Just fired up the English feed of the C.A. River Plate-Santos Sudamericana match on Connect from earlier today and it sounds like a young child is doing play-by-play.
Hudson has a passion for South American Soccer like no other English born commentator I have ever heard in my life. Him doing Libertadores is fine by ,me.
The CONNECT broadcast for Macara-Guabira showed the BEIN channel logo with commentary underneat, so no actual footage of game action. Luckily the game is supposed to air on BeIN Espanol today. One would think that the engineers would see that there was no image last night. Hopefully the broadcast today happens.
Whoever's doing the graphics for the world feed of Copa Libertadores consistently has the wrong team advancing when the aggregate score appears every 10 minutes, noticed this in Barcelona-Defensor as well as the Miniero match.
OK, mea culpa on Barcelona-Defensor as I was unaware the first leg result had been overturned due to an ineligible player and I was muting Metellus and whoever that other guy beIN was using is. But the graphics folks did have the Miniero bit wrong as things went the way I thought they would based on their first leg result.
I think some BeIN announcers will get up to speed with these tournaments but in general this was my big concern with BeIN buying the rights: most of the announcers don't seem to spend much time reading about football or paying attention to games not involving big clubs. For example, Phil Schoen and Ray Hudson talked about the Barcelona-Defensor match coming up and were still relaying the score from the match itself, not the changed score due to Barcelona's fielding of an ineligible player. Ok, so you (Art Deco) didn't know that the first leg result had been changed, but it's not your job to know that (and I don't know how much Libertadores occupies your viewing time compared to other leagues). But this is Phil's job. I generally like Phil as an announcer but I can't say that he's proven to be well-versed in stuff he's not calling. He's not alone on that front, but then Andres Cordero has shown to pay attention (or at least now how to put together a diverse info sheet so he can fake that he knows what's happening). So, I would expect that English coverage of these tournaments will be hit and miss. Unfortunately, the bigger the game probably the bigger the miss because BeIN will want to put their "A team" on those games.
Oh and one other thing. I'm currently watching Macara-Guabira, which I recorded from BeIN Espanol. The first half was Spanish. The second half has just begun and the commentary is in English. Again, I have no idea how an engineer would miss this, but the larger question I have is why they didn't schedule and show the English commentary broadcast yesterday on Connect; they have 8 channels and this was a late game so no conflicts with African or European games on Connect. They only scheduled the Spanish version, which was screwed up (as I described above).
I checked with my friend and the Connect channels (La Liga TV and BeIN 4-8) are indeed included within the Sling app on the World Sports package. I see $60 annual and they send you a Roku express advertised. My friend said he did the free trial of the Spanish package and when he tried to cancel before the trial was over they offered him the World Sports package for $45 for the year (sans roku).
This is only available to new customers, so those currently with Sling will have to create a new account.
I'd say that one of my biggest irritants is inept production and programming decisions by soccer networks. But having BeIN on Sling is going a long, long way to letting bad decisions roll right off me. For example, BeIN listed Defensor v. Atletico-MG on the guide and then had Defensa v. Botafogo listed for later on delay. I set the cloud DVR to record the Libertadores match and went to watch only to find the Sudamericana match. No problem, the on demand options for Connect led me right to the LIbertadores game. No need to curse BeIN management or yell at the TV. Haha. Then there's another benefit. I set the DVR for the Sudamericana match on Connect and BeIN just to cover my bases in case the on demand feature stops working. I'm used to two steps forward, three steps back with US TV coverage. And I find an added gift: BeIN USA commentators for Defensa v. Botafogo on BeIN but the Connect broadcast uses the English feed. Amazing. The Connect option it will be after I finish the Libertaodres game.
Sling is running a special on the world sports package. $5/month for the 1st 3 months or $45 for a year
A little disappointing they didn't show the tunnel and players walking out ahead of the Sevilla x Barca match on Saturday. Always a riveting atmosphere in Seville ahead of big matches. I could understand if there were back-to-back matches and there wasn't enough time to fit your commercials in between games, but they had a 45 minute pre-match show for this particular match and you still can't go to the stadium 3 minutes before kick-off?
Thanks for that tip. Used the chat feature to request a change from $10 per month to the $45 per year and am all set with that.
Interesting. I was just going to create a new account when my month ends next week since it said it was limited to new subscribers, but I'll try that option if that proves unsuccessful.
Same here. If you click the bein deal it will advertise $45/month but will check out at the $60 with roku price point Also bein sports connect is down on roku
I didn't bother looking on the website but instead just went to the chat option, posted that I read that they had a deal for $45 for a year, and wanted to know if I could change my sub. The CS rep asked me to hold on while she checked, came back and said all was good. The rate starts for me on March 1 and lasts for a year. So, I would recommend following the same move. Just say a friend told you about the deal and you want that deal as well. If you have cloud DVR they will bill the full year for that as well so the total bill is $105, which is fine when I was paying $15 per month. Realistically, the on-demand options make Cloud DVR kind of moot but I still do it because I'm a bit too obsessive for my own good when it comes to Libertadores and Sudamericana. I figure I will set the DVR for every English option and if there is a screwup I can go to the Spanish on demand.
Bein and Bein Espanol now on Fanatiz. For 9.99 a month you get those plus tyc sports Goltv and RCN. All the Bein stuff plus Colombian League on RCN All the Argentine League and cup matches plus various lower div. matches and basketball,volleyball too from Argentina. All in HD including Goltv in HD. A great deal with good streaming quality.
For me, what would make cord-cutting a bit more of an easy-to-use slam-dunk is if there was a stable, reputable and cost-effective "aggregator" who replaced the TV channels I get today from cable. And ideally also an aggregator for the various streaming sources I have to contract separately with as well. Fubo seems to be focusing on the first idea and they might be pretty close (although they still don't offer all my key cable channels I think). But I guess we're a long way from the second idea... a streaming aggregator. And what are the chances of that happening at all? It's a lot trickier than just rerouting live broadcast TV signals. The varied login authentications and interactive UI controls makes a unified, aggregated experience a bit of a pipe dream? I guess the various providers (NBC, ABC/ESPN, FOX, NETFLIX, HULU, AMAZON, etc, etc) would have to want to do this for some reason, in order to work on some sort of compatibility standards. I won't hold my breath.