Eurosport Updates

The issue with the player was less the lack of live coverage, but the actual lack of on demand content. While they store content, they only did so from ES 1 and ES 2 and this not in HD. All the extra channels, were no longer saved.

This is something that was once different, I remember coming home from a tennis event and I could re-watch it all.

If they do not offer on demand for the Olympics, then it will be quite some disaster, as nobody can watch it all at the same time.

The new layout does not suit me much, though. It´s less good than the old, at least for my liking. In the old, you got a list of all live channels and you just clicked on your desired broadcast. Now, all I see are huge pictures of snooker tables It´s as if they turned the well designed old player into an app player for smartphones I use the player on my laptop though or the PC, so for me clicking through all those pictures is a bit of a nightmare.


Edit:

Figure skating (Olympics) is shown at the player, each competition in full length. This is from an internal source, so take it with caution. Also to add is the following.

In future, ES wants to have seasonal passes, like for football, cycling ... That means, you can buy access to those events, but won´t be able to see any other, that you did not pay for. They will still support monthly and yearly passes, but if those will just be the basic ES 1 + ES 2 remains to be seen. It could very well be, that the Olympics will require an extra pass, but this is pure speculation from my side.

Anyways, all will be shown at the player, but it might be more expensive, than the six bucks we currently pay each month.

Nothing to do with figure skating, but maybe some of you are interested. As I've written before, Eurosport started showing the Friday football games of the german Bundesliga over the player. Last Friday there was a football match and the player stopped working, I LOLed in real life. I knew they wouldn't be able to handle that. And there is no hell a fury like a german football fan scorned. Social Media was burning and people were really...you know, it's not allowed to swear on GS, but that's what they were. And just now I got a mail from Eurosport telling me they will give 10 EUR back to my and all the other accounts....wow. Just a neat little anecdote there. I've written them mails for years and was ignored, but once the football masses arrive they're on their knees begging for forgiveness. Funny that.

Couple of observations:

for some reason, I cannot find figure skating listed anymore on the Eurosport player. There's this list with logos of the various sports, and figure skating has just... disappeared. Being the paranoid type that I am... am a bit worried by this development.

I clicked around on some stuff in the On Demand section, and there are 5 videos about the Olympic Games. One is called "Heroes of the Future", 43 minutes long, and it focuses on equestrianism (show jumping)... and figure skating, specifically it follows You Young. The video keeps switching between them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Young
Maybe this is old news, but I hadn't seen it yet. Good fun (my two favorite sports together in one video, wow!), except that I am stuck with Dutch audio. *shudder*

Winnie_20 said:

for some reason, I cannot find figure skating listed anymore on the Eurosport player. There's this list with logos of the various sports, and figure skating has just... disappeared. Being the paranoid type that I am... am a bit worried by this development.

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Mmmmm. I just went to investigate, and it seems that Figure Skating has been replaced by Squash.

I don't blame you getting worried. Eurosport can make some very strange decisions...

(By the way, I have now updated the table in the Original Post to add in a Squash row, as well as a column for the On Demand links).

There were things I wanted to write about before I went on holidays, but didn't get the chance to. So, I will do it now.

During this thread, I have been talking about my frustrations about only being able to wind back 5 minutes on the Eurosport 1 and Eurosport 2 streams, compared to the 3 hours that you used to be able to wind back. And my frustrations at the lack of a clock on the live streams.

Well, in the week before my holidays, I found something else that is a bigger problem – the way the videos are edited for being put into the archive.

Previously, the On Demand videos were nicely trimmed so that they started at the start of the programme, and ended at the end of the programme. This is still the case for the things that were shown on the additional streams.

However, it seems that the things that were shown on ESP1 and ESP2 are now trimmed automatically by a timer, starting 5 minutes before the programme is due to start, and finishing 5 minutes after the programme is due to finish.

But, as we all know, Eurosport programmes never run to schedule! So, you know where this is going…

For some reason which I never quite understood, British Eurosport has not been showing the Ski Jumping Summer Grand Prix for the past few seasons, even if there is not a clash with some other LIVE event. So, to get my fix of “green” ski jumping, I have been having to watch on Eurosport Deutschland.

