Viola... In English!

Viola Channel Guide

Saturday's match, home to Torino, will be aired at 1130 Pacific Time on Fox Soccer Channel and RAI International in the United States.

For those others there will be a stream that you can find my going to Myp2p.eu and clicking the tv graphic to the right of the team names.

SerieA.tv is, of course, also an option.

UEFA on SerieA.tv!

Fiorentina-Groningen on SerieA.tv LIVE!

     

SerieA.tv will webcast live worldwide coverage of the UEFA Cup first round return leg tie between Fiorentina and Groningen on Thursday, October 4 at 2100 CET  (3pm in NYC, 12pm in LA, 4am + 1Day in Tokyo).

Watch the game for $6.95.

To enjoy every moment of this exciting UEFA Cup encounter, just sign up at www.seriea.tv and book your grandstand seat for the very best in live European soccer action on SerieA.tv.

Fans of Italian soccer will not want to miss out on seeing if the Viola can qualify for the lucrative group stages of the competition.

Coach Cesare Prandelli's high-flying side have been turning it on in Serie A and will go into this game as favorites after gaining a valuable away goal in a 1-1 in Holland.

So it's another great reason to subscribe to the portal that is fast becoming the first choice for all fans of Italian football the world over.

This UEFA Cup match is not available as part of the season pass for the 2007-08 Serie A season so if you like to subscribe to the Italian soccer season subscribe at www.seriea.tv.

My take -- All I did was copy, paste and re-format.

SerieA.tv's Response

Well, one of the big guys over at Infront AMS read the post about my SerieA.tv experience and sent me a personal (I'm impressed!) response.  I emailed him back and then he responded to that...  Only 30 minutes later!  Nice work, SerieA.tv.  Response time is really huge with me.  Below are the three emails in their entirety; his, mine then his.

He did give me his actual name but I have decided to just put his initials out there as I think his email address would be too easily guessed if I were to divulge it.

-------------------------------------------------------

Dear Nick,

This is M.B., Director of Infront AMS and Head of SerieA.tv.
I have just read your review about SerieA.tv, and I must thank you 
for your kind words.

I do admit that we had a few problems.
Logging problems, mostly.
Some subscribers contacted us and we dealt with them fast 
and, as you had the chance to experience, their problems got fixed.

As for the streaming issues, we were not aware of anything.
We had more than 5000 simultaneous streams and we never got any 
warning that something was not going as foreseen.

We are putting in place a set of new procedures in order to deal 
also with these problems, if properly reported.

If something is not working as it should, we want to fix it as fast as 
possible.

Dealing with thousands of subscribers and with tech issues it is not 
easy.  But we are committed to give you the best experience possible.

We are open to suggestions and we want to have a close relationship 
with our subscribers and supporters.

We are legit (we don't have a BBB seal because we are not an 
American company).
We are part of one of the largest rights and media groups in the world.
We have a 3-year long plan.
We are here to stay.

So, the sooner we get to know each other, the better.

Once again, thank you for your vote of confidence, you trust and your 
kind words.

Looking forward to reading more from you in the future.

Regards,

M.B.
Director
Infront AMS

Milan, ITALY

----------------------------------------------

Dear Mr. B,



Thank you so much for taking the time to personally respond to my
review.  Many of my readers (and readers of forums such as bigsoccer
and xtratime) had asked me to share my experiences so that they could
better decide whether, or not, to subscribe to SerieA.tv.  Would you
mind if I were to share your response on my site?



I also know that one question that keeps popping up, as I have many
readers from Europe (Scandinavia especially), is whether or not there
are plans to expand the service to Europe.



Regards,

Nick Puglia

editor www.ViolaIE.com

------------------------------------------

Dear Nick,

One of my duties is to make you fans happy.
Your feedbacks are vital if we want to succeed.

You are the next frontier when it comes to experience events, 
whether they are sports, movies, music concerts,...

You guys are the ones who want to watch something and sometimes 
cannot.

We want to fill that void and satisfy that needs.

Today with SerieA.tv.
Tomorrow with something else.

As for the other questions, here are the answers:

1 rights in Europe have been sold to another entity, so we are 
not allowed to manage and exploit the rights in those territories. 
Unlike in the States, where rights are sold by the leagues directly, 
in Italy (and in Spain) rights are owned by the clubs. Agencies try 
to facilitate the distribution of the content. This leads to this 
kind of situations, which are not nice, I agree. If SerieA.tv is 
successful, this could lead to a change in this scenario, so that 
the content will be available to more territories and more countries 
through one supplier only. 

2 of course, you can share my thoughts to your readers. The only 
thing I ask you is to have my email address withheld so not to be 
spammed from here to infinity.

I wish you a very good day over there in sunny Arizona (from your 
posts on Bigsoccer I gathered that you live in Tucson and you bleed 
Dodgers blue).

Let me know if we can be of further assistance and rest assured 
that we are already working to provide you a better experience 
for the next weekend.

