Eurosport Player - Stream quality?

Zendog1
Zendog1 Posts: 816
edited July 2017 in Pro race
I'm going to be in hospital for most of this years TdF :(:( and looking for a way to watch it.

Eurosport player has been suggested against the well expensive pay TV they have. The hospital does have WiFi on the wards unknown bitrate. Anyway as the title what is the quality of the stream - especially in the last few klicks when presumably lots of people start the app. I used to have Cycling TV and that was so cr*p it was worse than useless.

Oh and what is the app like to use - the first few days after the opp I won't be wanting complicated / crashy.

Cheers
Steve

Comments

  • RichN95.
    RichN95. Posts: 27,137
    ITV player is free. Watch it on ITV4

    (Only good if you're inside the UK)
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  • Zendog1
    Zendog1 Posts: 816
    I will be in the UK but prefer the Eurosport coverage. £ 30 for a lot of cycling to help pass the time is a deal I'm happy with.
  • argyllflyer
    argyllflyer Posts: 893
    As with any live video the faster the connection the better the performance. I find ES player variable in terms of quality. However it does have a good 3 hour live rewind so if you have just missed something you can jump in a wee bit behind and catch up. Most stages of races get archived for a few weeks.
  • daniel_b
    daniel_b Posts: 11,538
    As with any live video the faster the connection the better the performance. I find ES player variable in terms of quality. However it does have a good 3 hour live rewind so if you have just missed something you can jump in a wee bit behind and catch up. Most stages of races get archived for a few weeks.

    Hopefully wrong on this, but pretty sure the 3 hour playback is not accessible, or very difficult to engage on a mobile device - works fine on a laptop though.

    Playback was ropey for me when I had standard broadband, but now i have upgraded to fibre and use a google chromecast on the tv, it runs like a dream, probably top quality 85% of the time, an occasional drop in bitrate, but then picks up again as soon as it can.
    I also utilise the video archive extensively - only downside is that you can't access broadcast programs for something like more than 1 week.
    I also think they could improve it hugely by allowing you to download videos and watch them offline, like iplayer does.

    Having said that, I would be surprised if your hospital wifi is up to the job, but I dearly hope it is.
    As already suggested, I reckon ITV4 is your best bet - not a Carlton Kirby fan myself, loved the Giro coverage, but will be ITV4ing it purely because of CK.
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  • mechanism
    mechanism Posts: 891
    Similar to the other replies, Eurosport Player is max. 720p when your internet connection is up to it. Image quality is OK but not great on a large TV, but would be fine on a tablet or phone and the Android app works well for me.

    As has been said it all depends on the WiFi or 4G if that's an option, maybe with a data sim.
  • bobmcstuff
    bobmcstuff Posts: 11,196
    Further to the above it does depend a bit on what you're watching it on - if you're watching it on a phone screen then it hardly matters if it's a bit lower resolution.

    I watched the final Giro TT on my phone on 4G on Brighton beach and it worked fine, picture was totally fine. Pretty sure if I'd been casting it to a 50" telly it would have looked atrocious mind.
  • daniel_b
    daniel_b Posts: 11,538
    Have to be honest here, as long as I do get the full bandwidth available, and am sending from my phone to chromecast device on a 42" tv, you can't tell it is not a standard quality broadcast, people have come round, and just assumed I have a paid for Eurosport channel.

    Not sure if that is a combination or one or other result of fibre\chromecast - but just my personal experience, and not relevant to the OP at all :-)
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  • larkim
    larkim Posts: 2,474
    App is great, never noticed any drop off when the busy times come along. But suspect the wifi in the hospital will be a big bottleneck, I'd suspect they'd have traffic / load management in place to stop every man and his dog streaming video all the time, so you could find the bandwidth is quite badly throttled. Next option might be a Three mifi 4g box - but that would be about £40 to buy, £20+ for the one month contract and relies on there being good 4G in the hospital area. Plus you could well blow though more than 20Gb data if you stream the tdf every day.
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  • timothyw
    timothyw Posts: 2,482
    Eurosport player is quality, no complaints here, although I wonder if you might be able to come up with a decent backup with some kind of portable telly (or more likely a TV tuner usb stick in a laptop?)

    The tour is live free to air on ITV4, might be better than cruddy wifi, although you might have a job getting good signal from a portable aerial, depending on where the hospital is and how high up you are!

    Does ITV player let you download shows for offline viewing? If all else fails you can probably download the highlights show and watch it each day.
  • kingstongraham
    kingstongraham Posts: 26,133
    Zendog1 wrote:
    I'm going to be in hospital for most of this years TdF :(:( and looking for a way to watch it.

    Eurosport player has been suggested against the well expensive pay TV they have. The hospital does have WiFi on the wards unknown bitrate. Anyway as the title what is the quality of the stream - especially in the last few klicks when presumably lots of people start the app. I used to have Cycling TV and that was so cr*p it was worse than useless.

    Oh and what is the app like to use - the first few days after the opp I won't be wanting complicated / crashy.

    Cheers
    Steve

    The app is simple - there is nothing to it for live TV. Start the app to start the live feed, and scroll up and down on the page to move from channel to channel.

    Really depends on your connection speed, but had no issues with losing quality on it at key moments at all. I also find it works on some wifi networks where my Virgin TV Anywhere doesn't.

    Decent through chromecast as well, but that's less immediately relevant for you.
  • Bobbinogs
    Bobbinogs Posts: 4,841
    Yepp, agree with all the comments on here. The app works great on Android (and Chromecast is fantastic). 3 hour wind back is only available on laptop/online so i use that instead for delayed watching and stream through a converter to the TV.

    The bigger nut to crack is the net speed. Any app/package you get will be wholly dependent on the speed and reliability of connection.

    Oh, my wife and I think Carlton Kirkby is great :-)
  • imatfaal
    imatfaal Posts: 2,716
    Ditto above remarks. If you are gonna go for it spend some time checking different deals - there is quite a variation in price depending on how you buy coverage. And hope the hospital thing goes as smoothly as imaginable.
  • Zendog1
    Zendog1 Posts: 816
    Thanks for the replies.

    I will be watching (hopefully) on a 10.1 android tablet so image quality shouldn't be a problem.

    I'm going to sign up for the player and see how it goes. Touch wood on the wifi but if not it's only £30.

    Cheers
    Steve
  • curium
    curium Posts: 815
    There's a ES app for the Apple TV which is brilliant. No good if you're hospitalised I guess.
  • Zendog1
    Zendog1 Posts: 816
    Update on this.

    Bitrate on hospital wifi varied between 0.3 and 3 mbs. The Eurosport player worked great at all bitrates seeming to adapt to what was there. ITV app was useless - crashed on anything lower than best rates.

    So to anyone considering shelling out £30 in sililar circs it's well worth it.

    Incedentally the opp went well and I'm slowly recovering. Breathing through a hole in my neck woll have me off the bike for a while but it's better than being dead!

    Cheers
    Steve
  • Ben6899
    Ben6899 Posts: 9,686
    Glad the operation went well and that the Eurosport Player option worked out! Get well soon.
    Ben

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