Cycling.TV Schedule

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 7:18 PM EST in News

So Het Volk is going to be available LIVE this weekend, starting at 5am Pacific, 8am Eastern... if somehow I am reading their schedule correctly. It's free, though premium members will have a higher bitrate.

This is great, but I also noticed that they've posted a rather extensive Classics schedule, rather quietly, after months of anticipation. ~~The Monuments aren't listed yet -- last year they got added at the last minute. But for now Cycling.TV will carry live:~~ Update [2007-2-28 19:46:51 by chris]:OK, I checked my email, and they've sent me the entire season schedule! Too numerous to list, and I won't go into free/premium only/etc, so here, instead, are the high points:

Het Volk
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne
What's left of Paris-Nice
Dwaars Door Vlaanderen
E3 Prijs (!)
Fleche Brabanconne/Brabantse Pijl
Three Days of De Panne
Gent-Wevelgem (!!)
Vuelta a Pais Vasco
Paris-Roubaix!!
Amstel Gold
Fleche Wallonne
Liege-Bastogne-Liege
Tour de Romandie
Dauphine Libere
Tour de Suisse
DeutschlandTour
GP Plouay
Vuelta a Espana!
World Championships
Zuri Metzgete
Lombardia!

Something called the Versus Channel (presumably a separate subscription for VS feeds) will be carrying the Italian races, and by races I mean the whole shootin match: Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, and the Giro d'Italia!

This looks a lot like last year, when the Tour of Flanders was the only real hole in last year's schedule, and there again we can still hope for coverage somehow. Also, please remember that if/when you subscribe to Cycling.TV premium, I'd be grateful if you did so through the Podium Cafe. It doesn't cost you any extra, and I get a rare opportunity to offset a few hours' operating costs. Click HERE, or see the yellow logo in the links section, right sidebar, scroll down a bit. Thanks!

Oh, and they have a new portal, bunch of interactive features, etc., which are added or set to launch this week. Don't ask me what exactly they are, but it sounds interesting.

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Comments

YaHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Way to go Anthony, Brian, et al..

Now to the question of cost... Will it be like last year, one charge for Premium and then another for this and another for that... or a flat fee for the whole season, of a gamblers rate... Premium plus that is a flat fee, more than premium but less than pay as you go, that includes ALL races?

What's it going to be fellas?

by ELVISGOAT on Feb 28, 2007 7:45 PM EST reply actions

Two fees

Premium and Versus. No UCI one as far as I can see, and the Vuelta will have a third channel, but you can skip it and watch on the free channel. As far as I can tell.

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 7:49 PM EST up reply actions

So the Vuelta

will be a bit rate for hire affair...?

by ELVISGOAT on Feb 28, 2007 7:50 PM EST up reply actions

I'll fwd

you the email. That's how I read it.

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 7:51 PM EST up reply actions

I <3 Cycling.Tv

But they annoyed me this week. I was looking forward to the new season, and there is no chance in hell that I'd not resubscribe, but when I checked my bank statement this week, I saw that narrowstep had charged me for another season of premium channel without asking me. So I was quite unable to re-up my subscription through Podium Cafe, which I was planning on doing.

So, if you all still have subscriptions from last season, beware that it will automatically rebill. I was unable to find a place to turn this feature off on their web site.

by Koppenberg on Feb 28, 2007 7:46 PM EST reply actions

Whoa!

Thanks for the heads up!!

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 7:47 PM EST up reply actions

you have got to be kidding me...

I'm going to raise a stink if I can't re-up thru PC...

by ELVISGOAT on Feb 28, 2007 7:49 PM EST up reply actions

...on second thought

by ELVISGOAT on Feb 28, 2007 10:37 PM EST up reply actions

Hey Anthony...

Any chance this can be corrected? For anyone trying to go thru here?

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 7:50 PM EST up reply actions

Same issue here...

I received a PayPal notice on Sunday telling me I had a pending charge. I searched through Cycling.Tv and Narrowstep, but found no information about recurring charges. So, I immediately wrote Cycling.tv an email complaining about the lack of notice, my loyalty to CTV since its inception, the potential of them pissing off a lot of other loyal viewers etc., etc.,... I was particularly annoyed because PayPal tried to take the money from the bank account I had set up as my primary account last year, even though it has not been my primary account for 10 months (currently inactive with a 99 cent balance... now with 2 pending $30 insufficient fund charges). I also told them I was going to post on Podium Cafe what had transpired, but opted to give them a chance to fix the issue before unnecessarily riling the natives. Obviously they didn't give a damn what I had to say, evidenced by the following response:

"The pay pal auto renewal is mentioned when signing up and in your receipt from pay pal. You can instantly cancel this function and it will not affect that year's subscription."

