They were over a million a few months after launch. More than half a million signed up for the UFC debut show. They didn’t say how many of those stayed on after the 7 day trial thus offered before the show expired.
As of right now, the 4R show is up. Edit: And it's well worth a watch. Dodgy pitches, giant upsets, some great goals. And miracles of miracles the 3R show is still there too.
I've generally watched ESPN+ content live, and I've given them kudos for having what may be the best quality streaming platform for that. But as I am playing more non-live content of late, including the FA Cup Highlights Show right now, I've been seeing more problems: "Your content cannot be played right now, please try again later" (or something to that effect... have seen that on several shows lately) Move the slider back a few mins and the audio goes back to that point, but the video remains frozen on the frame it was just on (had to close & reload that show in order to fix) Anyone else seen stuff like this?
Not exactly those same problems, but I am having issues with the slider. Its very difficult to go backward or forward in small chunks (and by that I mean anything less than 5 minutes). This wasn't an issue until just a few days ago. Also, the app takes forever to load on my Galaxy phone! Its basically unusable atm, I have to use my ipad. This is probably a short-term issue that will get fixed with the next update though. The third annoying thing is there is a separate tab for "ESPN watch" & "ESPN+". And adding to the annoyance is that "original shows" fall under the 'Watch' tab even if they are only available on ESPN+ (like ESPNFC). Why have separate tabs? Those who subscribe to "+" don't give a shit if something is on + or Watch, we just want to access the full inventory in one place with one search. From a business angle, it also makes sense to put everything in one place cuz then those who don't subscribe to + can see what they're missing. Just bizarre.
If you're having an issue with using the app on a Samsung phone, I recommend deleting and re-installing the app. I had similar problems with my Note, and doing that fixed all of my issues. All I had to do was login again, and everything was back to normal.
You can double tap on right side of the screen to advance 10 seconds, and on the left side to go back 10 seconds. They implemented that feature several months ago, so make sure you have the latest version in case you have automatic updates turned off or something.
Fiorentina-Roma in Coppa Italia right now with no crowd/stadium noise mixed in. I wish they’d sacrifice the announcer rather than the stadium noise. EDIT: the noise came in around the 25th min.
There's a bunch of sound oddities in Serie A matches and shows. I'm sure IMG has their top interns on production
Agreed about the slider. It's practically unusable. Especially when going forward. The backward 15secs works nice for a minute or two back. I think most if not all of the various players I've used pretty much suck in this regard. I have/had one apps that had a nice feature 30secs forward or back (2 buttons). I found that extremely helpful. As for the two-tabs issue, I wonder if it's like NBC/Gold? It's way too bifurcated on the website, but IIRC it's integrated on their Roku app. I commented about that in the NBC thread. I speculated that it has something to do with different credentials you use for each, i.e. cable provider login for NBC vs separate login Gold. Could same be true for ESPN vs Plus?
It could be. WatchESPN is based on your TV provider like watching games from NBC, NBCSN, or CNBC. Plus is paid like Gold and doesn't require a TV provider. As for your first error "Your content cannot be played right now, please try again later" (or something to that effect... have seen that on several shows lately)," I was getting that whenever NCAA Basketball games had timeouts, and I had to refresh. I've seen it for soccer during halftime, but not during play. If you get it while watching live during halftime, set a timer to go off when the second half will start and refresh then.
Just realized something pretty cool on the ESPN app: Just like with Netflix, you can download certain movies and TV series (like 30 for 30) to your device, and watch while not online. I hope they find a way to bring games to that eventually. It would be cool to download a bunch of games and be able to watch them while on a flight or just simply without using any data. That would be really cool.
I've been pretty pleased overall with my ESPN+ sub since the start of the season. The video quality and availability for recent FA Cup matches was sublime. Requests would still be: To make it harder to get spoiled as the app opens up with live scores at the top. YoutubeTV has been incredibly accommodating on the no spoilers front so it's not like it's a major ask(to the people that push back against the whining as a 1% of the population problem). Would like a theater mode on their web video player as I have to choose between a tiny video or a full screen and that's not great for work. Interface still needs a bit of work. Have to dig around for things I want to see way too much and they don't always seem to be in the same place.
You need to set your main screen for something other than soccer if you don't want scores spoiled. The app, first and foremost, is for checking scores and sports news. It just also happens that the app contains ESPN+. They're not going to hide stuff your interested in. It's why when I open the app, it shows me cricket scores and WNBA news since that's what I selected I wanted shown on the main page.
Called ESPN support to ask if I could suspend my ESPN+ account for several months while I don't need it. They said I can't "suspend" it per se, but I can cancel and then sign back up again later, using the same login credentials as I had before. Sounds straightforward. Has anyone here done this before?
