Cycling.tv - Does anyone still subscribe?

squired

The subject title says it all really. A few years back I did, but consistently poor streams and a price that seemed to be increasing exponentially ended my use of the site. For anyone who still uses it I'm wondering what it is like now?

Noodley

That's spooky. I got an email tonight from cycling.tv and thought 'bloody hell are they still around?' and was going to be posting a thread to ask if anyone still used them.... :shock:

skut

Even 15 months ago for the 2008 spring classics they were still pretty good. Trouble was that's all they did well. I cancelled 6 months ago.

Noticed Anthony and Brian are commentating on the British Premier Calendar on Eurosport now. Good commentary, shocking camera work.

guv001

I joined Cycling TV in 2006 and found that the coverage was up and down but the nail in the coffin was the 100% price increase they imposed on viewers. I know business is business but a jump that big was just not worth it to me.

reverendmark

Extremely flakey implementation, inscrutable user interface from the dark ages of the internet, botched takeover and random pop-up window link language, failure to support Macs.... I gave them money, I forgave their faults, and yet... A wasted opportunity.

Most annoying feature: emails telling you about races you couldn't access.

Kléber

I still tense up at the thought of their website, it was a pain to use. I would still pay for the high quality streaming but the site is such a pain to navigate and use that I'll put up with someone's flakey justin.tv stream instead.

There might be the opportunity to make the site free, because they could get many, many users and then sell the fact that they have a million subscribers around the world to waiting advertisers. Charging for a niche product like this when you can watch the race for free on other streams is tough.

afx237vi

reverendmark wrote:

Extremely flakey implementation, inscrutable user interface from the dark ages of the internet, botched takeover and random pop-up window link language, failure to support Macs.... I gave them money, I forgave their faults, and yet... A wasted opportunity.

Most annoying feature: emails telling you about races you couldn't access.

This sums it up perfectly.

When it worked, it was definitely worth the money. The picture quality was very good and commentary from Anthony and Brian was superb. But unfortunately it didn't work very often. The website was an absolute horror, I had login problems almost every time I visited the site, and finding the actual link to launch the correct stream was a challenge in itself.

Brilliant idea, let down by the execution.

I would still pay to watch high quality English language streams of bike racing on the internet. Especially the early season northern stuff that CTV specialised in. The niche is still there. It just has to be provided by a company that knows what it's doing.

sing_for_absolution

afx237vi wrote:

reverendmark wrote:

Extremely flakey implementation, inscrutable user interface from the dark ages of the internet, botched takeover and random pop-up window link language, failure to support Macs.... I gave them money, I forgave their faults, and yet... A wasted opportunity.

Most annoying feature: emails telling you about races you couldn't access.

This sums it up perfectly.

When it worked, it was definitely worth the money. The picture quality was very good and commentary from Anthony and Brian was superb. But unfortunately it didn't work very often. The website was an absolute horror, I had login problems almost every time I visited the site, and finding the actual link to launch the correct stream was a challenge in itself.

Brilliant idea, let down by the execution.

I would still pay to watch high quality English language streams of bike racing on the internet. Especially the early season northern stuff that CTV specialised in. The niche is still there. It just has to be provided by a company that knows what it's doing.

+1

Burghley

Another ex-subscriber here!

Put up with the flaky delivery when it was free, but got fed up when a premium price was added and lots of the stream was "Exclusive for North America".

Probably originally owned by an enthusiast who sold out...

Rgds

Pete

reverendmark

But it seems they DO have the Eneco tour!

What price my cycling withdrawal?

bikerZA

Sounds like they don't have any subscribers left!

donrhummy

The odd thing is they appear to have completely ignored all their users. I sent them a number of emails outlining issues I'd had and it seems you all had the same ones and they lost tons of subscribers. So why didn't anything change?

afx237vi

I think all the problems began after they were bought by jump.tv. In the first year or so it was a pretty small company and actually worked.

Is it still owned by jump.tv? Because some pages redirect to nmnathletics.com, whatever that is.

calvjones

afx237vi wrote:

I think all the problems began after they were bought by jump.tv. In the first year or so it was a pretty small company and actually worked.

Is it still owned by jump.tv? Because some pages redirect to nmnathletics.com, whatever that is.

IIRC it was pretty crap in the early days and the move to jump was supposed to bring better servers :roll: . I subscribed for a few years but moving to a Mac completely killed it for me.

Possibly the worst designed site I've ever used. The designer clearly never found the tick box that said 'open a new window?' in his HTML editor to untick the fecking thing.

Awful.