Yeah, thanks buddy. As far as I remember, CTV never advertised that this was a recurring charge. And why would I bother reading the fine print of a PayPal email receipt when I thought I was just making a 1-year purchase?. Unless you know where to look on PayPal (History) and carefully read through the original payment, there's know way you'd know this was a recurring payment. I too would have purchased the premium membership anyway, but this has left a sour taste in my mouth, to put it politely.

Perhaps I'm wrong; someone tell me they remember it being advertised as a recurring subscription and I'll stop bitching and apologize.

Please Anthony, get on this!

by Scott. on Feb 28, 2007 8:47 PM EST up reply actions

I saw the notice

when I just signed up, but only because of the postings here.

So, can I cancel the auto-renewal feature, and not affect this years subscription? That's what it seems like they were telling you.

by johnw on Feb 28, 2007 9:25 PM EST up reply actions

Yow!

Auto-renewal without an opt-out?

My renewal is coming up in late March; I planned to re-up through Podium Cafe (Hennie would have wanted it that way), but can't find any sort of "auto-renew on/off" option on the Cycling TV site.

Because they lack a "normal" Web site clearly stating their policies (or their damned schedule), I'm going to have to send them an e-mail.

I love the content, but the business/marketing/finance side of the operation is strictly Keystone Cops level stuff.

by TCWriter on Mar 1, 2007 12:24 AM EST up reply actions

We'll get answers

I've asked Anthony to stop by the site tomorrow if possible to answer questions. If he can make it, we can see if he can help us, or more likely get their tech people to fix this.

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 12:32 AM EST up reply actions

Hey TC

There is an opt-out, but you have to do it through the PayPal site, not CTV. THAT is what got me annoyed. CTV seems to be assuming that everyone knows about PayPal's subscription policies/structure or would have bothered reading the email receipt (which I usually don't). But PayPal is nothing but a third-party vendor who sets up the transaction; CTV is the party who sets the terms of the transaction and should be advertising those terms up front, not using stealth tactics by relying on PayPal to do it for them.

by Scott. on Mar 1, 2007 7:52 AM EST up reply actions

Can you post details on how to do that?

When I contact CTV they say "ask paypal" and when I ask paypal they say "contact the seller".

It is a most annoying feedback loop.

by Koppenberg on Mar 1, 2007 9:07 AM EST up reply actions

OK, here is how it is done

(for those who are as slow as I am)

In Paypal, click on the "my account" tab, and then history. In the dropdown box next to show: select "subscriptions". You will likely have to set the date range back a year to see the Narrowstep subscription. Click "search". When you see the subscription creation for Narrowstep, click "details". At the bottom of this screen you will see the option to "cancel subscription". Confirm this choice and you have stopped future automatic payments.

Good to know they made it such an intuitive process!

I'm fairly certain that my annoyance with this process will last until Saturday AM, when I can sit in my living room w/ a nice cup of coffee watching the Het Volk on my TV.

by Koppenberg on Mar 1, 2007 9:14 AM EST up reply actions

I didn't pay via PayPal...

I used a credit card. You can cancel a repeating contract in PayPal, but I'm concerned they're going to charge my Credit Card come March 27 whether I want to or not.

There's no "auto-renew" setting anywhere, and someone above said their card had been auto-charged.

That's why the need for an e-mail to CyclingTV

by TCWriter on Mar 1, 2007 11:12 AM EST up reply actions

If I'm understanding correctly...

The auto-renew is a pay-pal issue. I remember having to create a paypal account last February in order to pay for the premium channel, at the time I don't think there was a direct-pay option.

My credit card was automatically billed, because my paypal account was zero balance (I rarely use it), so it automatically went to the card I used to set up the account.

If I'm understanding the situation correctly (and that is not a given), if you didn't subscribe through paypal, autobilling won't be a problem.

by Koppenberg on Mar 1, 2007 12:08 PM EST up reply actions

Versus

Is the name the old OLN network changed their name to, I think. Isn't that right?

by Tiki on Feb 28, 2007 8:19 PM EST reply actions

Yep

And apparently C.TV has partnered with them again to make a separate channel on the C.TV site for the Italian races.

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 8:29 PM EST up reply actions

no good

don't forget to mention the fact that it won't work right on a mac. i've tried everything they say to do & it still won't work. when you email them for help the answers they tell you don't fix the problem. the video quality was terrible even back when i used a PC with a fast connection. not worth the money to see tiny grainy little riders with the audio garbled. strange that the ads always play just fine, its only the actual race that I paid to see that has terrible quality video & audio. I won't waste my money again. demonoid has most races available for download anyway.

by Lili on Feb 28, 2007 8:22 PM EST reply actions

Hm

I have two macs, and had no trouble last year, once I got Firefox. Not sure if Safari is ready for it yet, I'll check tonight. Quality is what it is... a stream. We will see if it's better this year.