Something I was going to mention previously but forgot about until last night: ESPN+ apparently doesn't have full broadcast rights to replays, or it is numerically limited by its contract. A couple weeks ago, I wanted to skim through the Stoke City-Shrewsbury Town replay since the latter came back from 2-0 down to win it. I fired up ESPN+, couldn't find the match from earlier in the day, searched for it, and realized the first match was broadcast but not the replay. Yesterday, I avoided the Wolves-Shrewsbury Town replay all day so I could watch it on ESPN+ after work only to realize it's not available. The only replay from the fourth round broadcast on ESPN+ was Newport County-Middlesbrough (which doesn't really clarify things; not sure why ESPN would choose that one if it did indeed have the choice). I wonder if the rights work differently for replays, or if ESPN simply has to be strategic about its broadcasts due to the numbers of matches remaining, and therefore must limit the number of broadcasts in a given round so it can fully broadcast future rounds, etc.
ESPN+ now has 2 million paid subscriptions, double the number from five months ago, Bob Iger says.— John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) February 5, 2019
Wolves-Shrews wasn't streamed by ESPN+ yesterday, only Newport-Boro. For some reason to do with live tv setups in the UK, replay coverage is limited to the matches selected and shot by UK networks (which is one per replay day, Tues/Weds)
This is one of my pet peeves about the new streaming world. If they had the rights to a match when it originally aired, then they should have the rights to show it on a replay. Legally it may not work that way, but from a customer POV that's how we'd generally like it, no? I keep thinking/hoping that the streaming providers will focus on replacing the functionality, ease & flexibility of the old DVR model, in which the customer can watch a recording as long as they like. But my hope may be in vain.
LOL, another misplaced meta assumption on your part. They couldn't stream it live so no replay or highlights either.
Yeah, another one of my pet peeves. When the powers that be say "oh that's progress, that's the new digital paradigm" when in fact we're actually going backwards in certain respects.
How is it going backwards? The match was not available to the US market in any fashion - streaming or TV. It wouldn't have been on last year either. Has nothing to do with ESPN+ deal, which is making far more games available for a fraction of last season's price. Complain about actual problems and not when you have no idea what you're talking about but still want to mold that bad take into your overall view. Add: even went back and checked last year's listings https://www.livesoccertv.com/schedules/2018-02-06/ 2 of the 4 replays (one Tues and one Weds) were on FOX. For the exact same reason, they were the ones prepped for TV in the UK. In the 4th Round proper, FOX did not air or stream 7 of the 16 matches. ESPN+ streamed all 16 4th Round proper matches.
Sometimes you really need to take a valium Kev. I wasn't talking about any specific match. I was talking about how in the not-too-distant days of Cable TV + DVR's, when a match was aired (and in the FOX days of covering the FA Cup, just for example, they used to air quite a few matches on their various channels) you could record it and watch it whenever you want, years later, limited only by your disk space. Now in the new streaming world, the replay rights for any given match seem to be severely restricted in terms of how long you can watch it, or if you can watch it at all. Same goes for highlights shows and other ancillary content. Sorry if that wasn't clear to you from my prior posts. This exposes one poignant irony of the cloud-based digital streaming world: at last we're in a technical position to achieve what Bill Gates projected decades ago - all "information at your fingertips", and yet the reality is that there's but a fleeting "shelf-life" to the content we want accessible at any time into the future. Apparently rights ownership law is hamstringing what technology could be enabling. Edit: Of course one of the big advances of streaming is that you should be able to watch many more matches live than you could ever dream of over Cable. That's also what I was alluding to. One step up, one step back.
The only instance in where replays are "severely restricted in how long you can watch it" is with EPL on NBC where replays seem to be limited to about 7 days. The majority of the matches are on NBCSN anyway and can be DVR'd to your heart's content. The restrictions really only apply to matches on Gold, which matches used to be on overflow cable channels that could be recorded. Otherwise, replays are available for all the matches on ESPN+ for at least 30 days, the replays on B/R live going back to last summer are still up for all I know (I dropped it while CL/EL are inactive, will check again when I rejoin next week), and BeIN never had a replay component to its streaming, which still supplements its main channels where the bulk of the action remains, available to DVR as ever. So outside of wanting to see an EPL Gold match more than a week after, I really don't see what the problem is. And I'm someone who watches very little live (as those who have seen my various spoiler complaints on here will attest) and I generally couldn't be happier with the depth and breadth of what's available and how easily it can be accessed. And I'm in the 1% of the 1% here when it comes to soccer viewers in the USA. If you really have to have a match from three months ago, well there are plenty of sites out there where full matches can be downloaded if you can master a simple Google search. All of the streaming options (even now with BeIN Connect on Sling in a package which only costs $10/mo) are available to streamed in high definition on your HDTV. It seems like all the streaming complaints on here come from those who are hunched over their computers watching on a buggy web browser, which is insane given how little the entry cost of a Roku Express ($30) or Amazon Fire Stick (my recommended device for watching replays at $40-50) is. And the subscription fees are hardly unreasonable for any of them (outside of FSMP, which is down to the Bundesliga at $20/month).