Network2 and World Cup

Funky Phantom

Great to see Network2 has finally arrived, well almost.

So us footie fans will have digital picture and sound for the World Cup feast that RTE are having this year.

See http://www.worldcup.ie/craic/tv_listings.asp

Nice to see our national broadcaster beating the Beeb and ITV for match coverage about 3-1 I reckon.

Its a shame RTE can't make some money with this type of coverage in the UK

DMC

Originally posted by Funky Phantom
Nice to see our national broadcaster beating the Beeb and ITV for match coverage about 3-1 I reckon.

But that is the way coverage has been down the years in the UK, split 50:50 for BBC and ITV.

But Network 2 is your one stop shop.

It will be great to hear Jimmy Magee on TV commentary again, his 10th World Cup... I can hear him now, "South Korea striker Seol Ki-hyeon, his great-grandmother played top of the right for the Kilkenny under-21 camogie team in 1932......."

Funky Phantom

LOL funny that I thought she played for the Banner....

osullima

You have got to give it to Network 2 on this one! Roll on the World Cup in Digital!!!

smoke.me.a.kipper

seems rte will be most watched in my house for football this summer

jimbob

RTE always provide great coverage of the world cup. I must take my hat off to them. With Ireland there it just makes it all the better. Will Eurosport be showing the world cup. They did last time didn't they.

DMC

No, not to my knowledge, Eurosport are not.

As Eurosport is a company owned by the European Broadcasting Union, and more or less working with their national broadcasters (notably not really in this part of the world), the EBU were out-bid by the now defunct Kirch media group, from Germany. Before Kirch was wound up, the rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cup were protected from the liquidation, which is currently taken place.

Over here, it looks as if nothing changed. RTÉ, BBC and ITV are covering the World Cup as normal. This is beacuse the paid Kirch, (IR£2m by RTÉ) for the rights, rather than picking it up from the pooled resources of the EBU. So not much change there. From a technological point of view, it will be different, as the EBU in the past have been very, very good at staging the big events. They produced the whole show in USA '94, because they didnt trust the American networks (and neither did FIFA!!) They pool resouces, of all the state broadcasting networks around Europe, and go en masse to these events. The Olympics in 2000 was the biggest mass movement of OB vechicles the planet has seen IIRC, RTÉ took charge of producing the Equestrian events at Barcelona '92, and probably will do so again.

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by osullima
You have got to give it to Network 2 on this one! Roll on the World Cup in Digital!!!

i always look forward to Network 2's World Cup coverage. the digital pictures will be a bonus

Ozzie

Do you really think Eurosport wont show the WC...

Oz

DMC

I am 99.9% sure it wont happen.

Wolf

Euro Sport had every single game for the Europen Cup.

I know that thats a different kettle of fish but still.... It will probably have all the matches in full.....but just not live is all. This can be realy handy if you miss a match that you real wanted to see.

DMC

The European Championships (Euro 2000, Euro 2004 etc) are broadcast by Eurosport and the national TV companies, as the EBU are the rights holders.

Since the EBU do not have the rights to this World Cup or the next, it is extremely unlikely that Eurosport are covering it. Even their WC coverage page, here draws a blank.

ifconfig

One thing which crossed my mind about World
Cup coverage on RTE via Sky is the fact that
due to the satellite uplink delays that when
a goal is scored households watching on Sky
will listen to their Chorus/NTL neighbours
cheering some 5 seconds ahead. Not that I'd
wish to give the terrestrials a marketing
idea but if that might make a clever
litte advert campaign for them. Its the
only value add I can see them offering compared
to digital sat. I know that there will be
an inherent satellite delay in any case due
to the games being hosted in Japan/Korea
but I can imagine die hard soccer fans finding
that a bitter pill (maybe not). On second
thoughts, die-hard fans generally turn on
the radio commentary when watching important
matches and turn down the commentary especially
if the TV commentator is irritating

--e

byte

I don't think the delay woudl be that noticeable as there is only around a 1sec delay between analogue and digital.

Network two will have to fix their sound on sky digital and make it the same quality as the other channels before the world cup:mad:
mm

Mossy Monk

i don't know if it's my hearing but i heard nothing noticably poor about the sound on Network 2 today. i watched no Network 2 yesterday so has it improved?