the con that is the BCN

HitHrdNDraw

HitHrdNDraw

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Is anyone else fed up with the scam that is the billiard club network?? not only did i pay $30 before the DCC to watch some matches only to have a week frought with "technical difficulties" and quality that was mediocre at best but half the time the archived matches wouldnt work or wanted me to pay more to see them... now after all of this they add the u.s. open final but want to charge me $14 to see it? give me a break... these people are con artists at their best... does anyone agree?
 
Absolutely. I posted once before about my negative experience with them. They've done nothing that I'm aware of to get past that initial impression.
 
On the contrary...I think they did a fantastic job and what little difficulties I had they made up for by rebroadcasting the match in its entirety...I felt I definitely got my moneys worth and will gladly do it again next year.

Shorty
 
Agreed.

I paid for and watched the 2005 US Open and was immensely pleased despite minor tech difficulties here and there.

I also paid the $29 for the DCC and watched as much as I could while at work. Got to see some unbelievable free pool (esp. Pagulayan/ Reyes and then Reyes/Miller) that I'll never forget. I also watched the 10-ball ring game after it was archived.

I'll be buying all BCN future broadcasts, even if there are glitches here and there. Nothing is perfect, but BCN is doing what no one else is and at a great price. Keep it up!



Shorty said:
On the contrary...I think they did a fantastic job and what little difficulties I had they made up for by rebroadcasting the match in its entirety...I felt I definitely got my moneys worth and will gladly do it again next year.

Shorty
Click to expand...
 
I enjoyed my experience. Wish I had a bit more time to watch the archived events though. But it was advertised as a live viewing opportunity only. I believe the had it available for a long enough period of time.

If you order a pay-per view movie, you have 24 hours of viewing. BCN has given more than that.

Room for improvement? Of course
Did I get what was advertised and what I paid for? Yes
 
Actually I would pay more to watch it 24/7, it was well worth the money, for 10 days of pool for $30.00 man what do you expect.
I only had two bed viewing times that was the first day when they were getting it set up, and the last time when the internet went down in the hotel but they reshowed that.
I think that it's great, hope they do it for the IPT events.
mrs.g
 
I had no problems at all! I thought it was great for 30.00! I would have spent alot more had I made the trip. If I can not make it next year I will purchase it again too!;)
 
Two words...

Accu-Stats. Not knocking what BCN does, but I'd rather get the DVD and be through with it. Do they show the entire tourney and all the players matches? Is this why it's better to watch it online?:confused:
 
someone help

ok.. so you guys made me give the BCN the benefit of the doubt and it just reinforced my point.... so i just paid another $14 strictly to watch the U.S. open finals because i had seen most of the rest and i can't access it... all of the other portals like the ring game and banks finals work fine... but when i click on the U.S. Open final it is the same screen as if i hadn't paid... Is it an ID-10T error on my part (ID-10t = idiot) or was i partially right in my original post?
 
HitHrdNDraw said:
ok.. so you guys made me give the BCN the benefit of the doubt and it just reinforced my point.... so i just paid another $14 strictly to watch the U.S. open finals because i had seen most of the rest and i can't access it... all of the other portals like the ring game and banks finals work fine... but when i click on the U.S. Open final it is the same screen as if i hadn't paid... Is it an ID-10T error on my part (ID-10t = idiot) or was i partially right in my original post?
Click to expand...

I think you should phone them if you have problems they seem nice when we had the first nite gliches. Talked to Rob over the past few years he was always resolves problems.
 
I emailed 2 times during the DCC, and had a response in less than a days time each instance.
 
shoutout33 said:
Accu-Stats. Not knocking what BCN does, but I'd rather get the DVD and be through with it. Do they show the entire tourney and all the players matches? Is this why it's better to watch it online?:confused:
Click to expand...


