OK, here's one from the clueless production team at Fox... Just watching Hull-Arsenal FACup replay. At the 32nd minute as Per Mertesacker is being subbed out, they go to a commercial!!! Let's just hope this isn't a sign of things to come.
Whoa, that has to be a first. They actually had a full on commercial during the half? How depressing... yet, somehow unsurprising.
I am currently at work so I say this with absolutely no knowledge about the Zenit-Benfica match: I have to wonder why Fox has scheduled a game like this one with a tight score from Leg 1 on the same channel as the Chelsea-PSG match. The potential for Zenit-Benfica to go to ET or to penalties means that they would have to move ET and penalties to FS2 or FS+ or they have to potentially move the start of Chelsea-PSG to one of these channels. Hopefully the futbol TV gods will end this one in regulation but Fox is playing with scheduling fire with this choice. I set my DVR to record FS2 just in case but I shouldn't have to screw with that. I get that Fox wants the max audience and FS1 is in more homes but moving games would seem to be more problematic if that happens.
There's a 2 hour and 45 minute window between the kickoffs of Zenit-Benfica and Chelsea-PSG. That's usually enough time as I can't recall any tie that was decided in extra time going 2:45 from kickoff to the last penalty kick. There was a incident here in the U.S. during EURO 2004 where the ppv telecasts had 2:30 windows to show each match. The Portugal-England quarterfinal was decided on penalties but the ppv broadcast cut off around the third or fourth round of spot kicks, leaving infuriated viewers hanging. They replayed the entire shootout the following day prior to the start of the France-Greece quarterfinal, but of course you had to buy the FRA-GRE match to watch the full shootout. The situation for next week's Europa League second leg games is worse since there's a only a 2:05 window between the kickoffs of the first and second set of matches. Any extra time in the first set of games will easily overlap the start of the second set of games.
I'm paying $15/mo for Fox Soccer Plus to listen to the Copa Libertadores in Spanish? Seriously? Thx, Jay!
There is an English language feed (one man of course) on fox soccer 2 go so no excuse for it to be English only on FS Plus.
Maybe my inflection didn't translate, Today's games were in Spanish on FSC. I pay for English. If I wanted Spanish, I'd get Desportes. Thx, Jay!
That was all kinds of painful. I remember DirecTV having separate dedicated channels for the Euro matches. The games could have been ten hours long without issue for DirecTV subscribers. With that said, if today's first match was on FS2, people still would have complained. Luckily, had that first game run long, it still wouldn't have messed much with the second game.
Fox Deportes and Fox Soccer Plus (which is what I assume you meant by FSC) play different matches. Fox Deportes plays the first choice game and Fox Soccer Plus plays the second choice game. Since there's probably more demand for these games in Spanish, there's no problem with the primary audio feed being in Spanish but they should make a secondary feed available in English perhaps with a occasional scrolling message at the bottom that English is available in SAP. Such a feed does exist because all of the Fox Soccer 2 Go feeds are in English.
