With the Setanta preview over, I decided to give premierleaguelive.tv a whirl for $15/month to see what it is like. My primary goal is to watch Norwich, preferably live, and with a lot of the matches on Setanta being tape delayed, this service intrigued me. I figured that I'd share my thoughts just in case anyone else was considering it.
Basically, you get the ability to watch every EPL game live, with the exception of the games that are broadcast on TSN. So most weeks, that means 9 matches I believe. For me personally, once I have been able to get my Norwich fix for the week, the matches on Sportsnet and TSN are plenty for me. I PVR them and watch them as I am able. With Setanta, I literally have too much content to watch on any given week. I'd probably reconsider it if it was offered on Shaw in HD and 16:9, but then again, seeing games live and on demand is kind of cool.
The service itself is very easy - you just sign up, give your credit card, and away you go. The subscription is $14.99/month and is rolling, so unless you cancel it, you'll be billed again next month. The site is fairly barebones, but I logged in right at 8:00 on Saturday morning and clicked on the Norwich game and it started streaming nearly immediately. My netbook struggled a bit with the feed, but my more powerful computer handled it just fine. It was broadcast in 16:9, which is very important to me, and the quality was better than I thought. I didn't hook it up to my TV to see if it was comparable to HDTV, but I'd say that it would be pretty close.
There was no half-time content - just some stats. No analysts. The commentary was the same as what was rebroadcast on SN later that night. The branding and graphics were all in the familiar Premier League theme.
As an added bonus, after each match concludes (a few hours later, I believe), you can watch each game as a 45-minute match, as well as 2-minute highlights for each. You can't watch full matches after the fact.
Advantages of premierleaguelive.tv: 16:9, better quality than Shaw's feed for Setanta, all of the SN/Setanta-owned games live (great if you follow a specific club, particularly one of the non-marquee clubs).
Disadvantages: With so many live games on at the same time on any given Saturday, and no ability to watch full matches after, you'll still need/want to PVR the games on Sportsnet and TSN. And this may be a big one for some people: you'll either need to watch it on your laptop or hook it up to the TV. I tried the PS3 browser, but as anyone with a PS3 knows, it is probably the worst web browser on the planet and it couldn't handle the newer version of flash content.
So sorry for being so wordy, but I'm certainly not the only one who resents paying $15/month for the fuzzy, cropped excuse of a channel that Shaw offers. This may be a good alternative to some of you.
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