Cycling.tv: Could anyone get it to work today?

is that you have to watch the stupid commercial every time you open the window again, or try a different stream. It isn’t my fault that the stream I wanted to watch isn’t working, and that I have to keep switching streams attempting to get one to work, I shouldn’t have to watch that damn commercial every single time. It sucks even more because the commercial runs fine and then the race stream doesn’t run at all!

I finally sent in the “Dear Sirs, F*** you” letter I should have sent long ago. Cancelled my subscription and asked them (not so) not to ask me for money ever again.

To some degree I could have saved myself the bloodpressure-spike today because it was apparently known beforehand that this weekends races are georestricted for Sweden. It just pisses me off no end that they aren’t able to present a readable list of what races I was actually paying for. Before todays race I checked that no other swedish channels were broadcasting and they weren’t so I then assumed that CTVs “worldwide-schtick” included me. Never assume.

So I will perhaps miss out on one or two races but better that than to continue to feed the scumsucking nimrods that run that company. It is blatantly obvious that they have no ambition to provide a serious service to it’s paying customers .Instead they are content with praying on the fact that we are so desperately enthusiastic that we forever cling to the hope that they will eventually deliver something of all that they promise.

I have given up that hope and I have no qualms about urging you all to do the same. Let this pathetic excuse for a company go down in flames and leave the market open for someone who might actually be competent enough to provide the service that they charge money for.

Last week, I had few problems logging in and the service was part of their free viewing. This weekend, when I’m paying for it, I spend an hour and a half trying to log in and get nothing but a commercial and solid black screen of buffering. Irritated was an understatment. Instead I read along watching the Frenchish stream and finally gave up and posted along watching only the Frenchish streaming. Even at the innertube people were posting boo’s to ctv and thanking the other streaming. I (sadly) would’ve felt better for even just the audio some had as I like B&A’s commentary, a lot. But I got nothing. I have another month or so left on my subscription and I really don’t think I’m renewing unless this next month is solid. Very few excuses for them when they can open it up and offer the free stuff with out much trouble. I too would pay some big bucks for cycling streaming – that worked and was consistant. Today only brought back bad feelings from early last year.

if everyone just stops paying them. For the past couple of years I’ve listened to nothing but frustration, anguish, and anger directed at this company. I have never once been tempted to give them a nickle. I know we are all desperate for our cycling fix, but these guys are going to continue on with the same old bullshit, year after year, as long as they have fans that are willing to keep paying them. For my part, I refuse to give them a link on my site, and I’m at the point that I’ll also remove a link to any others who accept advertising $$s from them. I will find a alternative live feed, or I simply won’t watch the race. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

I had no trouble logging in – the commercial ran without any difficulty, then nothing. A few seconds of “connecting to media”, then “Ready” with a black screen and no audio. On high, medium, and low, with repeated attempts and even re-logging in. I left it the “Ready” screen on the media player open in case it was actually buffering without telling me and was going to show video in a few minutes, but still nothing.

Maybe we should all just ‘rec’ this post so that it stays at the top for the season, seeing that we will be having this discussion after every race…again. I decided not to renew my sub last August when I realized that I’m away at races every weekend in April. Originally I was thinking or subscribing in may, but no longer. It’s just not worth it.

just a thought. If we want to complain to someone, it should probably be ASO and the other race organizers. CTV is/trying to shut down the other feeds to ‘their’ territory, effectively blacking out the race to those ares. I’m sure that if the race organizers catch wind of this, CTV will have a much harder time getting the rights to the races.

To be clear. I have thoroughly enjoyed the commentators on CTV, and have found their voices here (Rebecca & Harold) to be very friendly and seem to genuinely want to help. But once again…it’s just not worth it.

Dear Mark,

We experienced several technical issues with the stream earlier today. We
apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this may have caused. This
issue should be resolved for tomorrow’s race.

Thank you,
Aric
JumpTV Fan Support

My reaction? I am going on a ride when it is supposed to be cold and snowing tomorrow AM, instead.

I realized it would be this:

Q: Will CTV ever get any better?
A: No, not if judged by all available evidence.

and not even that works!

So we don’t have this problem tomorrow? IMHO ctv has only gotten worse since jump took over. The costs went up and the quality went down. Why offer a data rate of 1800 when you can’t even hook up at 400?

amazingly bad service – even before it was bought by jumptv

But I canceled my subscription at the beginning of last year, and this thread reaffirms my decision. I would pay, if it worked but the frustration is too much for me. I guess I can look forward to another year of proxy servers and foreign language feeds when I can find them.

the FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tour du Haut Var stream was excellent, run on a simple media player platform, the Vuelta Murcia will be streamed for FREE!!!!!!!!! this week and probably flawless. The Mallorca challenge was streamed FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and worked fine as well, once again ona simple windows media player platform. Yet the streaming we pay for can’t be delivered proparely. I know it can’t be that hard to stream it,as I watch a ton of football(soccer) streaming for free, that always works excellently and with good quality. I’m watching a free stream of a tennis tourny in Mexico right now, once again, it works perfectly with a real good quality. Yet ctv doesn’t work at all, and they have money to pay for their services, fucking unbelievable!

live streaming on the internet, worked great, no cost, no ads whatsoever (seems like the universities themselves are so far paying for the “Streaming Sports Network”) … why does the (presumably) non-profit do a lot better than the one we pay for?

