Premium Tv - Bristol City World

[East Yorkshire CideRed]

...my dream has finally come true, I'm actually working where people are paid to talk about Bristol City all day!!!

I've started working for Premium TV in Feltham, Middlesex who basically run Bristol City World for the official website amongst lots of other football content.

Whilst I don't work directly on that I wouldn't mind getting some insider information on how you find it. I am fully aware of the commentary crashing (Blackpool match wasn't it?) as I was affected and thoroughly annoyed too!

What could be better? Do you like the new look? Any other features you'd like to see?

Cheers

S_Hants_Cidered

[Red Ferret]

The best thing would be if Premium TV lost the rights to Football League audio and somebody who could provide a more reliable service took up the contract

[Sheik Yerbouti]

complete waste of time for me.

i signed up, and couldn't watch any new video content, even though my pc is a only few months old.

i could watch the archive games, but what good is that? i want to see the new interviews etc!

and yes, i tried all the 'help' options many times..

[Nibor]

I'd feel guilty about slating a site so badly but, well you asked!

The content, the stuff provided by AdamB and the media team is very good, always has been.

The official site's structure is terrible, probably the worst professional site I've ever seen. Some brief reasons why:

- Content is a tiny fraction of the guff actually on the page

- Unintuitive navigation - no scroll links between time windowed content like next/previous on articles or match reports, menus are the irritating rollover kind.

- Site doesn't work without javascript enabled, why? Nothing it actually needs to do requires script.

- Advert overkill, over 20 ads on the home page but only half a dozen words of actual content.

- Layout is awful. Half a dozen little boxes of titles? Stupid idea. Why not just use the common practise of menu on the left and content in the middle?

- Bottom third of the page completely wasted on duplicated or pointless links.

- World content that I can't access taking up space even though I don't have World - just filter it out please.

- Hugely inaccessible due to needless fixed pixel widths on everything, low res doesn't work and high res has no benefit. Probably illegal now under new accessibility laws for the visually impaired.

- Pointless User Tools bar that simply does a poor job of replicating functionality provided by every browser in existence.

- Must be one of the last few news sites on the internet not to provide RSS feeds.

- Logins aren't shared properly across other ptv sites, I don't want to create an account on each one just to read news. This seems intermittent though.

- Adverts slap bang in the middle of articles, that's just utterly stupid. Put them to one side.

- Gay rollover and flash adverts you can't get rid of.

- Unnecessary use of transitional doc type instead of strict and correct css design. It's only been 8 years, haven't we transitioned yet?

- No site map

Simply put I can't see any reason to prefer this format over a traditional format with a menu on the left and across the top and content on the rest of the page. It seems to be an exercise in pissing off the user and any web designer who admitted to having anything to do with that site would not only never get a job on a project I was interviewing for, I'd probably shoot them for their own good.

I'd be willing to bet that the number of individual users has dropped off since the new format was implemented (traffic by pages may heve gone up since everything takes several attempts to find).

On World:

I unsubscribed when they introduced DRM because they decided to unnecessarily mandate the use of Internet Exploder without even bothering to inform people. Very stupid decision on every level, a huge number of people use a mozilla variant and there are mac users out there somewhere apparently, plus people posting videos on youtube is easily handled by other means.

Other than that it's fine! Sorry again but it's a terrible design and it's not hard to get this stuff right.

[Red Ferret]

Nibor--->

[chowie]

I'm with Nibor, lots of points and can't be arsed to write them but most are covered above. Needs some major desgin work across the board with regards to the web sites only one desgin with a good content management system is required.

[reddog]

I shall not be paying for World again.

They have charged me £49.99 when the most expensive option on the OS is £34.99.

4 e-mails to them about this over-charge have gone unanswered in the past 2 weeks.

Streaming is appalling since DRM, utterly unwatchable despite altering buffer settings etc.

Echo above sentiments re OS.

For the amount of expertise and money available this is a dreadful site, but is virtually the same country-wide.

[Blagdon red]

I'd feel guilty about slating a site so badly but, well you asked!

The content, the stuff provided by AdamB and the media team is very good, always has been.

The official site's structure is terrible, probably the worst professional site I've ever seen. Some brief reasons why:

- Content is a tiny fraction of the guff actually on the page

- Unintuitive navigation - no scroll links between time windowed content like next/previous on articles or match reports, menus are the irritating rollover kind.

- Site doesn't work without javascript enabled, why? Nothing it actually needs to do requires script.

- Advert overkill, over 20 ads on the home page but only half a dozen words of actual content.

