Professional Cycling For the Fans - Any word on US coverage of the Giro d'Italia?

Amazingly, my crappy cable company actually carries Universal. And web feed today worked great. Woo hoo! Can't wait for them to hit the mountains tomorrow...

Ya, It does not work under Firefox. But I have verified that it does work with Internet Explorer and Windows media player 11 or later. You need this combination. I guess there is some DRM issue that requires this combination.

Been working fine on either Firefox of IE for me the last 3 days.

What plug-in are you using for a player?

Comcast ch. 245 here in Atlanta.


They appear also to have digested coverage at 9pm and again at 2am.

Why the crap can't I see them? The files are 650k, far too small to be actual movies, and that size is reported by the site itself.

You know, the DRM has driven me over here (http://v0rtex.appspot.com/index?query=giro+2009).

Universal Sports is carrying the Giro like dammit. Last night they played Stage 2 at least twice.

...

And I'm on a digital TV with rabbit ears. So if it's not on your provider's list of channels, hoof it over to Radio Shack, snag some rabbit ears and an A/B switch, and switch over to watch Universal Sports. It's a great channel, I was watching Tour of the Basque Country a few weeks ago, snowboardcross last week, and some cool MTB downhill races earlier today.

I have no idea what plug in I'm using. I'm not too tech on this stuff. All I know is that with either Firefox or IE, I click on the watch live or the on demand and it starts playing. I then click on the full screen thingy and enjoy the race. Pretty sure the 650k refers to the transfer speed though, not the file size.

Merging threads

I have no idea what plug in I'm using. I'm not too tech on this stuff. All I know is that with either Firefox or IE, I click on the watch live or the on demand and it starts playing. I then click on the full screen thingy and enjoy the race. Pretty sure the 650k refers to the transfer speed though, not the file size.

I'm glad to hear that it works under Firefox. I must not have the necessary plug-in installed for Firefox. I'm sure that the 650k refers to the speed your DSL needs to be to have skip free streaming. Some of these video files are 2-3 hours long. They have to be many megabytes in size. Universal sports is great. I've never been able to watch the Giro before. It's an amazing race so far.

I'm glad U.Sports is carrying it, both web & TV shows excellent coverage but that commentator is an idiot. Yesterday he was claiming the victory for Di Luca over Cav until they showed a close up of Petacchi's number and today with Cav being behind he kept talking about Armstrong taking the pink. Geez. Seriously, you can mute the sound and be none worse off.

edit: I just watched the TV highlights which were a considerable improvement.

anyone else having problems viewing online? I get sound using Firefox. I get nothing using ie. :(

Persistence paid. Don't know what the problem was, after several attempts...

IE is fine but Firefox & Safari I get nothing.

Anyone else having problems viewing today's feed? I'm getting an RPC error.

Anyone else having problems viewing today's feed? I'm getting an RPC error.

I'm not seeing the "watch now" link. Are they late on the coverage this morning?

Anyone else having problems viewing today's feed? I'm getting an RPC error.

Now I'm getting the RPC error too. S**t!

I finally got Firefox to work, IE will not work for me today. I hit reload a couple of times and it finally started to work.

U.Sports is not showing it live over the air. 2 hour digests at noon, 9pm, 11pm, 2am. At 9pm last night the broadcast jumped from Bruseghin faltering in his late break directly to Petacci running Farrar into the barrier (after the finish). Then directly to the start of the 11pm.

IMO the announcer isn't terrible. Reminds me a lot of Hummer, in fact. The color man seem to be comatose.

And what is with the picture quality? It's TERRIBLE. Like they are using the same source for both the lo-res online stream and broadcast. I wonder if they finagled a discount for one stream only...:mad:

Anyone else having problems viewing today's feed? I'm getting an RPC error.

Nope....smooth sailing here, on IE8

anyone else having problems viewing online? I get sound using Firefox. I get nothing using ie. :(

Persistence paid. Don't know what the problem was, after several attempts...

I had everything working with IE for the first couple of days and now I can't get anything. It acts like it's working but the videos don't download. So I haven't been able to watch stage 4 or 5. I don't know if this is a bandwidth problem on the Universal servers or something else.

And what is with the picture quality? It's TERRIBLE. Like they are using the same source for both the lo-res online stream and broadcast. I wonder if they finagled a discount for one stream only...:mad:

At least here in Seattle, Universal Sports has always had terrible picture quality.
If anything, it seems to have improved for the past couple stages.
I think it has more to do with how much bandwidth the local broadcaster allocates for the channel though.

If your cable company offers RAI (Italian TV), they show at least 2 hours of coverage/day. Well, except for the weekend when calcio is king. Oh yeah, you'd better brush up on your Italian also. Sadly, it's the best we've got.

... Brad

On and off I've had problems with the Universal streams.

One day I connect easily, and have a great picture. The next i can't connect at all, or the quality is terrible. Today the video kept stopping and going so much it was like a sideshow! I couldn't keep track of what was going on in the race since the audio kept stopping too. So I finally muted the audio and listened to a Eurosport audio stream (Via http://www.cyclingfans.com).

Tomorrow I'm going to keep a window open to cyclingfans.com (http://www.cyclingfans.com/) just in case. That way I have a backup in place. I don't want to miss any of the stage, that's for sure!

Sally

You can find links here, They work well

http://atdhe.net/index.html#

A vote for justin.tv

go on there, search for Giro and see how many live feeds come up. Choice of languages too.

You can find links here, They work well

http://atdhe.net/index.html#

That link goes to something NOT cycling related!

http://www.cyclingfans.com/ lists the justin streams plus many more alternatives

That link goes to something NOT cycling related!

http://www.cyclingfans.com/ lists the justin streams plus many more alternatives

Two links there now

That link goes to something NOT cycling related!

http://www.cyclingfans.com/ lists the justin streams plus many more alternatives

It has porn advertising, but Giro is on there streaming every day.

This looks promising if your provider carries it:

http://www.universalsports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=23000&ATCLID=3734597

I don't have your fancy cable or satellite dishes. Nor did I try to watch on the internet machine.

I use a "rabbit ears" antenna to watch TV (when I watch TV) broadcast over the airwaves.

Last week, I bought a digital converter box because of the upcoming change to digital broadcasting.

Miracle of miracles, I can get Universal Sports now, broadcast over the air for free!

I live in the Hartford, CT area. I wonder how widespread this is around the country?

I'm pretty psyched that this channel broadcasts so much cycling. Picture quality is great, too.

Also, you've got to like a station that has a "Hotties in Sports" section on their website:

http://www.universalsports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=23000&ATCLID=3633651

even if it is "equal opportunity", if you know what i mean.



I had never heard of this station, before reading about it here..., enjoyed the Giro coverage, and also found the SeaMaster sailing show. Sailboat racing is my other main activity, but I didn't know about SeaMaster.