Regards,

M.B.
Director

Infront AMS

My SerieA.tv Weekend

This weekend I gave my season pass to SerieA.tv a good run-out; watching three matches live.  The Saturday matches; Lazio-Torino and Juventus-Livorno; came off without a hitch except for some authentication problems that have since been corrected.  The streaming was practically seamless.  The commentary was the same as that on the Fox Soccer Channel broadcasts of the same matches.

Sunday morning I watched the Fiorentina-Empoli match (live) which was, of course, not televised on FSC.  The commentary was in English (over the Italian commentary that I could barely hear in the background)  which meant that I missed one of my favorite parts of the experience, hearing the tifosi.  That was disappointing but I understand that SerieA.tv is marketed to English speakers so I do understand it.  The actual streaming quality of the live version of the Fiorentina-Empoli match was much lower than that of the Saturday matches.  It was almost unwatchable in the first half and, though the second half was an improvement, it was nowhere near seamless in the second half, either.  I chatted with a guy who watched the Genoa-Milan match at the same time and he had the same experience. 

There were seven matches being aired simultaneously so that may have had something to do with it.  On the other hand, the viewing audience was spread out over seven matches so one would assume that this would mean less viewers per stream which would, in turn, mean a faster stream.  I should point out, I guess, that I am not very technologically inclined (I'm 35 and still have found nothing that I am really adept at) and don't really know if any of the above (in this paragraph) really even has anything to do with the performance of the stream but common sense tells me that it probably does.

In SerieA.tv's defense, I did not contact their technical support on Sunday (I did on Saturday for the authentication deal, and that was fixed smartly) as I just put it down to the service still needing to work out the kinks.  A representative of SerieA.tv did end up making an appearance on a forum and said that we should have said something as there were no red flags.  It could just be that anyone who has ever watched a stream before is used to all of the buffering and never thought to complain.

Even with the problems laid out above, I still love it and, in truth, would gladly pay three times the price for the ability to have all of those matches available to watch seamlessly and on-demand.  And the archived matches are seamless.  I watched Siena-Sampdoria this (Monday) morning without a hitch.  It was in Italian but that was more than fine with me.  From the SerieA.tv Media page there were (until I got home from work tonight) options to watch each archived match in the following manners.

• English
• Italian (though that area was not highlighted and I don't even see it anymore)
• Condensed Match
• Highlights
• Top Play (which anyone, even non-subscribers, can watch)

As of this evening the Media page just lists several random clips with catchy titles rather than the nice layout of this morning that listed every match and all of the options.  It appears that you now have to access archived videos from each team page.  It should be noted that I just clicked on the English version (the only version 'available,' remember) of the Siena match and again, it is in Italian. 

One of the things that really makes this service very appealing for me is that this time of the year the early Sunday matches air at 0600 my time.  In the winter it gets worse; 0500.  As I cannot really put the finishing touches on my ViolaIE.com match reports until videos of the goals start popping up anyway, this gives me the option of sleeping in on Sundays (like a normal human being) and then watching the seamless, archived version of the match at my convenience.  I only hope that SerieA.tv comes up with a way of accessing the archived matches without being forced to see the final score as that would be a real bummer. 

Another very appealing thing about the service is their recent announcement that they will air the final four rounds of the Coppa Italia tournament and that really makes SerieA.tv a no-brainer for me.  The Coppa Italia round of 16 and round of 8 matches still feature lots of players that I don't get a chance to see much during the regular season and it would be really great if Fiorentina were to go far (we're already in the round of 16) as I could watch some of our Linea Verde prospects (Hable, Mazuch, Lupoli, etc...) in action.

If your only interest is in a big club the service may not be as valuable for you except for the ability to watch matches after the fact.  If you support a smaller club, however, or if you want to watch a wide variety of matches, SerieA.tv would really be invaluable. 

I really do believe that the company will improve the quality of its live streams as they do seem serious and very responsive.  In fact, the only email of mine that they never answered was the one I sent about a month ago asking if they would provide me with a free subscription in return for a review.  Hey, I had to try.

A New Way Of Watching I Viola

Well, I have just bought the bullet and charged $89.95 to my card for SerieA.TV.  According to the site I will have unlimited season-long access to every Serie A match; to play and replay to my heart's content.  I would feel a lot more secure about it if they accepted PayPal, but they don't...  Credit card only.  Truth is; if it's legit it may be the best $89.95 I ever spent.  I don't watch much television anyway so I could cancel my RAI International and whatever package I have that gives me GolTV.  I'll miss the Spanish and Bundesliga matches but, in all honesty, those are just a pastime for me.

I will keep you posted as to the legitimacy of the package and fill everyone in on my own opinions of the matches.  Is anyone else on here getting it?  Today the site posted a short video entitled 'Viola Renaissance.'  If I have to listen to that guy week in and week out things could get ugly.  For those watching the streaming video note that (for me, anyway) it works much better in Internet Explorer than in Firefox.  Well, nothing is perfect...

Fiorentina - Larissa Stream

Saturday's friendly match in Bolzano against Greek Cup winners, Larissa FC, will be televised on SportItalia at 1300 EST.  This means that streams should be available and I will post some here when I have a chance to look for some.

Larissa lost in Bolzano 3-0 on Thursday to Torino.

Source1