- Layout is awful. Half a dozen little boxes of titles? Stupid idea. Why not just use the common practise of menu on the left and content in the middle?

- Bottom third of the page completely wasted on duplicated or pointless links.

- World content that I can't access taking up space even though I don't have World - just filter it out please.

- Hugely inaccessible due to needless fixed pixel widths on everything, low res doesn't work and high res has no benefit. Probably illegal now under new accessibility laws for the visually impaired.

- Pointless User Tools bar that simply does a poor job of replicating functionality provided by every browser in existence.

- Must be one of the last few news sites on the internet not to provide RSS feeds.

- Logins aren't shared properly across other ptv sites, I don't want to create an account on each one just to read news. This seems intermittent though.

- Adverts slap bang in the middle of articles, that's just utterly stupid. Put them to one side.

- Gay rollover and flash adverts you can't get rid of.

- Unnecessary use of transitional doc type instead of strict and correct css design. It's only been 8 years, haven't we transitioned yet?

- No site map

Simply put I can't see any reason to prefer this format over a traditional format with a menu on the left and across the top and content on the rest of the page. It seems to be an exercise in pissing off the user and any web designer who admitted to having anything to do with that site would not only never get a job on a project I was interviewing for, I'd probably shoot them for their own good.

I'd be willing to bet that the number of individual users has dropped off since the new format was implemented (traffic by pages may heve gone up since everything takes several attempts to find).

On World:

I unsubscribed when they introduced DRM because they decided to unnecessarily mandate the use of Internet Exploder without even bothering to inform people. Very stupid decision on every level, a huge number of people use a mozilla variant and there are mac users out there somewhere apparently, plus people posting videos on youtube is easily handled by other means.

Other than that it's fine! Sorry again but it's a terrible design and it's not hard to get this stuff right.

One of the best posts on here for ages ... nothing to add .. this says it all ... to put it in layman's terms: the new website is horrible! ... and I don't even bother with World.

[Gerry Gows' Tash]

Having to log on every time I want to view anything despite being a member - it's not my pc as all my other logons load automatically. The content is good, but the layout and functionality were better before it was upgraded

BTW I use Firefox and haven't noticed any issues with World ?

[Geoff65]

Ok lets start:

Start of this season you stopped the download option and the streaming of the content was horrible.

Letter to the director of clients services - no reply - director of client services certainly knows how to treat it's clients.

Commentary went tits up - complained and got an automated reply saying they will be in touch.

A week later - emailed Football League.

Got a reply from Premium TV giving absolutley no information and wasted by time reading it.

FA said Premium TV have replied.

Premium TV is totally devoid of client orientated staff led by a director who is most likely on the golf course.

Premium TV now give the option to download the content - interviews and matches - so we are back to where we were last season and their bright ideas to enhance the service didnt work and they are back to where they were a year ago.

Last year's service and content was sufficient for the price paid and now tht normal service has resumed I am satisfied with the service.

As to Premium TV and my thoughts about them - it just reconfirms my idea that most companies don't give a monkeys about customer care and the staff are doing the job with no other motive other than to get paid and see the week out with as little hassle as possible - who blames them when their directors give the lead in bad customer service.

Good luck in your job - don't envy you one bit.

[havanatopia]

Spot on Nibor.. if a little harsh in parts but in general you are right.

Succinctly..

1. navigation is not so easy as before and repetitive.

2. takes much longer to load and when it does sometimes not completely and I have an 8mb line.

Finally...and, for me most importantly,..

3. why oh why did the live commentary box go to be replaced by Windows Media Player?.. the intuitive feel of the former was far far better and tailor made for sport whereas the latter is just a cheap ass way of dumping content.

I suspect I will continue with world as I am, in large part, off shore, but if i had a choice I would drop it like a lead balloon.

Sort it out and fast.

[Red Ferret]

Its a poorly run company who don't give a toss about their customers - their customer service (lack of) is appalling!

Anyone know when their Football League contract runs out?

[The Fat Controller]

Worms. Can. Opened.

[Barry]

can't watch anything on firefox and when try to watch on internet explorer it makes my whole internet connection go down

[Lordofthebling]

Just sent an email about not getting text alerts since May...

However, I have been charged since May! So lets see how this goes... ;-)

[Guest DanC]

BTW I use Firefox and haven't noticed any issues with World ?

Watching content on Firefox was fine for me untill a few days ago when suddenly content would play but only with sound. However using my IE tab thingy I can view it but that's a pain that I would rather do without.