Anyone wondering about this can go to the site now and test the quality using one of the archived race files. I think, from the recipient's perspective, those work the same as a live stream. At least, when I was having trouble last year, it was with stored and live video.

by Chris Fontecchio on Feb 28, 2007 8:28 PM EST up reply actions

Firefox v. IE

Their little "This site really wants IE, but you can try Firefox and see what you get" notice was a bit offputting, but things seem to be working fine. Anyone sort out what is lost by not using IE? (That's an awful policy, btw, considering market shares . . .)

by Sui Juris on Feb 28, 2007 10:43 PM EST up reply actions

IE

isn't loading the site properly on my mac. It gets stuck on the screen confirming my bitrate.

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 1:27 AM EST up reply actions

On my home machine

the cycling TV app doesn't find my windows media player when I'm using firefox. It does find it on my work machine using ff, and my home machine using IE7, or whatever is the latest version of IE.

Oh well, no biggie, just kinda strange.

by johnw on Mar 1, 2007 10:48 AM EST up reply actions

I think...

You need to install the ActiveX plug-in to get Firefox to work correctly with CyclingTV's player.

It works fine on my PC using Firefox, but crashes Firefox every time I close the window containing the player.

Kinda final, if you ask me.

by TCWriter on Mar 1, 2007 11:14 AM EST up reply actions

Thanks, sounds like

I'll just be using IE.

Has anyone tried placing the player in full screen mode and connecting the TV out of your computer to your TV? I'm wondering how bad the compression artifacts are when you display it on a 36" TV.

by johnw on Mar 1, 2007 11:24 AM EST up reply actions

I've noticed the same thing

FF worked ok, until I installed the Gecko active X. Now it crashes. I guess I'll have to tinker w/ it. It still runs fine in IE. Cycling.tv is the only thing I run on IE, so I'm hoping to get FF worked out.

The reason for the need for active x is, I believe, that the stream uses windows media player for DRM (digital rights management, makes it slightly more difficult to record the stream). W/ the gecko active X plugin, it should play in FF.

Which makes me think, I have VLP set as my default media player, I wonder if that is causing the lockup in FF?

by Koppenberg on Mar 1, 2007 12:15 PM EST up reply actions

cycling tv on mac

I'm with you Lili. I've tried everything to get cycling.tv to work on a Mac. I have both a iMac G5 and a brand new Intel Macbook. I use the latest version of firefox and flip4mac. Still, when I try to watch an archived video, the jumping, skipping, stopping, etc. are just too much to handle. The live content is OK if it is streaming. But, I've found the coverage of the live races starts late into the race. I completely missed the Nys/Wellens incident at cyclocross worlds because I couldn't get the stream to load.
I found the WCSN site to have much better quality for video streaming. They carried the tape delayed coverage of cyclocross worlds, and it streams perfectly on my Mac. I can't figure out why WCSN, using Windows Media Player works fine, but cycling.tv does not. Like you said, the commercials on cycling.tv work great (including the Mac commercial - how aggravating), but the actual race feed is crap.

by telemick on Mar 1, 2007 11:21 AM EST up reply actions

Flanders?

I'm surprised it's not on the Versus channel. Maybe they can't show it live or something? Seems like it would get a bunch of people (myself included, although I'll do it anyway for races like T-A, MSR, and the Giro) to lay down the money for their channel

by BDBrian on Feb 28, 2007 10:08 PM EST reply actions

That raised some discussion...

Hello all of you.

Well our email last night and auto renewal has clearly raised temperatures in good and bad ways. Let me try and answer some questions and handle some of your issues.

Firstly, in all of this I will be as clear and direct as I can. At Cycling.tv we are all cycling fans and we are trying to bring you as much bike racing as we possibly can. Who else has ever brought any cycling fan as much live and on-demand racing as Cycling.tv?

Ok, here goes....

Auto-renewal.

When you subscribe to the Premium Channel, it clearly states that the subscription will auto renew and does the same on your paypal receipt. shnabors and TC writer, we are not using stealth tactics in any way - we as a company are really open and I think that is evidenced by me writing here. The only option we have is to have the opt out through paypal - there is no other way of doing it. If we could facilitate this we would.

You have opt out through paypal, right of cancellation through paypal and can email team@cycling.tv with any questions. We really pride ourselves on our quick response to you and try to be as helpful as possible.

Our schedule

TC writer and others, you have made comments about our lack of schedule. We have listened to your comments about this very closely, the new Cycling.tv will have the schedule and that is also why we emailed everyone last night. We are learning from our customers as we develop and hope that you can see that we are reacting. Please work with us, we were one of the first into broadband tv and are constantly asking you our customers for feedback to develop and then it takes time for the technology to catch up to make it happen!

