English Premier League on SkyTV

I'm very much in the same boat, we have a subscription to Netflix and use a fiends subscription to Lightbox. But we wanted to watch Greys Anatomy from the start only to see it's on Neon.

Also, if you do find Home Improvement anywhere let me know. Been looking for a while, loved that show. Also Boston Public, The Practice and Third Watch are pretty darn hard to find

I really hope that ends up being the case, but until they announce the details I'm sceptical. F1's in-house F1TV Pro streaming service retails for $11.99 US a month, the equivalent of $17.84 NZ. Coliseum/PLP back in the day went for $199 for the season, the equivalent of roughly $22 a month. 

Unless the rights have gotten a lot cheaper, giving us $40 worth of content for $19.99 would seem overly generous of Spark. And that's before you even factor in WRC + MMA + Hockey + NBA + European rugby.

Really hope spark have got Xbox/PS4 apps in the works. At the moment if you try to play any content on the site via the web browser on a console you just get an error message.

I think they confirmed EPL is included in the $20 a month package on their Facebook page. I asked about a PS4 app and they said "it's in our roadmap."

Re: Home Improvement, believe TVNZ have the rights to it. Recall it being on 2 in the afternoons for a number of months last year, though they've stopped showing it. It's not offered on TVNZ OD, according to a blurb on the site: "Unfortunately due to our rights agreement, this show is not available to stream as catch up."

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/home-improvement

There's a bunch of episodes on Dailymotion by the looks, so there's always that.

Does NZ have a net-neutrality law? 

Basically, can Spark shape the traffic so that their own internet customers get a better experience (and, for instance, Vodafone customer a lesser quality of service).

I'm kind of expecting a lot of "well it works great for me" type feedback, which let's face it, happened with most things like Premier League Pass, etc. 

I used to work in customer support for a software company. 99% of the time it is user error....

In regards to net-neutrality, I do not believe so. Technically it has been flauted, when some providers (I think Spark?) offered free data for Facebook and other social media websites. Which technically goes against the whole neutral web thing.

But generally speaking NZ is in a different situation to the U.S., whereby we have good competition in regards to internet providers. In the instance of Sparksport, I'm not sure if in this instance it's actually practically possible to favour their own customer's traffic over others.

Dailymotion, interesting, I know very little about that. What's the deal there? Youtube but with more illegal content or what?

Youtube with fewer take-down notices is probably the way I'd charitably describe it. 

It's been a while since I did any significant networking but I would think it's pretty easy to shape the traffic for customers on your own network (i.e. for them to get the fatter pipe). 

I think Spark would stoopid to consider this though. The ComCom and/or Minister would crack them particularly hard.

Do we think Spark are going to hand TVNZ a PL game every week, mirroring what Sky do with Prime (albeit in-house as opposed to a partnership)/Coliseum did with TVNZ? I'm puzzled as to why Duke's 'TVNZ Football Club' show exists, it's a tad bland without any highlights. 

It's also way out of date, screening on a Thursday yet obviously filmed on a Wednesday as they're previewing Barca-Liverpool in future tense.

They may do when their online platform fails like it has with everything else./

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?...

Hmm. Bit more detail around this would be nice. They're allowed to have matches up for 30 days, what time-frame does "but probably won't" look like? Hopefully we're talking at least a couple of weeks here.

How much of a task would it actually be for Spark to store/host the 10x matches per week over the 30 day period? We're talking roughly 40 games total over the span of a month, 90 mins a pop but we'll call it 120 factoring in pre-match/half time etc. Is 80 hours of content really so arduous for them to keep up?

The infrastructure required to just store 80 hours of content is minimal compared to what is actually required to stream live content. It's a strange thing to say.

I wonder what the uptake of those videos would be past the first week though. Would it would make commercial sense to keep them stored that long? Can't imagine many people would watch a full game that is more than a week out of date - you're bound to know the score by then etc and (at least in my case) would be more inclined to see highlights. 

Would be good to keep the highlight packages for a few weeks so you catch up with an entire round if you're AWOL for a bit. 

Yeah absolutely keep the highlight packages, but would expect demand for full matches more than a few days old to be low.

Are you guys aware of BeIn Sports? Not the one via sky but the app itself. 

$20 a month you get EPL, La Liga, French League, Bundesliga and then select games from Championship, League 1/2, League Cup, French Cup, MLS and South America. 

Cast to your TV and done. 

Cut the middle man with Sky, Telecom etc. 

except Spark now have the rights for EPL

and it will crash... often

spark - cant get hockey right, can't get motor racing right, highly likely to screw the rugby up (but will blame someone else), almost guaranteed to fudge the EPL.

There are some inaccuracies in that statement but I'm not going to be a fanboy.

Yea unfortunately this was actually part of the Sky deal. If you bought the Bein channels through Sky, you got access to it, or alternatively you could purchase it separately, direct through the Bein website.

With Spark taking over I would expect that website to either go offline, or to just be frozen in its current state basically.

Ah now I think I see what all the fuss is about. I’m so glad I’m only just now learning about this /s. 