In terms of Zenit-Benfica, I see what you're saying, Unclesox, about that window of time. But that window assumes everything moves exactly on schedule and we don't have a penalty shootout marathon akin to some of the Africa Cup of Nations finals or some injury that adds 5+ minutes of injury time. Or Russian fans, who have historically caused delays with issues in the stands. I get that I wasn't fully factoring that the 2 hour TV block isn't a 2-hour game block and that the 2nd half usually finish 10-15 minutes before the 2-hour TV block has expired. I still think they're taking some chances. Yeah, Europa has had some problems with those overlaps. Not a lot luckily, but a few times games ran long and the 2nd game was only available on FoxToGo. @JayRockers: While I prefer English (except those days when we got stuck with Danny Lee on the Fox Deportes SAP), I think you need to consider the context here. Every year until this season Fox Deportes showed some live games. All other games were shown on delay and every single one of those games, with a few odd exceptions here and there, were edited 2-10 minutes. During that time FS+ basically showed reruns of other games and only in SD if you are DTV subscriber (which I assume you are if you're paying $15). So, now you have almost every game shown live (only 2 on delayed this week) whereas in the past you would have only had 2 live games. I was unaware that FoxToGo has English commentary so they could use SAP. But for me, who cares. I want unedited and HD. And we've got that. Would you rather have no games or games with Spanish commentary? One complaint though, to stick with the Fox stupidity theme. The games on FS+ are mostly coming from Fox Argentina or Fox Colombia. These games never feature spoilers for other simultaneous games. Or at least not so far. However, the Fox Deportes games that use the Fox US announcers constantly feature cut-ins for the other simultaneous games. I wish these idiot producers would realize that FS+ is also showing the games, so that means some folks might record. And all the FS+ games end up on delay on Fox Deportes. Spoilers mean a lower viewership for the other games. Talk about the scores at half-time and post-game. That makes sense. But don't do cut-ins. Now that I've figured out that this is a problem with Fox US, I can watch accordingly. Of course, that sucks when the best game is on Deportes and called by Fox US announcers, as was the case last night with Atl Nacional-Penarol and the constant cut-ins of Sporting Cristal-Huracan.
Fox & directv dropped the ball. I don't pay for Spanish language broadcasts of FSC+. I'll be asking for a refund. Thx, Jay!
Since most programming on FS plus has been in English (they did show the last champions league final in Italian), it was reasonable to assume that Copa Libertadores would also be in English. Since you signed up specifically for Copa Libertadores, you should get a refund. Since Spanish speaking people presumably get the channel for free, they're not entitled to broadcasts in Spanish. I don't think I'm entitled to a refund since I was paying $15 before they even added Copa Libertadores. So there was a benefit conferred to me above what I was already paying for regardless of the language. They should definitely add SAP though.
It should be HD all the time. I've sent emails to various DTV folks, from the general customer service reps to folks who deal with sports engineering. They all basically say the same thing: it's HD for live games. But that ignores the point; it's $15 and no other single channel costs that much. The only other channels on par with that are XXX. Even movie channels are multiple channels and less than $15. But for me, Libertadores is a bonus and very, very good bonus so I've got no complaints with FS+ doing this. Moreover, except when Roger Valdivieso handled the SAP back when Deportes had SAP, almost all of the other announcers sucked. I'd much rather have Spanish with commentators that know the competition rather than Danny Lee reading from a producer's cue sheet and mispronouncing every other name.
Not necessarily a complaint, but I logged into Twitter at exactly the wrong moment today. The delay between @FS1 and @twitter was just enough for me to know that ball was going in. #MUNWHU #FACup— Jay! (@JayRockerz) March 13, 2016 Thx, Jay!
The Atl. Madrid- PSV match keeps on spontaneously going to commercials on my DVR. Is this happening to anyone else?
If you saw my post from a week ago, they did that during an FACup match. Apparently their production team is a little green bit at the moment.
A friend of mine who has Dish said the same to me. I'm watching the game on ESPN Deportes. (I have Comcast which doesn't offer FS2)
I watched the game live on FS2 and there were no commercials. Cable/satellite companies have put technology in their DVRs to substitute commercials. So for instance you can watch a recording from a year ago and see a commercial for a movie debuting the weekend when you are watching the recording. Although I'm not an expert in these matters, this would appear to me to be a bug in this technology. Not a fox issue.
I didn't see the commercials either, although FOX wasted no time switching away from that dramatic finish and celebration in Madrid. Gotta get to the Bundesliga highlights show ....
Two days in a row Fox has decided to air the game that was decided in the first leg and send the more appealing and anticipated game to an obscure channel. They have been doing this consistently for the past 20 years. I've had it. I wish they would just die as a sports channel and would lose every soccer property they own.
As much as I agree with you sportswise, they're going to go with the ratings, and Messi/Barça gets the eyeballs. I was watching at a restaurant showing both games and (without getting into spoilers) more people were watching Barça-Arsenal for the _entire_ 90 minutes.
I understand that. But every single day for the past 20 years. I mean come on!!! It's not like it's teams no one has ever heard of in other games.