Ordinary Gweilo

After months of hype, the Now coverage of the English Premier League is finally here – and it’s both better and (slightly) worse than I had expected.

The first big surprise for me was that none of the games are being shown on ESPN or Star Sports.  I am sure that when the deal was announced it was implied that at least some of the games would be on those channels, and when I enquired about subscribing to ESPN/Star Sports shortly after the EPL deal was announced, I believe that Now’s customer service people confirmed that this would be the case.

Strangely, the pre-game show (in English) is being broadcast on ESPN, but for the live coverage you then need to switch to one of 6 Now Sports channels .  They are also showing Football Focus in midweek. 

The English commentary comes from the UK anyway, and generally would be the same on whichever channel in HK has the EPL rights – except that I recall that for some games ESPN/Star used to take the whole Sky Sports package of preview, commentary and analysis.  Excellent – but the basic English commentary is perfectly adequate. 

As expected, Now Sports 1 is a general sports channel and Now Sports 2 is basically an EPL channel. Now Sports 3 has live games from Italy (Serie A), Brazil & Japan, and the other 3 channels only burst into life when a live game is shown – and they show every EPL game live, so that’s a clear improvement over Cable TV.

The other improvement is that they have an "on demand" service, and (surprisingly) there is no additional charge for this – but not all the games are included.  It may be that some games are featured on Now Sports 2 and others are available "on demand" but I haven’t figured that one out yet.  There is also an Internet service (for an extra fee).

Finally, the HD (high definition) service is also now available, but only in some parts of Hong Kong.  It only covers selected games (presumably the ones chosen by Sky Sports), and the monthly fee seems to be about HK$100 (including the decoder rental charge).  However, you need to have a TV with an HDMI connector that includes HDCP (Copy Protection), and games can only be recorded in SD.  I haven’t yet managed to see what it looks like.

The SCMP has printed a torrent of complaints about Now (and Cable TV) over the last few weeks.  One very valid criticism is that PCCW make great play of the channels being available ‘a la carte‘, but they don’t actually allow you to subscribe to ESPN & Star Sports separately from the ‘Mega Sports Pack’ (HK$218/month).  Well, not unless you complain long and loud, it seems – the SCMP published a letter from one reader who was eventually allowed to do this.  So I guess a few people will be pushing PCCW to get the same ‘concession’.  Good luck!