For the archived versions of the Courchevel and Chaykovsky competitions, there were 15 minutes of other programmes either side of the ski jumping, because the ski jumping started later and finished earlier than Eurosport were allowing for. Which wasn’t a big problem, in the greater scheme of things.

However, something starting earlier than scheduled can be a problem if the programme on before it wasn’t being shown for the first time. Because, repeats do not get put into the archives. I can’t remember what it was, but I went into the On Demand one day looking for something that I had forgotten to set the timer for on the Sky + box. But, it turned out that the broadcast had actually started 15 minutes earlier than planned, and because the programme on before it was a repeat, the archived version had the first 10 minutes missing. And they were a significant 10 minutes!

And the same can happen at the other end of the programme if it over-runs and there is a repeat programme scheduled afterwards. During the China Championship snooker, I wasn’t able to watch one of the sessions live. And when I went into the archives later, and watched the TV match, the recording cut out during the deciding frame!!! And the score was such that it was not obvious who won!!!

Thankfully, Eurosport Player had also streamed the World Feed coverage of that table. So, I was able to watch the last 5 minutes of the match on the archived recording of it (although, it was mighty tricky finding the spot where the ESP recording cut out!)

I really hope that Eurosport go back to trimming all the programmes properly soon. Because this is a major problem.

Finally, I didn’t get cancelling my subscription before going on holidays. As I said, I had a few things to catch up on before cancelling, and didn’t get them finished until late in the evening of the 23rd. And by that time I had them finished, the 12 month pass for £30 option was not there.

Instead, the long-term options available were a 12 month Tennis pass for £30; or a 12 month Cycling pass for £30. I know that these are probably the same offer under a different name, didn’t want to get tied into a subscription associated with a particular sport just in case anything changed (especially a sport that I don’t actually watch).

When I went onto the German, French and Italian versions of the Player, the only long-term options they had were sport passes (cycling, tennis or Bundesliga). The Dutch version was the only one that had the option I wanted (but for €30 rather than £30), but with the way things are going, I was wary of signing up for a package priced in Euros.

And anyway, when I went into my account page, it was now saying “No active subscription”, and so I didn’t know how to cancel. And that is still the case.

I just looked, and the general 12 month pass is available again, and it is still £30. So, if I can work out how to cancel, I might try again this month.

CaroLiza_fan

Winnie_20 said:

Couple of observations:

for some reason, I cannot find figure skating listed anymore on the Eurosport player. There's this list with logos of the various sports, and figure skating has just... disappeared. Being the paranoid type that I am... am a bit worried by this development.

I clicked around on some stuff in the On Demand section, and there are 5 videos about the Olympic Games. One is called "Heroes of the Future", 43 minutes long, and it focuses on equestrianism (show jumping)... and figure skating, specifically it follows You Young. The video keeps switching between them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Young
Maybe this is old news, but I hadn't seen it yet. Good fun (my two favorite sports together in one video, wow!), except that I am stuck with Dutch audio. *shudder*

Click to expand...

I'm not overly concerned. The Season has not yet begun and maybe they're testing things. I'm positive they will show the GP series, as our commentators ALWAYS mentioned this at every competition. "We're the only ones! WE at EUROSPORT & EUROSPORT 2 bring you ALL THE FIGURE SKATING. No one does this (on german tv), JUST US!" I guess no Nebelhorn this year, but at least I guess there will be a stream.

Eurosport does now achieve everything again. I checked the US Open tournament and they offered all courts as catch up, which was funny as I was there and my strong sunburn was quite noticable on video (why me... ) It is in HD as well, so that is a relieve for those who can not be at the Olympics / might attend other competitions. You should be able to rewatch everything, at least a few weeks later, unless special contracts probit that.

Nebelhorn is not listed and can be watched online at Dailymotion (link I have posted).

As for GP´s, I have no information about that. Personally, I would not be suprised if they did not renew their contract, the numbers were very low and the times often European unfriendly. If ES does indeed not have the rights, then we should still be fine, as then the ISU channel will be free to watch without geo block. Of course, the quality of the stream is not that perfect, low bitrate even though in HD.

