Cycling TV (Is it any good?)

tony_hutchings@btconnect.

Has anyone any expirience of the Cycling TV website and whether it is value for money and is actually something you can watch over normal broadband speeds?

andyp

I stopped subscribing long ago. It should've been great but I had no end of trouble getting quality coverage of races and frequently missed out on the finish as they presumably couldn't cope with the demand. I don't know if it's changed, but found that once the spring was past they'd run out of decent races to cover.

I also had big problems with their customer service. They rather sneakily set up a repeating paypal payment so I automatically subscribed the following year, despite now intending to do so. After a month or so of chasing them for a refund I had to open a paypal dispute to get my money back.

squired

I gave up on cycling.tv a long time ago. Most of the major races are on Eurosport and a lot of the other races covered by cycling.tv seemed to be on in the week, which is no use when if you have a 9-5 job.

If you don't have Eurosport already I'd suggest looking at the Eurosport player, which I believe is very good. You can then look at sites like cyclingfans.com for free streams of other races.

thomasmc

Subscribed just for a Veulta a few years ago & thought it was fine but it has got its fair share of critics here

tony_hutchings@btconnect.

Thanks, the feedback so far is exactly what was worrying me. I think I will look at some of the suggestion made.

andyp

When Cycling.tv started finding internet streams of races was almost impossible. Nowadays the advent of justin.tv and www.cyclingfans.com means you can get coverage of pretty much every race that's televised in Europe for free. You might not get English language commentary but think of that as an excuse to learn cycling expressions in other languages.

calvjones

I have found it endlessly frustrating and given up. But I do use macs.

OP, do you find you get a lot of spam with your username = email address?

dougzz

andyp wrote:

When Cycling.tv started finding internet streams of races was almost impossible. Nowadays the advent of justin.tv and www.cyclingfans.com means you can get coverage of pretty much every race that's televised in Europe for free. You might not get English language commentary but think of that as an excuse to learn cycling expressions in other languages.

This reminded me of a great bit of commentary in the Giro last year or maybe 08. Duffield was saying he couldn't remember the Italian for (pardon the spelling) regrougemont, Harmon suggested it was ageddatogether....

OK it made me laugh.

greeny12

I'm another ex-subscriber who gave up over quality issues.

The website was so unbelievably clunky it wold have been funny had it not impacted so badly on my viewing pleasure.

Availed myself of Eurosport player for half price (£17 for a year!!) over Christmastime and the rest I'll make up from Cyclingfans or steephill.tv, which is also worth a look for streams, as is mp2p.eu

blazing_saddles

Which reminds me, we had the Trofeo Mallorca, last year.
I know the feed broke down, when Colom stole away to take the overall, but
anything is worthwhile, in early February.
It starts on the 7th.
Anyone had a sniff as to if there's any coverage, this year?

Cycling tv is defunct and a waste of cash.
Folks have and will point the way.

Bernie S

We are promised a live stream via IB3TV ...watch cyclingfans.com

afx237vi

Agree with what everyone else said. It worked fairly well for me when it first started out and I was happy to pay for it... but they seemed to overhaul their website every 6 months or so and each time it got worse and worse until it became unusable (for me). The price kept going up as the service got worse, too.

Stick to Cyclingfans.

AndyRubio

It's kak. Real kak. Don't bother.

Maxiton

The absolute worst. Before last season they advertised a package called "Giro d'Italia." $99. Included all pro races and, of course, the Giro. A week before the event, they announced that, well, they didn't exactly have the rights to broadcast the Giro . . . but they were hoping they'd be able to secure the rights through last minute negotiations . . . .

As it turned out no rights were secured. Well, write to us, they said, and we'll respond with a special offer to make it up to you. I think those members who bothered to write were given an extra month of membership or something. Then they promised to show the Vuelta, but that too fell through.

I think the only reason they got away with selling these "Giro d'Italia" memberships was because they are in the UK and most of their members are not. And also because, apparently, no U.S. district attorneys (or their Brit equivalents) took notice . . . .

Half the time the broadcasts they did show live didn't work. And needless to say customer service is non-existent. From doing a Google search, I found that this has been going on for years. And unbelievably it continues still.

It's too bad, because there's enough interest in cycling worldwide for an honest broker to make money. Probably a lot of money. The world is ready for internet broadcast of cycling races. But you won't find it at Cycling.tv.

conceptual_primate

Apologies for hi-jacking this thread a wee bit, but for those who mentioned Eurosport; does anyone else have the problem where what's actually being shown doesn't line up with the schedule?

I think I first tried to watch cycling on ES for the 2007 TdF and every highlights show was out of sync. Despite Sky+ing the program, sometimes the program actually started 30+ mins after scheduled or didn't appear at all.

This happened last year too (at the Vuelta I believe) when I went to watch a stage and they were showing the tennis. It wasn't even as if the tennis match had overrun, it was one of those replays they show when play is rained off, ffs!

Considering that these occurances were 2 years apart, it seems that it's not the odd one off and ES have made no headway to fixing. Must admidt I don't watch an awful lot of ES, so not sure if it is everything or just cycling?

Kléber

Eurosport is live TV and schedules will always be subject to change. Even a 90 minute footy game can go to extra time, but a tennis match or bike race can vary a lot.

Like everyone else, I subscribed in the past but the website was a pain to use and you can get free streams. As much as the commentary from McCrossan and Smith was good and informative, there's nothing like watching the Belgian classics with Flemish commentary... even if you don't get the language! Plus CTV didn't have the rights to a lot of races anyway, so you get some races but not them all.

http://www.cyclingfans.com/

stueyh

Can't say I ever signed up for a paid account as the website and whole shambles of a site put me off. Also all the freebie streams they gave were pretty ropey. One thing for sure though I do get tons of spam sent to the unique email address I signed up with. [/u]

terongi

It's worth knowing that the Eurosport audio player is subscription-free

This means you can find the best quality free video stream in any language, turn the sound off and have Harmon and Kelly audio running at the same time.[/b]