So what’s this going to cost? Have they got an app I can cast off? I’m not downloading it in the lounge TV, I’m also not watching games in a small screen. Puts me in a sticky position as I boycotted Telecom some years ago but here we are. 

Bein has WSW v Leeds

Spark Sport has the International Champions Cup (or whatever it's called) pre-season games. Was able to watch Arsenal-Fiorentina yesterday at the pleasant kickoff time of 10am on a Sunday.

Optus Sport from Aussie have a good offering, $14.99 per month for all EPL, Champions League and they've just had the Women's World Cup too, they also have a number of international games too. And if you're a broadband or mobile subscriber with Optus you get it for free on certain plans..

I asked Spark if they did anything for their subscribers (I have both a mobile and my broadband with them, spending around $250 a month combined), and they said they have nothing currently, other than the RWC which i'm not that interested in.

Using a SmartDNS service and iTunes Vouchers, i signed up to Optus and have been using that for the last 3-4 months.

Spark really need to do something for their subscribers though.

I watched too.

Couple of early observations...

Spark Sport worked really poorly on my laptop and reminded me of PLP in its first year. However that might be my laptop.

It worked very well on my phone, when casting to tv. Good picture, no stuttering or anything, it was beautiful.

A Spark Sport icon appeared in the Apps list on my smart tv. I initially attempted to watch the game on that but it didn't work at all. You clicked on the game and it just said "game not yet started", even though it had started. I am not sure if the app was a minimum viable product and will start working when they update, or if it's a bug that they will fix on the next update, or what. With the way software/apps are developed these days it should get sorted out soon I would think. 

That app popped up on the day I signed up to Spark Sport, so I am guessing that they had some smart system recognise me signing up and then they put that there? Or is that not a thing? Otherwise it was a complete coincidence that it appeared on that day. 

I watched on the Samsung TV app and it was fine. Froze once which was fixed by closing and reopening the app but may have been my WiFi which is a bit patchy in the bedroom due to the distance from the router. Got the TV as part of an S10 deal through Vodafone but as it's smaller than the lounge one, which sadly is older than 2017 so won't get an app, it's on the bedroom at the moment. As with PLP I'm still hanging out for a PS4 app to get it on the lounge TV. Although Chromecast is not a massive one off cost I still don't want to have to buy an extra piece of equipment for one service when my PS4 and Vodafone TV box currently provide every other streaming option. Will be nice to be able to watch Sunday morning games in bed. Just using free trial at the moment though as I'm going to be overseas for the first few weeks of the season so not going to start paying for it until I get back.

I feel like my tv has some issues to be honest... that app wasn't working yesterday, and I frequently get errors in the TVNZ and Netflix apps. No blimmin idea what to do about it tbh. 

buya new one?

Honestly, have watched the entire F1 season and lots of pre-season friendlies on Spark Sport so far - both live and on demand and not had a single issue.

Their Apple TV app came out early last week and Paul, I think their Samsung app came out early this week. So good chance you just got lucky.

The Apple TV app works very well. Would highly recommend if you don't want to arse around with TVs and Chromecasts also has Netflix, Youtube, things like Masterclass, Lightbox, tvnz, three, MUTV, etc

Go get a 50 inch smart TV from $700 to $3500 depending on make. I'm sure he has plenty of $$$$$  :)

I have a 50 inch samsung smart tv, 1 year old, should be no problems...

I guess I should try and contact the store/manufacturer or something. I think it's now outside of warranty period, but still definitely new enough that I shouldn't be expecting issues. I'm guessing it's an internet issue since it seems to happen across a few apps.

Gotta get off my butt and investigate properly I think. 

don't worry about the warranty - it'll be covered by the Consumer Guarantees Act if its faulty

https://www.consumerprotection.govt.nz/general-help/consumer-laws/consumer-guarantees-act/

FYI, he does not :(

One income family with 3 young kids = tv must last FOREVER

I've actually done well with it mind you. Bought a 46 inch Panasonic Plasma in 2010 for $900, it lasted until 2018, when little miss 2 climbed up behind it and managed to cause it to break, something about dislodging dust in the back which made it short out. So I claimed insurance and got my current one, only had to pay an excess of $250. 

Couldn't agree more, an Apple TV is the best solution for most people i believe, yes it's around $200 to purchase but is very simple to operate and works on all TV's.

I concur - Apple TV all the way

So I've seen the app on my app section of my Panasonic Smart TV. 

Am I to presume that will work fine once I sign up?

Is the app able to be chromecast?

The app did not work on my tv... well it worked in that I logged in and it looked good, but when I clicked on the game it just said it hasn't started yet, even though it had. Tried many times. 

So switched to the app on my phone, chromecasted to tv, worked very well.

One piece of functionality I've noticed it does have... when you click on a game that's already in progress, it gives you the option to "join live" or "watch from start". That's fantastic news. 

The old PLP platform had this, but Bein did not. Personally I quite often have a need for that. 

The other key thing I want to know is how fast on demand games are ready...... haven't yet seen how that will work.