Worlds and Europeans will be shown on British Eurosport.

Alex D said:

Personally, I would not be suprised if they did not renew their contract, the numbers were very low and the times often European unfriendly. If ES does indeed not have the rights, then we should still be fine, as then the ISU channel will be free to watch without geo block. Of course, the quality of the stream is not that perfect, low bitrate even though in HD.

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I am starting to get just a tad worried here (more worried than I am about Hanyu's "knee pain", boy, I need to get my priorities in life straight, lol!).
Because all signs are pointing to it possibly going to be very difficult to watch the GP series.
You seem to be in the know about these sort of things, so if you haven't heard anything...

I installed my new apple TV just now, and the Eurosport player asked me for my favorite sports... *again*. When I first signed up with my new annual subscription, it already asked me that, so I checked out my account settings, and sure enough... figure skating isn't listed anymore on that page, either!
So it's gone. Completely gone. I cannot think of any good reason why they'd do that if they planned to air the GP series.

Do we know for sure the ISU will be streaming the GP series? I know they did last year, but when I look in the archives, there are only three out of six + Final from two years ago, and the year before that only the Final. And I'm not too convinced yet the live streams wouldn't be geoblocked... but we live in hope.

Alex D said:

Eurosport does now achieve everything again. I checked the US Open tournament and they offered all courts as catch up, which was funny as I was there and my strong sunburn was quite noticable on video (why me... ) It is in HD as well, so that is a relieve for those who can not be at the Olympics / might attend other competitions. You should be able to rewatch everything, at least a few weeks later, unless special contracts probit that.

Click to expand...

Just to follow up on that point, now that the new player has been around for over a month, I have realised that although the things that were shown on the linear channels (i.e. ESP1 and ESP2) are still only available for 7 days after being first broadcast, the things that were shown on the additional streams are available for 30 days.

I wish they would make everything available for 30 days, like most of the UK channels do now. ITV and Channel 4 always had 30 day archives. The BBC changed from 7 days to 30 days a couple of years ago. Channel 5 was strange in that programmes were archived for 30 days on their website, but only archived for 7 days on Sky+. But last month, it changed to 30 days for both methods.

Here is a table with a handy summary of the differences between how the linear channels and the additional streams are treated on both the current player and on the old player:


Really shows how they have improved some things, but made other things worse.

Hope this helps

CaroLiza_fan

In a tweet Ambesi (Italian Eurosport commentator) said it's a bit too early to know wheter GP circuit Will be broadcast or not ... we've to wait till October

So, the wait is almost over... we should know in a day or two whether or not Eurosport have at least *some* rights to the GP.
http://www.eurosport.com/tvschedule.shtml seems to show the schedule exactly two weeks into the future, so I reckon we could see something listed next Friday.

That should really set the tone, as the first competition is CoR in Europe. So they don't have the time excuse (I remember them not showing Skate Canada, because it was in the middle of the night) I'm anxious! Please let it appear!

Well, I see the men’s SP listed on E2 (live and repeat), so that should make the Yuzu fans happy, but that’s it for Friday (?).
So not sure what’s going on there... Looks like they have *some* rights, anyway.

Of course, could just be the rest is stuck on a livestream instead of live TV channels

I'm an idiot! I just checked the listings on Eurosport Player, and wrote out the following comment:


Then I saw Winnie_20's comment, and thought "but that contradicts what I found".

So, I decided to check the dates of the first Grand Prix, and found it was actually the 20[SUP]th[/SUP]!

And that, my friends, is why you shouldn't do things like this before 5 o'clock in the morning!

Where are you getting listings so far in advance, Winnie?

CaroLiza_fan

Winnie_20 said:

Well, I see the men’s SP listed on E2 (live and repeat), so that should make the Yuzu fans happy, but that’s it for Friday (?).
So not sure what’s going on there... Looks like they have *some* rights, anyway.

Of course, could just be the rest is stuck on a livestream instead of live TV channels

Click to expand...

