To all of you who have inquired - thanks. I'm OK. Here is the lowdown - I no longer live in the US. Life has led me to Europe (good reasons) but has left me in a quandary regarding the website. I have always said that I created and ran the site for myself, family and friends. I have always kept that philosophy. I am very happy that along the way it made it easy for many others to find soccer games in the US. While I still have access to pretty much all US channels, keeping a daily log of where to watch games has become somewhat unnecessary for me as I have so many sources for each game. I know this screwed up those depending on the site for updated TV info. Sorry. Still trying to figure out how to structure the site so it's informative but not only for US readers but for a-holes like me who have access from other countries. I keep the Calendar up to date and I have posted some articles but still playing around with what the final product will look like. But sorry, I don't believe it will be going back to the US-only TV listings because of the simple fact that I am no longer in the US. I have a few ideas and just need time to implement. Different life here and lots to do outside of soccer, as you can imagine. But I'll get there. As for Twitter - what a bunch of assholes. They suspended my account for "violations". All inquires have been dead ends! WTF did I do?? The only clue I got was that Sky in Italy may have been the one that reported me as "abusing the service". I went thru old tweets and found a single reference I made to SkyCalcio and that was a link showing what games are being shown in Italy. Other articles and readers are also complaining about being banned because they were promoting iptv services. I never did!! But it seems that I was lumped into this group. There is a big crackdown of illegal streams - especially in Europe. Fine. Good for them. But they are sweeping up people like myself into this group when I never promoted any such services. Do I use them? None of your business!! And when you think of all the degenerate politicians, charlatans, thieves and general a-holes that Tweet on a daily basis, and they ban me?? Anyway, thanks for asking about me. If you need any info on matches - US or elsewhere, feel free to ask I still get emails from providers. Happy to help. I'll keep everyone posted here as to future changes. SA
SA, thanks for all your hard work over the last several years, the site has been an indispensable resource for me and I know many others. I wish you luck in whatever comes next. During the last few years, I've been copying and pasting some of your TV info into a Google doc for my own benefit since I'm typically watching anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks behind the action and didn't want to be spoiled accidentally on any results. Since you stopped updating TV listings about a month or two ago, I've been using the schedule on your site and adding my own TV info to it (in your old format) in order to keep it going for myself. As it doesn't appear you'll resume with US TV listings, I will now make that Google doc available to anyone who wants it. The only caveat is that I'm only keeping listings for the "big 5" Euro leagues (EPL, Serie A, Bundesliga, La Liga & Ligue 1) and they're in a rolling format by day with each league in the order listed. I'm also not keeping track of replays and delayed broadcasts. Hopefully some of you will derive some benefit from it. Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h16lIyopxcNbQpfxmBjMVNVXBWVoNoGJRaL8pQV2ezA/edit?usp=sharing
Watched both Soccer Xtra shows this weekend. Pretty much the same as before: Jeremy, Gary, Thomas. BUT with the new addition of Kaylin(?) The Canadian lass, Who seemed OK but a little nervous on her debuts. They covered the usual stuff which i'm thankful for. Including MLS playoffs. (although not comprehensively)
It 's nice to see the big Libertadores Semi between Boca and River has been hyped up the last few days similar to the Spanish classic. I am also very glad beIN has the rights because Fox Deportes would have shown the World Series instead and relegated it to stupid Matchpass
I think the final season or two they were putting the Libertadores games preempted by baseball on Fox Sports Go, without needing a matchpass subscription. There are negatives and positives. BeIN has it in English as well (I think Fox had one season that they were putting games in English on FS Plus but I don’t think that returned for the final season.) But the Fox Sports South America feed Fox Deportes borrowed was superior to the BeIN announcers. Obviously Fox Deportes has far wider distribution available everywhere, whereas Dish is the only national non-streaming provider to offer BeIN. Many have to rely on Fubo or Sling or Fanatiz to get BeIN beyond their regular cable/satellite subscription. But, yeah, glad they’re promoting it and glad I’ll be able to watch.
You are correct about the FOX Sports go matches. I forgot about that. 2016 was the year FOX actually put the Semis and the Final matches in English on FS1. It was a great year since I really wanted Atletico Nacional to win and was able to see it in both English and Spanish.
Yeah, Fios isn’t national. Although to be fair, most of the providers in my brain when I quickly typed that aren’t national either. I guess only DirecTV and Dish are truly national (and even there a lot of apartment dwellers can’t get them). So basically my original comment was near worthless because I’m saying that one out of two doesn’t have it. Of the not OTT providers available to me, only one out of 5 carries (dish yes; directv, Comcast, Uverse, TVision [I think I can get TVision although I don’t see the point in finding out], no.)
