Willow TV: “Your ISP sucks, but we still love you”

Willow TV offers high quality livestreams of up to 3 mbps, and one of ‘lesser’ quality (600 kbps). Can you guess where to find the latter?

Your ISP sucks, but we still love you

Telling it like it is!

You already know I am a fan of Willow TV right? Little things like this make me like them even more.

Where to watch livestreaming of the World Cup Cricket

World Cup 2011 on Willow TV

I'm watching the World Cup at Willow TV

The World Cup starts tomorrow. Time for you to choose where to watch the games online.

I have written several posts about cricket livestreaming and I am not going to repeat myself and rewrite them here. You can just go and check the category page for livestreaming to get some background on Willow TV and ESPN Player.

Because for this World Cup, it was one those two who were going to get my money. (Check out this post if you want to know why I don’t like those peer-to-peer livestreaming sites.)

Willow TV vs ESPN

As you may know, I have been a big fan of Willow TV for some time now, but I also love the high quality ESPN Player offers.

To me, when both livestream the events I like to follow, it has always been a matter of choosing between Willow TV’s multi-platform (now including PlayStation, Google TV, etc, etc ..), multi-channel livestreaming combined with an awesome on demand service and ESPN’s top notch quality, which allows for decent full screen watching.

But I haven’t had to debate this subject with myself this time. It was settled from the moment Willow TV promised a glorious 3mbps livestream for the World Cup.

Willow TV added extra quality to the mix and I was sold.

Money, money, money …

Well, until I saw the price they asked for their World Cup package: a staggering 95 Euro (129 us dollars) … Compare that the 14,99 Euro to watch the entire World Cup at ESPN and suddenly there was a whole new argument on the table: money.

Don’t get me wrong; the complete package Willow TV offers is probably worth all that money. It really is an impressive set of features, but I won’t use all of them and the World Cup doesn’t mean that much to me.

So all this means I subscribed to ESPN Player? You’d think so, but no. I made another switch and eventually went for Willow TV’s Blockbuster package for 2011.

Blockbuster

It is a great name for a great deal: the World Cup package and a monthly subscription for the rest of 2011. The price: 147 Euro.

No small sum indeed, but I would have probably subscribed to their monthly package anyway, which would have cost me about the same.

A win-win situation for me.

How about you? How are you going to watch the World Cup? Are you going to watch it online at all? Are you willing to pay for it?

Cricket in 1950 and my post-Ashes-dip

From the British Council Film Archive:

As England battle it out against Australia at Lord’s cricket ground in an attempt to claim the Ashes, we witness the mastery involved – both on and off the field.

http://vimeo.com/17360378

And yes, it has been a while since I posted anything. Can’t be bothered that much with cricket at the moment.

A slight post-Ashes-dip probably, not helped by the fact it has been really busy at work and I just don’t care much about all those ODI’s.

Looking forward to watching the Netherlands at the World Cup though. Hope they can cause another upset like the one from 2009 (← watch the video in there :) )

Stumpy?

Quick! Off the top of your head, give me three positive associations on the name Stumpy. Three!

Or at least one.

Impossible, right? Stumpy is a name you’d give something of someone with a deformation. A missing leg, arm or head. It is not a name fit for the official mascot for the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

And yet it is exactly the name they have come up with. Awful. Horrible!

Sometimes, a picture speaks a 1000 words. I found more than one picture to prove my point with Google: