BT Sport - Launch of BT Sport Ultimate

Someone mentioned a joint Sky/BT bid next time around, as a suggestion. I'll make a suggestion; a possible involvement of Eurosport in the bidding?

A joint Channel 5 and Big Centre TV bid is probably more likely than a joint BT/Sky bid - I think both would rather lose the rights than share them.

Tonights probably the first night of the season that ITV are regretting losing the Europa League rights.

Finally got access to BT Sport and watching on their website, the stream seems to buffer less in IE than Chrome, any idea why that might be?

Does Chrome maybe sandbox the Flash plugin in a way that IE doesn't, but also slows things down? (I'll compare when I'm next on a work PC...)

A couple of programming notes for this evening - the WTA coverage will start with Konta v Brengle, which is a late change to the schedule. Then there's London Irish v Saracens from the NY Red Bulls stadium - Sunset + Vine are producing the world feed (though with local facilities), so it might not look too different from a regular UK production.

I get mixed results when streaming Silverlight streams. Now TV works great with Firefox and IE, while Zattoo Switzerland is awful using Firefox and Chrome, yet excellent with IE.

Steivie Belgium works excellent on Chrome but buffers like hell on Firefox. Edge on Windows 10 seems to be ok with the majority of streaming websites.

Opposite here, Stievie on Firefox 45 64bit is excellent. Glad to see a Hollywood film in English with Dutch subs. Shame there doesn't appear to be any French/Wallonia output yet.

The dire weather conditions of a very overcast sky, washed most of the benefits of the wide shots on UHD today at Goodison Park. I'm surprised BT didn't ask for floodlights to aid their coverage.

Wasn't sure whether to put this in The Sport Thread or here...

Been told by a good source that BT is set to renew its deal for WTA tennis #tvrights in the UK. Current deal runs from 2013-2016 #wta #bt

— Robin Jellis (@robinjellis) March 20, 2016

BT Sport decision not to show Heather Watson match this afternoon has not gone down well on Twitter. Apparently it's not on a televised court but Sky Sports have shown ATP matches from that court. Suspect it's more a case of the WTA not making it available via any of the world feeds which BT seem to rely on more than Sky do on the ATP's feeds.

BT do take in additional feeds where available - last night they dipped out of a Venus Williams match on the World Feed for Johanna Konta.

The fact that matches have been shown on that court previously but they can't do it now may mean that the cameras or camera operators have been moved elsewhere - I'm sure they wouldn't make it up!

Konta's match was on court 1 so you'd expect it to be available.

It'll be interesting to see if Sky Sports show the Bautista Agut v Bedene match later which is on the same court (7) as Wickmayer v Watson.