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Six Nations NOT on Setanta!

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  1. #1

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    Six Nations NOT on Setanta!

    Aiya! This whole sports rights thing is getting fucking annoying!

    I've just discovered that Setanta, to whom NowTV has got me signed up to a 2 year contract don't have the rights to the Six Nations in HK for 2014. Apparently someone called beIN, which is the sports arm of Al-Jazeera has the rights. And I suspect that to watch the five weekends of matches on my TV I will have to commit to a two year subscription to some other NowTV channel which will show nothing else of interest (the Aviva, the LV etc - is still on Setanta, at least until the end of the northern hemisphere season).

    So I guess my alternative is to "pay per view" by going to a pub that has the beIN feed, or, better, the UK TV feed (e.g. Trafalgar). But I'd really like an easy option to watch some games at home.

    Surely it's about time that NowTV came up with a decent PPV option for stuff like this? Asking people to take 2 year commitments to watch 15 games of rugby over 5 weekends is completely unreasonable.

    I recall that they did offer such a deal for the last Rugby World Cup - I wonder if there's any chance of them doing the same for the Six Nations?

    Anyone here with inside knowledge from NowTV?

    Edit: I see that TV5Asie also has rights here for the French games at least, but presumably only with French commentary, and that's not a free channel either!

    Last edited by Gruntfuttock; 21-01-2014 at 01:03 AM.

  2. #2

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    This is bad. My husband re-signed us to Now just for Sentanta a few months back (I was out at the time, or I would have stopped them at the door). Last weekend he moaned about the channel because it wasn't showing some UK club match, but another channel he didn't subscribe to was.

    The reason he got it was to watch 6 nations at home, rather than having to go to the pub. Once he hears this my life will be a litany of whining about the damned rugby!

    Seriously, how can Setanta offer a rugby channel that doesn't have one of the two major world tounaments on it? And why is Now still charging a full whack of over the top rental for it?


  3. #3

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    So I'm digging into this further, and the people who have the rights are TVB Network Vision on the BeIN Sports channel. But on calling their customer service line it seems that this is a satellite based service, and apparently they do not have coverage in my building at least.

    Does anyone know who these people are or have service from them? Their Customer Service line wasn't really very helpful.

    But in any case, there's obviously zero chance of a satellite dish being installed before Saturday given that it would have to be a building-wide thing.

    It looks like this latest mess is going to be a huge boost for the bars which have decent internet-based feeds of the UK TV channels!

    I guess for me that means Trafalgar.

    This is really very annoying since I basically have NowTV only to watch live rugby and now I'm effectively paying a huge amount of money per game to watch the Championship and a few Aviva Premiership Games.

    Last edited by Gruntfuttock; 29-01-2014 at 11:03 PM.

  4. #4

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    You could buy a UKTV HK box and watch it on BBC 1 live? I know it means shelling out for the box but at least it's an immediate connection and you can just subscribe for 1 month. Obviously you're stuck with the box then but you can use it next time NOW TV pulls the same stunt as long as you pay a minimum month's subscription again. And the handy thing is you can move the box from TV to TV so you can even take it round to a friend's one night and watch it there and then back to you for the next day. It's very handy.


  5. #5

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    To be fair, it's not NOWTV that's pulled any stunt, it's simply that Setanta got outbid for the HK rights to show the Six Nations.

    I'm basically moving fairly quickly towards getting some sort of UKTV Box or other similar solution, in conjunction probably with HKBN to replace my Netvigator and NOWTV when the commitment expires.

    I was hoping, for the first time in my 15 years here, soon to be without any relationship with PCCW/HKT. But of course they've just gone and bought back CSL, so I'd have to change mobile operator as well to escape now!


  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gruntfuttock:
    I'm basically moving fairly quickly towards getting some sort of UKTV Box or other similar solution, in conjunction probably with HKBN to replace my Netvigator and NOWTV when the commitment expires.
    That's exactly what I did a few months ago when I moved. UKTV is great, especially for sport. It's weird having so many channels in English. When my friend's 5 year old comes round to my flat, he now automatically heads for my bedroom (where my UKTV box lives most of the time), climbs into my bed and lies there watching CBeebies. We don't hear a peep out of him so we can sit and actually have "grown-up" conversation in the living room. Last time he was on the verge of tears when he had to go home.

