Coliseum Sports - EPL Overlords

But you can watch games from Sky at any time to suit if you buy a second-hand DVD recorder with hard drive on Trade Me for recording games - good ones with 160GB - 250GB HDD going for $70 on Trade Me - I bought a second one for the extra hard drive storage for $70 on Trade Me the other week.

I've had a DVD recorder with hard drive since they first came out years ago and have mostly used it for recording live football from the wee small hours on Sky. It's also good to be able to transfer games (and other stuff you record like movies) on to DVD's from the hard drive if you want to keep special ones or share with others (my parents don't have Sky so I copy games on DVD-RW for them - you can wipe and re-record on those discs).

Better, cheaper option than a "My Sky" box for recording stuff as you own it, not renting from Sky and can copy to DVD etc.

I think he means the games on a sunday night, won't be played on sky until 1pm monday - after he is already at work and probably found out the score from some prick of a co-worker. 

^ yea this is what I meant Pete.

But good info nonetheless - you are the king of this sort of thing

Personally, this season, I'll be having MySky, PLP, and am now trying to sort Freeview so I can get Sommet. Fricken football galore, I am well excited.

Got sent a 15% discount code by Telecom today... but I purchased my pass two days ago. Time to fire up the Live Chat with Coliseum I think.

Has there been any discussion on the fact that Sommet says they will be broadcasting live on their website as well?

From the 'About' section of sommetsports.co.nz -

"Sommet Sports is launching a free to air sports channel on the Kordia terrestrial Freeview platform. If you are outside of this coverage area or wish to watch the channel on a computer, tablet or smart phone we will be streaming video of our channel live on the internet at this website."

There is already over 3000 people signed up through Telecom, or at least in the draw to win 1000 season passes.

http://www.telecom.co.nz/internet/football/

I am pleased I did not waste my birthday present on this one as I get to watch Arsenal after all

Signing up to win something free doesn't mean you will sign up to the package.

PLP might get the numbers they want this year but as has been witnessed overseas keeping those numbers the next year is the big issue. I signed up for a streaming site and found that due to a combination of factors I didn't carry on the next year. Picture quality, irritating controls to fast forward rewind etc and the hassle of connecting cables, turning on 3 pieces of equipment etc put me off

Just received an offer from Telecom:

I'll get to see the ones where we get smashed....and the arsenal games!!!!

Did you guys read the email where it says the most supported teams are Man U and Liverpool. The least supported team is stoke with 26 fans lol

Yeah as the technology gets better, people get more confident in it and are able to upgrade their hardware, and the prospect of more competitions and options being made available on the platform, you'd  think that numbers would only increase (as has been seen overseas - despite your claim)

Todays announcement will knock Coliseum over. Just watch...

Unsure. You'd think they'd have anticipated something like this happening. There is still a real market for what they're offering. 

That Tim bloke said they will offer HD if there is enough interest to justify the extra cost. It's getting better each day !

From various snippets of info I've heard, I think Coliseum get some sort of financial benefit (as the major rights holder) from having other minor rights holders broadcast games on delay. 

As I said before, for the fairweather fan this is great news. For the more serious fans, nothing has changed.

(for the premier league at least - i am salivating at the fact that now we can see league cup, fa cup and european ties that otherwise wouldn't have been televised)

It was a good counterstrike by Sky, even if all they did was steal Sommet's idea and go bigger with it

Now what i did  come here for...

I remember in the original release, Telecom said something about upgrading customers onto bigger data plans for free - anyone else remember that?

I'm only on a 30gig plan. I want more giggage, free, now. Rang up telecom, they said you can only do the premierleaguepass thing online, so I went online and got the voucher - but nothing there whatsoever about data upgrades.

Have any telecom customers been through this process and had offers or anything? Or are you all on bigger plans than me?

I am so stoked Arsenal has been picked up by Sky, I have always watched the games delayed in My Sky so is all good.

Never intended to go with Coliseum and it is cool for the people that do, we all win in the end? 

Am loving the amount of football available all of a sudden. Between sky, coliseum and sommet there is just so much more than ever before. With the prospect of more to come. Exciting times. 

it is good news cos some of us cannot afford both sky and plp. to call people fairweather because they dont get it, you are clearly a ....

Don't get used to it. Coliseum have the rights for 2 years I believe. When the rights come up for renewal sky will outbid Coliseum by such a huge magnitude and operate the EPL as a loss leader. Get all those subscriptions back, and what does Coliseum have other than a website and several thousand disgruntled customers.

So why isn't it free, or better quality, or a million other things. If you think those billionaires are going to piss money away in a small market then your dreaming. Sky will outbid them.

Okay guys, either way I was going to pay because I want to watch Newcastle live.

Here's a screen grab at max quality. The flash player controls are all blurry, not sure if thats them or my fault.

The video isn't  bad. I hope they open a higher quality option though.

http://i.imgur.com/1RvGBAT.jpg (Full HD res)

It honestly looks a lot better when it's moving. 

SKY didn't outbid them a few weeks ago. In fact even Summit outbid SKY.......

And Sky were completely shocked by this. They bid the highest amount they ever had for the EPL rights and lost out to a start-up web based broadcaster who bid about 2x the amount Sky did.

If you think Sky will get caught out again your don't know how aggressive Sky can be when it comes to getting what it wants.

It is obviously hurting them losing these rights, that's why the have gone out and bought the club packages. Coliseum have at least made Sky more aware of the value of football coverage. So I expect when they do get it back, we will probably have coverage similar to Australia with their red button option and being able to chose the game you want to watch or record from all available fixtures. Sky could even go as far as to launch their own Football channel similar to the Rugby channel.

Coliseum have shown that there is a market for Football independent from Sky sports and people are willing to pay $150 a year for it.

Another likely scenario is Sky bids on enough content and suddenly they have the material for a channel they can sell at $25 per month, and I'm guessing if all the content was HD everyone would jump on that in an instant and forget Coliseum ever existed.