Spectrum in Tampa/Orlando(former BrightHouse) has both Bein networks. No Idea if it is on all of the Charter and Time Warner systems that merged to form Spectrum
No TV (non-streaming) providers here in Miami have BeIN. Only Dish and that's about it. Maybe they should consider opening shop for a OTT service?
Comcrap don't have it and ATT don't have it. I think only Atletic Broadband has it but their coverage is pretty small here...
I went with Sling's one-year deal on the World Sports package to get get BeIN. I noticed that the Connect version of the Sudamericana final had a lot of digital noise (image breaking up and problems with pixels blowing out). The BeIN-1 and Ñ versions did not have this problem. Now watching Nigeria-Ivory Coast on my cloud DVR features the same problem via BeIN5 Connect. These problems didn't feature during the Libertadores and Sudamericana seasons so this is a new one. Are other people seeing these problems? I'm trying to figure out if this is Connect, Sling, or only the games I am watching. I haven't messed with Ligue 1 or La Liga.
I have Sling too, and yes this has been an ongoing problem on Connect recently, there were a couple of Ligue 1 matches which were unwatchable a month or so back. It was really bad for awhile, then it improved, and now it seems to be starting to crop up again. I tend to think this is a BeIN problem rather than a Sling problem because as you pointed out the main channels don't have this problem. Since I'm almost always watching on demand, I can't A/B it with the BeIN Connect App or its website to see if the issue's the same there.
Thanks, AD. My cloud DVR recording of the Connect Sudamerica Final would not play past the pre-game, so I used the on demand feature, and the image was very, very poor. Like you, I rarely watch anything live so I don't know if this is an on demand/cloud DVR issue but I doubt it. I sent an email to Bein but that has proven in the past to be a waste of time. I miss the days long, long ago when BeIN had a guy participating in these threads.
The production on these AFCON qualifiers is laughable. In the Cameroon match yesterday, the cameras aside from the main midfield shot (thankfully) were all 4x3 stretched to fill a 16x9 screen. This is 2019, people. Now, I'm watching Zambia-Algeria, and the score/clock box has the typical color strip below each team to indicate which is which. However, they show green for Algeria which is wearing white, while Zambia, which actually is wearing green, is shown as red. For a change, these have nothing to do with BeIN which is carrying it, it's the world feed and not their own graphics or cameras. (EDIT: They must have heard me complain from the future, as they put the proper colors below Algeria and Zambia in the scorebox for the second half)
The picture quality was fine. And 90% of the time it was OK because the classic midfield camera angle was in the correct aspect ratio. But anytime they showed a field level shot it was in a stretched 4:3, something I haven't seen in a broadcast in about 10 years. It had nothing to do with the provider or even BeIN, it was the on-site production crew.
My UNIMAS CL matches are all in 4:3 SD. I did not even know that anything current is shot in such format.
I sent BeIN an email about the Connect problem. They asked a bunch of questions, which they will ignore. I sent a screenshot and video sample. I don't know if they looked at the screenshot but I know they didn't download the video sample since wetransfer sends a receipt when the recipient downloads. Because the CAN U-23 matches were not up against any competition until CAN qualifiers started, I can't say if the Connect problem persists. The CAN U-23 were all showing on BeIN1 during the past few days and I've just been watching those on demand. I'll say that tech problems show me two things: (1) Not enough people watch niche leagues or they don't watch closely because my concerns just seem to be ignored as if the problems are unique to me. It took me about 6 months to get DTV to deal with a problem with NTEL during live Colombian league broadcasts and that problem was only fixed because I remembered that I had an email for a producer at DTV that dated back to DTV having Europa League rights. He put me in touch with another engineer who called NTEL's engineer and the problem was fixed within a week. That, after 6 months of emailing DTV customer service and being told that the techs watched NTEL and didn't see the problem. Of course, they never actually watched futbol, only other programming that didn't have the problem. So, I was probably part of a viewing audience of 10. (2) The providers don't actually send information along to engineers who deal with the broadcasts. Tech support for them means blaming the ISP, Roku/Amazon, and re-loading an app.
beIN are launching a free streaming service - beIN Xtra - ‘BeIN Sports Xtra will build on the network’s existing premium flagship English and Spanish feed offering in an effort to help drive awareness and tune in to content that would otherwise be crowded out of the live premiere window given the extensive rights offering in the US,’ BeIN Sports said in in its announcement. Article: http://www.sportspromedia.com/news/bein-sports-xtra-free-us-streaming-service-ott-la-liga SA www.soccertvblog.com
Pretty cool. I'm sure that pleases Ligue 1 and La Liga officials. beIN's future (and most of their present) is as streaming network.