Mac

The age old question! We are still working with technology suppliers to make this work to its optimum. However most of our mac users are now agreeing that progression has been made and that we are improving. You need to use flip for mac, firefox combination. In flip for mac you need to make sure that the option to 'create streaming movies' is selected. This should make it happen and we will be working to improve this over the coming months.

Others

I will talk to Chris about sign ups through PC. I am sure he and I can agree something.

On the comment about demonoid, that is personal choice and is it legal? Not sure. Cycling.tv has invested millions of dollars in bringing you as Cycling fans the very best cycle races. That involves rights purchase, negotiation, development of technology. I hope you would back that instead of an upload/download option that doesn't back cycling in any way. We support the sport at all levels by sponsoring teams such as Slipstream and raising the profile of riders, teams, sponsors, that must be worth it?

Finally, I hope I have answered your questions, I am looking forward to bringing you Het Volk and KBK at the weekend - and of course the new Cycling.tv with so many new features you wont believe it - in the next few days.

All the best

Anthony

by anthony mccrossan on Mar 1, 2007 9:32 AM EST reply actions

Thank you so much Anthony!

I think you guys heard our requests about scheduling and pricing, it's much better to have a plan in advance. And it sounds like we've hit on a way to stop the auto-renew now. I really appreciate your coming by to answer questions.

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 10:40 AM EST up reply actions

Thanks Anthony!

It is great to read such a quick response, especially considering the time difference between GMT and PST.

I now understand that the auto-renew "feature" is not a stealth tactic by cycling.tv. Still, it did sneak up on myself and some other customers. An explicit comment on the order screen along the lines of "This subscription will automatically renew unless you take steps to opt-out." would go a long way to keep this from being a future problem.

And I want to say again that I love your product. I was annoyed by this billing snafu, to be certain, but as I've said before that will all go away as soon as I sit down and watch the Het Volk on Saturday.

Thanks for all the hard work in bringing us cycling.tv. Thanks for responding so quickly to criticism. Whatever bumps encountered as you grow your business, when I think of the difference between following races in '05 and then watching cycling.tv last year, I thank my lucky stars for cycling.tv. Y'all have come a long way in a short time, and it looks like things are going to keep improving.

Thanks!

by Koppenberg on Mar 1, 2007 10:43 AM EST up reply actions

$.02

Anyone concerned about how Cycling.TV works on their gear has two days to load it, tinker, etc. Work out the bugs now, not Saturday!

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 10:54 AM EST reply actions

On second thought

from the chatter above, it sounds like there are more problems associated with loading archived files than with streamed video. So when I was trying to test my system watching Zuri Metzgete I was asking for trouble. Try loading a live stream, they usually have something playing.

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 11:41 AM EST up reply actions

Auto renewed!!!

I thought the auto renewal was great!!!

Don

by CobblesorBust on Mar 1, 2007 11:41 AM EST reply actions

If you're expecting

to auto-renew, it is a great thing. But, I think the real problem is that Paypal doesn't give advance notice that you're about to renew. They (Paypal) should email you a few weeks to a month ahead of your renewal date to inform you that you're about to renew.

by johnw on Mar 1, 2007 12:15 PM EST up reply actions

Agreed

We auto renew a few services and they all email us a month ahead. Paypal should be a little more obvious. IMHO autorenewals are kind of an affront... but in the case of cycling.tv, they might as well create a "renew-until-I-am-dead" function. Let's face it, I don't think you're ever going to hear the words "Coming up next, ESPN's live coverage of the Tour de Romandie!"

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 12:47 PM EST reply actions

I second that concurrence and

will remain a loyal fan regardless of this communication snafu. Cycling.tv has always been responsive to all my questions and comments, and Anthony's response here is surely indicative of how much they care about us. So, if I was wrong, I hang my head in shame and apologize as I promised I would for any appearance of defaming Cycling.tv my comments might have caused.

by Scott. on Mar 1, 2007 12:56 PM EST up reply actions

Everyone

has a right to demand the best services for their money, so it's not like we should shy away from asking Cycling.tv hard questions (though I'm not sure it's all on Anthony specifically). It's healthy for them too to hear it from us, a decent-sized customer bloc. But as was mentioned before, if and when I can turn on Het Volk Saturday morning and see a good live feed, everything will be just fine.

by Chris Fontecchio on Mar 1, 2007 1:08 PM EST up reply actions

No question...

If it wasn't for cycling.tv I would still be a "vuelta? whats a vuelta?" kind of cycling fan (I know...I'm ashamed just typing it).

I subscribed last July and have watched all their archived (and live) material at least once since. In fact, if I never finish this degree...blame cycling.tv!!

by Hons on Mar 1, 2007 2:21 PM EST up reply actions