Winnie_20 said:

http://www.eurosport.com/tvschedule.shtml

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Thank you so much. I didn't realise that the original page worked again. I thought it was all integrated into Eurosport Player now.

And I like that it is back to having a vertical format, albeit not having the 2 channels side-by-side any more. (Although, I don't like the way the day is now divided up into morning, afternoon, evening and night. They could easily display the whole day in one go!)

The good news is that British Eurosport 2 is showing LIVE coverage of the Men's SP from 12:00 - 13:30 BST.


Makes a change us getting the same LIVE coverage as on the continent. We normally get less because of other things being on.

There is a snooker tournament that week, but it is on BES1 on Friday. But, I should warn you that there is also World Superbikes on that weekend, and it is normally shown on BES2.

So, with these both on, the figure skating coverage over the weekend is liable to be cut down, at least in the British Isles.

Don't shoot the messenger!

CaroLiza_fan

CaroLiza_fan said:

The good news is that British Eurosport 2 is showing LIVE coverage of the Men's SP from 13:00 - 14:30 BST, with a repeat from 21:00 - 22:30 BST.

CaroLiza_fan

Click to expand...

Okay... I guess I am seeing the UK website, because we have the same listings, and the same times that you quoted. Only Men’s SP.
So I suppose there is a tiny bit of hope that there will be more than just the men’s event on some local versions of Eurosport? Because all four events are held that day (starting with the men).

Edit: nope, I cannot be seeing the UK listings, because the men’s event starts at 2 pm Moscow time... which is 1 pm here and noon in the UK. So what are *you* seeing, CaroLiza_fan, if you also get a 1 pm start time?

I checked this morning as soon as the two weeks mark passed, and as Winnie mentioned, there it is, the men's short. So! Whatever happens now in terms of 'showing it all' which they never will, now that it IS there, they definitely plan to show the GP series and do have the rights. So, I think the ISU channel will also reappear on the website! Yes! Unfortunately the days of videos are over, and it's only on Eurosport 2 anyway. Last season I used Screencastify, and I still kind of like it to record, but the 10 minute cutoff annoys me so perhaps I'll buy premium for the olympic year. Unless one of you guys knows a good alternate recorder? I'm on Mac, by the way. :hap85:

Well at least it's something, showing the men's, but I can't see it being any different on the Saturday, European Track Cycling on Friday - 4.5 hours! and 2 hour repeat, also U17 World Cup finishes that weekend. Perhaps future weeks will be better - at least they're still showing figure skating, but I have to warn you they've also discovered 6 day cycling e.g. following weekend in London, track cycling for road professionals that basically goes on for 6 days!

Winnie_20 said:

Okay... I guess I am seeing the UK website, because we have the same listings, and the same times that you quoted. Only Men’s SP.
So I suppose there is a tiny bit of hope that there will be more than just the men’s event on some local versions of Eurosport? Because all four events are held that day (starting with the men).

Edit: nope, I cannot be seeing the UK listings, because the men’s event starts at 2 pm Moscow time... which is 1 pm here and noon in the UK. So what are *you* seeing, CaroLiza_fan, if you also get a 1 pm start time?

Click to expand...

Just realised what the problem was. I clicked on the link you posted, and didn't realise that it was not displaying the British listings. I also assumed that the times were adjusted to my time zone, but they weren't.

We are getting the LIVE coverage at 12:00 - 13:30 BST, but we are not getting a repeat.

Sorry for the confusion.

CaroLiza_fan

CaroLiza_fan said:

Just realised what the problem was. I clicked on the link you posted, and didn't realise that it was not displaying the British listings. I also assumed that the times were adjusted to my time zone, but they weren't.

We are getting the LIVE coverage at 12:00 - 13:30 BST, but we are not getting a repeat.

Sorry for the confusion.

CaroLiza_fan

Click to expand...

There is a repeat in the evening:
http://www.eurosport.com/tvschedule.shtml

BUT where are all others -pairs, ladies?!! In the past CoR was one of the best events in terms of coverage. I am in shock