My subscription ends in a month, that’s it for me.

Please die soon. You suck.

Regards,

Jimbo…

P.S. Fuck you.

that offers all the races ctv does, has good customer service, and provides a viewable product by using technology from the year 2009. If this sort of company were to be created than A) we could have somewhere reliable to watch cycling, without the massive frustration or B) Ctv realizes that it’s losing customers and actually starts trying, and fires the 5 year olds who run it, leading to a reliable product as well.

Hi, I’m Koppenberg, and I’m an idiot.

Some of you may not know me, since I’ve been scarce around here of late, but I was an active member of the community for several years.

This morning, I discovered that Cycling.TV has billed my pay pal account for another year’s subscription. Now, I’ve canceled my rebilling subscription before, but apparently in the most recent round of cycling.tv rearrangements, they snuck in another reoccurring charge and I didn’t notice. They are nothing if not devious and persistent.

Anyway, so I logged in to view my account, and I’m informed that I haven’t purchased any subscriptions. (My bank balance gives the lie to that claim.) Not only that, I log into the podiumcafe.com and find that customers who CHOSE to pay and had their subscriptions properly processed STILL were not able to enjoy their purchase.

I can’t believe I find myself in the position of being taken advantage by that awful company yet again, but at least I can serve as a warning to others. If you expect your subscription to lapse, be CERTAIN that you go into your PayPal history and cancel any reoccurring subscriptions. I didn’t get what I paid for LAST year, I’m just shocked that I’m in the position of complaining that I didn’t get what I paid for THIS year as well. Like I say, I’m an idiot. Don’t be like me. Don’t give cycling.tv money. Ever. Take your $100 and buy something nice for your bike.

cheers,

A very stupid and very angry Koppenberg.

…really

Just keeps saying “Connecting to media” on all videos, as live, highlights and all bandwidths.

But the ad plays just fine. Convenient that.

I have a few months left on my subscription. Already canceled the renewal via papal. Won’t be renewing.

Buh-bye CTV!!

My feeds were all but flawless the last two days. A couple drops here and there in the form of screen freezes that seemed to work themselves out w/out my help.

Nothing fancy here computer-wise—Vista, IE 6.0 (I use Firefox for everything else—CTV never seems to play well with it though) I access the live video page, select the feed, sign in, and BAM.

Does this make me a bad person?

or Mel Gibson here?

Cut’s into the delivery when you get it wrong……..

Their customer service has been abysmal in the past, from rude emails saying that it was my network connection (when it’s not) to often no response. The horrible UI design of their ‘client’ which makes it almost impossible to find information about which races are shown in which country (one did wonder if that was done on purpose).

And then of course, the simple lack of functionality during race time. It’s not rocket science to plan system load – you do capacity testing for that.

It’s a shame because it was a good idea that never delivered on the promise.

I just wanted to drop a note, partly in hopes that Rebecca and Harold will come back and visit, but also to say that making harsh and rude comments about the employees of CTV for the company’s inability to serve us is not fair – unless of course they work for that area of the company. I’ve got loads of ranting still to be done on CTV’s crap from this weekend but I am a little bummed that some here are lumping Rebecca and Harold and even B&A into that group of bashing. I for was was very appreciative last year that they attempted to help us figure out why we were having issues. I know we are all frustrated but I at least felt better having someone acknowldge the problem.

I’m bringing this up as something at work came up and I work for a utility. I don’t work out on the lines and don’t make decisions but I work here and friends often crack jokes about “helping out with bills” or they even call me direct when there are power outages. I would be crushed and it would NOT be fair for them to unleash hell on me when things are not going smoothly. It is not my area but as an employee, and more so as their friend, I try to make some calls to look into issues when they come up. But, I can try to help but it’s seriously out of my hands. I don’t have those kinds of powers, I can only offer to try and make it better. I feel that Rebecca and Harold do that for us. They are not in the IT area (that I’m aware) but they at least listen and can approach the problem for us with trying to find out what is causing it by making some calls directly on their end.

Not sure why this is bugging me so much today but I read many rants and I so have even more of my own for CTV itself to be done but I hope that we all see that a company’s piss poor handling of our issues is not directly upon all those that work there. I’m hoping Rebecca and Harold stop back for a visit. And even more so, I continue to hope, okay, I wish, that CTV would fix the long term on going identified issues. No excuses this year make it any better when the same things happened last year.