you were lucky you could download a bittorrent of some illegally copied Belgian tv with unintelligable commentary. Cycling.tv seemed to be the only outfilt willing to step up and provided a product for this specialised market.
Personally, I just accept if for what it is, and I'm happy to pay to see minor classics, cyclocross, uci track world cup and premier calendar races that otherwise I'd never see.
Of course, if I could reliably watch all the live races at 1200kb/s through a sensibly designed website, that would be great!
Cheers, Andy
ps I haven't even gotten into the argument about the increase in domestic sponsorship that can be directly attributed to the cycling.tv coverage of Premier Calendar races, which is then resold to eurosport.
pps I also need to thank Brian Smith... I still owe him for a cracking leadout for the sprint at my local Thursday night world championships, plus his getting me a start at the Glasgow GP one year, but mostly for the great work he does with the Braveheart fund to support young Scottish riders.0 -
pps I've obviously not watched Het-Volk yet, and won't be wacthing KBK until at least Tuesday - so no spoilers please!0
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I hope that the people who run cycling.tv sort the technical problems out. It's this, rather than a lack of sponsorship and advertising, that will drive potential and existing subscribers away. And fewer viewers means less revenue. It's a fledgling technology which no-one seems to have got right yet - think about the ToC's official video stream which crashed worse than cycling.tv.
Surely they can get a place somewhere on Sky Digital?0 -
I tried to watch the highlights on video-on-demand this evening. Same thing. The picture freeze rendered it unwatchable. What's the point in having something if you can't watch it? Let alone pay for the privilege...?? I joined cycling.tv within a week of its release - but they won't be getting my money this time...0
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Looks like I've been caught out by the automatic Paypal renewal like so many others!
£19 deducted when the subscription is now £29 leaves me "unsubscribed" when I finally managed to log in on Saturday - so no Premium Channel access for me. Needless to say, my email to them remains unaswered.
The website is shambolic, and the customer service seems to be heading the same way...
Please post and alert us all if you manage to get a resolution to the subscription issue.
Rgds
Petewww.bikesetup.co.uk
miles more cycling comfort0 -
An update (with fingers crossed!)
Decided to telephone Cycling TV a few minutes ago - 020 7096 1303 - and spoke to a real (and extremely pleasant) human being who promised to make sure that the previous "unsubscribed" tag would be removed. She also informed me that with a renewal, I don't have to top up to the current price.
After my last post I am prepared to eat humble pie if her intervention enables me to watch the cycling.
Suggest that others in the same position telephone the company direct.
Rgds
Petewww.bikesetup.co.uk
miles more cycling comfort0 -
Looks like I've been caught out by the automatic Paypal renewal like so many others!
£19 deducted when the subscription is now £29 leaves me "unsubscribed" when I finally managed to log in on Saturday - so no Premium Channel access for me. Needless to say, my email to them remains unaswered.
The website is shambolic, and the customer service seems to be heading the same way...
Please post and alert us all if you manage to get a resolution to the subscription issue.
Rgds
Petewww.bikesetup.co.uk
miles more cycling comfort0 -
I cancelled my subsrciption and bizarrely for the first time in ages the coverage didn't crash when watching BKB for free. It was a bit fuzzy mind, but it worked for once.It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired. You quit when the gorilla is tired.0
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I have to say that the logging in bit seems hit & miss, but I watched Het Volk highlights uninterrupted, which was nice...The fast forward bit actually seems to work too.
Greg0 -
I had about 10 minutes of viewing at 800Kbps and was perfectly happy then it just all started to go bad - Freezing of pictures and commentary. I persisted with getting a snippet every few minutes or so but it was awful. HOWEVER, I then found the connection speed to my ISP's Broadband service had deterioted so badly I was only getting about 200Kbps. This situation persisted for about 2 hours before it got back to about 2.8Meg. I tried contacing my ISP (Orange) by phone but got no help so have e-mailed them and am awaiting a response. So there is possibly an issue with the ISP's ability to provide consistent bandwith also. I was able to watch the Cycling.tv Archived footage later with no problems at all. Yes, Cycling.tv have been poor - and I too had subscription problems where money was taken without prior warning via PayPal. I actually thought this meant I had a valid subscription until I tried to Login to my Premium account and found I did not. After firing-off e-mails to various addresses I eventually found my subscription had magically been activated - but without any explanation or comment from Cycling.tv. A few days later I got an e-mail from PayPal to say that the annual subscription mandate had now been cancelled (by Cycling.tv) again with no word from them. Pretty poor and very frustrating as it is good when it works and I like Brian and Anthony/Martin. Anyway, that was some ride by Gilbert - awesome !!!0
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Cycling TV.
I'm badly torn on this. I've always enjoyed great live pictures on Premium subscription (as someone pointed out earlier they cover a lot more than ES instead of Darts and Gymnastics!). Having said that I've not tried it this season (watched ToC on the official Amgen Adobe tracker - now there's a live TV interface for you, and was away this weekend so missed Het Volk and KBK). My problem with them has always been trying to watch highlights of races. I get the advert at the start and then lose the stream getting a 'server error' message. Last year the 'as live' highlights were available without ads for a few days so I was fine and watched great quality cycling (useful with Paris-Nice and Tirreno overlapping plus I work from home so have cycling on the one monitor whilst 'working' at the other).
Yesterday I tried to get Het Volk and KBK 'as live' highlights and got the advert then the drop off which was damn annoying.
I continually called Cycling TV last year about this problem ( emailing usually gets naff responses like 'is your pc switched on' or ' have you tried a lower connection speed' DOH!) and more often than not I got through to a pleasant human being who quickly sorted out my login problems which most people had when they changed their site over, but was unable to do anything about my highlights problem other than pass on the message ( and the buck) to Narrowstep or whoever handles that side of things and i got no response from them. I'll badger them again this week to see if anytihng happens and will continue to watch (hopefully) the live stuff up until mid May when my renewal is due.
If they could sort out the highlights problem fo me I'd be thrilled with them but if I have the same problem with the live stuff that others had then I wont renew - thanks for the heads up on the auto renew - i'll be all over that if I'm unhappy.0
