Warning: Full on Cycling TV rant coming

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, and to blow off some steam, I'm going to unleash my anger on Cycling.TV (again) because of my poor viewing experience (again) during a major race (again) - in this case the Elite Men's cyclocross world championship. I had a 15,000 screed already written in my head but now I've got a headache, so I'm just going to list bullet points of annoyance, frustration, and fury and let you get back to your morning coffee. To whit:

• No accurate starting time to be found, other than a helpful suggestion of 'most likely start time is 8:00 if your computer settings are accurate.' Guess what? I started trying to log in from 7:45 on and didn't get anything until around 8:30am, when the race was already 23 minutes in. Sound familiar? How fucking hard is it to list the  local start time (from Italy) and either provide a link for global time zones, or let us figure it out for ourselves? How about actually starting your freaking coverage on time?
• Needed multiple screens to open before getting the actual screen that is showing the video. For Exploder you have to open at least 3 screens before getting to your destination. I'm no web designer but how hard is this? Especially after 3 years of getting the kinks out?
• While we're on the above subject, how about making the goddamn site play nicely with Firefox? Or Mac for that matter?
• Consistently losing the video feed due to site traffic. I lost it 4 times in the span of 12 minutes and after the last time, could not get back in. I was greeted the first 3 times by Lake Shoes and Tour of Qatar adverts. The last time I got Paris-Brussels highlights, before getting shut out completely with a blank page. For all I know Lars Boom just rode off the edge of the earth while leading on lap 5. Are you telling me that after 3 years you still don't have enough servers to handle your traffic on a day you know will be pretty high in people trying to watch the race? Do I really need to be typing all of this?

I am past the point where I'm going to be assuaged with 'we're undergoing growing pains and we appreciate your patience.' I don't appreciate a continued shit product that has not changed much (fancier interfaces aside) since day 1. I certainly don't appreciate paying for the privilege of watching archived races to ensure an uninterrupted data flow, knowing who's won already.

And the rub is that I've got no choice, since there is no other real competitor to Cycling.TV. So it's either put up with this treatment and rant every once in a while, or read cyclingnews live commentary. Wonderful.

*this is not a commentary on Anthony or Brian and their call of the race. I fully enjoy their participation....when I can hear it.