Another baby step towards quality gymnastics TV.
Unfortunately BGtv has a lot of problems!
Internet TV company Narrowstep has launched a broadband channel for the British Gymnastics Association, called British Gymnastics TV.
www.bgtv.biz will provide live coverage of major gymnastic events starting with the Men’s British Masters this week, with further live broadcasts planned on November 11 and 25.
Alan Sommerville, chief executive officer of the British Gymnastics Association, said: “British Gymnastics is extremely excited with this new initiative, where BGtv is to become the central plank of our corporate communications policy, to deliver information, news, reviews, interviews and cover domestic and international events wherever we can secure rights.”
Narrowstep already runs a number of specialist sports channels including Sail TV, Martial Arts TV, Cycling TV, and Field Hockey TV, in addition to non-sports channels ITV Local and London TV. To launch the channel, Narrowstep worked with Sportsgate, which helps with and provides technology services to sporting bodies to help them harness new technologies.
Digital Spy – Broadcasting – Narrowstep launches ‘Gymnastics Channel’
Sounds good. …
Unfortunately the interface is ugly. The TV monitor is a pop-up window, blocked by most modern browsers. And video won’t stream on my modern computer with high speed connection.
BGtv posts a Viewing Problems page.
Give Bgtv a try. But it seems to me they need to completely redesign the website.
UPDATE: Marie commented that the streaming works well for her. Perhaps it is a problem with my own computer.
6 comments ↓
It works beautifully for me, maybe it isn’t the highest quality but its way better than nothing which is what we are used to! I applaud British Gymnastics for giving their fans what they want.
HI Rick – I read with interest your comments. Please send some mre details to our support team as I am surprised you are having problems viewing this. support@narrowstep.com
I am glad that Marie is able to watch the channel fine. IN fact with regards the streaming quality – due to bandwidth issues and costs, the live stream is sent at a maximum of 400kbs, however, after the event the feed is re-encoded and will be available at up to 1800kbs, which is simply amazing quality. We’d hate you not to be able to enjoy it fully. Thanks.
indeed it works perfectly ,but the video quality is not god enough – if you look at the other narrowstep channels – for instance my favourite -
http://www.singlemalt.tv
I don’t want to be unfair.
I am on high speed cable. Shaw is the provider in Canada.
I have 1-year-old a Mac Powerbook, 1.25 GB memory. Even if I restart the computer and load only the player in Sarafi or Firefox browsers, it takes several minutes to load. Then plays very choppy video.
Both browsers are up-to-date.
In little used Camino, my popup blocker did not open the window. (Or is that some sort of advertising popup it is blocking?)
Opera for Mac did not work at all. But at least there was a prompt telling me so.
Please test in Apple browsers.
I will check some Windows machines here.
Now … your webpages are very poor, graphic intensive, old school. You badly need a redesign.
I click on links and nothing happens. Or it happens so slowly that it seems not to be working.
However, I am a huge supporter of IP TV as you will see in this blog. You are the future.
Look again at YouTube. It is popular because it WORKS. Even on my Mom’s dial-up computer.
If your video won’t stream to me, it won’t stream to many around the world.
I got some more information for Mac owners.
“Though the Narrowstep players are not optimized to run on the Mac, they can and do work well when a few guidlines are followed. Here is some advice on getting Narrowstep’s players to run on Macintosh computers:
The Narrowstep Player will run on Mac OS X versions 10.3 and 10.4. You should (generally) make sure your OS is up to date by running System Preferences->Software Update (which will update you to 10.3.9 or 10.4.6 currently). This will also make sure your copy of Safari is up to date. Ensure you have the right version of Safari for your OS: v1.3 for OS 10.3 and v2.0 for 10.4.
You will also need either Microsoft Windows Media Player version 9 or 10 (not 11) or the Flip4Mac components for QuickTime. Both of these are available free from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?pid=windowsmedia
You can use most of the browsers available for Mac OS. We have tested and recommend Firefox (v1.5), Safari or Internet Explorer. Naturally the more memory, faster processor and internet connection you have, the better the player will perform. (NOTE: There is a known audio issue with the Safari + Flip4Mac combination. If you are using both of these and hear an echoing effect, try disabling the Flip4Mac plugin or using a different web browser.)
On older systems it is sometimes advisable to use a lower data-rate than that which is automatically detected (go to the Settings tab panel on the player and select the next rate down, then click confirm).
Intel Macs are currently not officially supported by either Windows Media Player or Flip4Mac (although Flip4Mac Universal Binary is very overdue). There is a way of getting Narrowstep Players to work on Intel Macs but it is a little involved. A “how to” is posted here:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-54693.html
Quite a few things do not work (due to limitations of Windows Media for Mac) including: VCR controls, Full screen mode, Quality of Service indicators, TV Schedule highlighting etc.
On some systems you may have to wait an extremely long time for the video to connect. Please be patient.
I hope you find this information helpful. If you are still having trouble, please send a detailed description of what happens when you try to launch the player, along with your system specs and software version numbers, and we will do our best to help you get it working.”
Best regards,
Narrowstep Player Support
What about Windows XP ??
After all this I expected BGtv to work well in Windows.
But when I got to the gym and fired up our modern Windows machine … my experience was even worse than on my Mac.
Pop-up window ads. And more confusing than most. (We did not have a blocker turned on.)
Then the video would not play at all.
If BGtv works for you, excellent! I wish I could see the programming.
But with all this hassle, I will stick with YouTube and Google video. They work all the time on every computer.
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