I guess a few of the best things I enjoyed regarding the online experience:

1. Live viewing, got to feel the moment as it was happening including a bunch of little things that wont show up in a bracket on a website.
2. Pre and post Accustats time, you got to see warmups, and here unrated discussion from different commentators that were in the booth.
3. Got to see matches that may not of made an accu-stats production since their ratings/name brand wont make production.
4. During the discussions, they reported tourney progress at times.
5. The BCN website had up-to-date reports of the DCC, prior to the outstanding full summary that AZ was able to report.
 
$30 is not bad when compared to the $900 + that the IPT wants for their tournament.
 
I was on the fence while watching the BCN. Sure I was pissed at times, but after the first night it all seemed much better. Was what I got worth $30? Hell Ya.....to see Efren live and uncut was worth every penny. Also the commentators were telling jokes, giving updates when they could, and I guess you get the feeling your there compared to the Accustats vids.

The only thing I would change, is while there is no match on the TV table, turn the camera on another match table. The down times sucked, and that blue screen thing saying "we are'nt broadcasting at the moment" was VERY annoying.

Anyway, will I buy it next year?.....naaaa......I'm gonna be there:)
 
HitHrdNDraw said:
Is anyone else fed up with the scam that is the billiard club network?? not only did i pay $30 before the DCC to watch some matches only to have a week frought with "technical difficulties" and quality that was mediocre at best but half the time the archived matches wouldnt work or wanted me to pay more to see them... now after all of this they add the u.s. open final but want to charge me $14 to see it? give me a break... these people are con artists at their best... does anyone agree?
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, if the quality was as good as a standard TV what would you be willing to pay?
 
I forgot, the one thing that really got me pissed was BCN dropping the price after a couple days. I realize it was cheaper because it was partly over, but I just felt half screwed for some reason?

Gerry
 
You know what I'd like? I'd like commercial-free matches for play on my iPod. Or, of course, on my computer (within iTunes or separately). The "iPod spec" is just an AAC audio track along with an MPEG-4 video track at 320 x 224 (or 320 x 240) - half of NTSC without the side areas, roughly.

The sound and video quality is excellent. Since it's not music, they could cut the audio quality significantly and probably drop the video quality (file size) in half without sacrificing much in terms of how it looks to viewers.

As it currently stands, I won't watch any BCN stuff except what's free on Google.
 
I disagree completely that BCN are con artists. $30 for ten days of broadcasting is super cheap. They showed 3 or 4 matches each day and if you break it down by the amount of hours of entertainment offered versus price, it worked out to be less than a dollar an hr. Each time BCN offers a package deal for the US Open and the DCC I have bought and I will continue to buy in the future.

Let me add something else just for folks to digest. I run enterprise level websites so I am fairly familiar with the costs and problems in getting live streaming to the masses. Decent quality bandwidth is running $20-$40 a mb per month. The stream that I was getting was running about 500k/sec or about half a mb. The method most ISPs charge for bandwidth is a bit complicated, but to simplify, if I am using their service for 10 days, I probably am not off the number much to say that BCN is running a bandwidth cost of $6-$10 per user for the broadcast. You minus out the refunds and chargebacks, you minus out the staffing costs, the billing charges (roughly 5-10%), equipment, etc and you are not left with very much. BCN is not making any kind of killing doing this unless they get a huge number of viewers. If Accustats were not involved in this with content sales on dvds, BCN would likely have to charge people much more than they do. People need to understand that the smaller number of viewers attainable in this type of broadcast also makes it prohibitive to gear up for this broadcast using the same type of hardware and bandwidth availability that a fortune 500 company can use to stream out something like Victoria's secret lingerie show. For what they are up against BCN did a fantastic job and I so hope they will continue to do this in the future.
 
I had no complaints with the DCC feed for $30.. I was even there for the first couple of days but still got my money's worth in viewing matches for the last 6 days. Good quality, live action and few problems.
Where else can you get that type of action for a few dimes??
Supporting the industry every chance I get.. BCN, keep up the work and continue to strive to get better. Thanks for the coverage..

Joe
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top