    I moved to HKBN 100M and it was cheaper than my crappy old PCCW connection. And I don't get bloody PCCW salespeople randomly turning up at my front door at 10pm on a Sun night, grrrr. Total result!
    emx and Tom007 like this.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by bibbju:
    You could buy a UKTV HK box and watch it on BBC 1 live? I know it means shelling out for the box but at least it's an immediate connection and you can just subscribe for 1 month. Obviously you're stuck with the box then but you can use it next time NOW TV pulls the same stunt as long as you pay a minimum month's subscription again. And the handy thing is you can move the box from TV to TV so you can even take it round to a friend's one night and watch it there and then back to you for the next day. It's very handy.
    What is this UKTV box device you speak of?

    Sent from my Nexus 7 using GeoClicks mobile app

  8. #8

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    I picked up a Maige TV box from Sham Shui Po after reading about it from DeletedUser and a couple of others on another thread in this forum. Its just a box with HDMI out to plug into the TV and a remote control. Can use it anywhere in the world where you have internet. I think I'm going to cancel my NowTV when it expires next month. The Maige has 356 channels currently, but new channels keep popping up all the time. Price was $2200 for the box with 12 months service, $60 for a wifi adaptor, then every 12 months renewal costs RMB499. You just enter your box MAC address into the following website to renew:
    http://www.maige.tv/

    That site also has some tools to connect to your box directly, see how much bandwidth you are currently consuming, stream from your box to pc or ipad, etc. It's pretty cool.

    Im not a huge sports fan and actually got it for the Japanese channels for the wife. But there are a heap of sports channels on there. Maybe 40 or so. A bunch of Fox Sports, Euro Sports, 4 Jsports, NBC sports, ESPN, Astro, NBATV, etc.... most in Full HD and usually with english commentary.

    It also has all the usual range of other Channels like Discovery, NatGeo, Disney, Fox, Star, all the news Channesl etc. Even CNN US, SkyNews, BBC World etc in Full HD look a lot better than the crappy SD feed that NowTV provides. Now TV only has selected HD channels but this box has heaps more in HD and the quality really is amazing.

    Just this week I turned it on and found they added NBC4, ABC7 and CBS channels from US (Detroit) if you are American and want to watch local US channels. In full HD looks amazing but the 12 hour time difference is a bit of a pain and US commercials I find really annoying and cant stand to watch. Every time the ads come on I cringe at some of them.

    On the downside, the build quality of the box is not the best (it has that cheapish feel to it), the remote control is in Chinese (but the system itself has English menus as well as a few other languages and my logitech universal remote picked it up fine so I dont use the chinese remote), sometimes the channels just dont work (blank screen or show some test pattern or something), there is always the risk of losing one of your favourite channels since they seem to be updating quite regularly, the wifi was a bit unstable so I switched to a homeplug and now is better.

    Im also not sure the legality of the box. But anyway I am enjoying it for now.

    Another review here:
    http://zoeblogshop.wordpress.com/201...1000-over-vod/

    Tom007 likes this.

  9. #9

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    I just got last Saturday a uktveverywhere box. Works great and the best UK TV set up I have tried yet.
    Grunty, you are more than welcome to come around and watch a game or two over a beer. It is in Kowloon though.


  10. #10

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    Feb 2009
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    Original Post Deleted
    I read your posts on the other thread, found the dodgy stand on Ap Liu Street, the guy tried to charge me a few hundred more until I told him my friend got it for $2200 and then he agreed . Im also happy with it so far.

    But one more downside I forgot to mention is that it doesnt appear to have the dual language function that NowTV and others have. Maybe I just couldnt find it or I didnt map my logitech remote to the right buttons or something, I dont know if you have any idea TB? What I mean is I might be watching an english program on Discovery or something and usually its in english with Chinese subs, but then some of the programs come on with the sound in Chinese. Im sure its broadcast with 2 soundtracks and normally there is a button to switch between english/chinese but this box doesnt appear to do it.

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