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OldBlueLady

Junior Blues Coordinator⭐⭐
Joined
Dec 27, 2007
Messages
50,767
Location
Benfleet
Back from the Trust's first liaison meeting with the new Head of Operations, Steve Waggott, along with Finance Director, Patrick Van der Waag, and one of the topics up for discussion today was iFollow.

Now, to summarise best I can, it seems that you can't use this in more than one additional country to the UK - we were told someone who regularly holidays in Spain had been able to use it, but when somewhere else on business was told that he had to use a local currency credit card to pay more and also had one story of supporters who'd set it up in the UK prior to their holiday, paying the required sum, and when they got to their destination, were asked for a further 130 euros!

So, what I'd like to hear from the greater SZ public at large is their views on iFollow, whether it's an improvement or not and any particular issues they might have found so that it can be fed back to the providers.

Over to you....
 
I don't use it at home because I can get the highlights later if I haven't seen the game. However, when I was away in Italy I watched a live game and if I was over there permanently (I wish but you never know) would absolutely subscribe. It seems a bit harsh to restrict it to one country although you can do a "pay as you go" for the games which is probably sensible.
 
Personally I think the overall concept of ifollow is brilliant. (especially for Southend fans living abroad).

My biggest gripe (and it is a big one) is that for a UK subscriber, the audio service is nowhere near as good as it was V Blues player. It's patchy (often gets cut off, sometimes as regularly as once a minute & then needs a complete re-boot to improve). It seems to be a lot slower than Blues player's audio (some times I can see our score flash up on the Sky or other media before I have listened to it online through ifollow).

Maybe, i'm picking at bones here, but I used to like the fact with Blues player you could log on a lot earlier to hear the pre-match discussion as well as the half time chit chat and the post match analysis.

Now with ifollow, it's pretty much commentary from only about a couple of minutes from the game starting / no half time disscussion / and it cuts off about a minute after the final whistle. Like I said, no biggy, as I can then just switch to BBC Essex radio online to hear that.
 
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When I was in Spain I couldn’t get it to let me watch the match. No option to pay the fiver.

I think you have to have an address overseas. It would be useful to have the "holiday option" if it were possible so that people abroad temporarily could use the service.
 
I am greatful that we have ifollow. I have had no problems with using it so far.

That being said there could be an improvement, as I watch the game on my ipad through the app I can only get vision or sound, not both together. It would be great if they could marry up the BBC Essex commentary to the vision and put it through one stream. I know that this is difficult as there maybe rules around using the BBC Essex commentary.

The next thing for me is to see if It works whilst I’m on holidays in Thailand at Christmas.
 
...great concept but picture breaks up more and more in the second half for some reason. Also when we shoot on goal the picture stops for a second or two but unfortunately this has only happened 2 or 3 times.
 
Trade agreements or not ,we in Ireland who cannot get to the match are deprived of OFFICIALLY getting I FOLLOW
Can someone tell SKY that Ireland is in the EU and UK is soon to be "NOT" in the EU
So how can we be in the UK ?? AND NOT OVERSEAS .:stunned::angry:
If we allowed to participate we would be helping the club with extra dosh.
 
I've used it with out any signing in issues in Portugal and France on PC, laptop and mobile phone. What does seem to be a general issue is the quality goes down in the 2nd half with a lot more chopping / skipping and buffering. I also can't get above 320p with out a lot of buffering cutting out even though my internet and equipment exceed the minimum as documented.
 
I've only used it once, I was at home, and had no bother at all. It seems people have very different experiences with it.
 
Only one major issue with me and that is not being able to push it through my ipad onto a TV even though I forked out £50 for the cable. It appears to be blocked.

Couldn't get to watch the Peterborogh match on Tuesday when I was actually abroad, but I think that was due to a poor connection (being on network rather than wi-fi). It wouldn't even give me the option of paying the 6 Euros.
 
Ive found it very good, always worked fine for me, both video and commentary. Would be nice as said already for commentary to be attached to video as you can play both at same time but the video always ends up lagging slightly so you have to keep realigning them.

The biggest improvement would be to make it available in the UK, even if its just away games. Everyone knows UK residents are watching it easily anyway.
 
Ive found it very good, always worked fine for me, both video and commentary. Would be nice as said already for commentary to be attached to video as you can play both at same time but the video always ends up lagging slightly so you have to keep realigning them.

The biggest improvement would be to make it available in the UK, even if its just away games. Everyone knows UK residents are watching it easily anyway.

Midweek games are coming, it won't be long before the dinosaurs in the FA wake up to this fact.
 
The biggest improvement would be to make it available in the UK, even if its just away games. Everyone knows UK residents are watching it easily anyway.

And that'll come for the 2019/20 season. Maybe even earlier if they twig how many people are using it already.
 
As a blues fan now living in Latvia I jumped at the chance to sign up and generally it's a reasonable service. I do find that in the second half of matches there is a deterioration in picture quality as others have described, which I now get round by switching off at half time and switching back on again. I have found Firefox better than Chrome. Another aspect that could be improved would be to be able to listen to the commentary and watch at the same time - at the moment it's either/or. I find that substitutions are sometimes missed and player identification would be handy. Finally, something we have come to rely on on television, replays of key moments would be a distinct improvement.
 
Back from the Trust's first liaison meeting with the new Head of Operations, Steve Waggott, along with Finance Director, Patrick Van der Waag, and one of the topics up for discussion today was iFollow.

Now, to summarise best I can, it seems that you can't use this in more than one additional country to the UK - we were told someone who regularly holidays in Spain had been able to use it, but when somewhere else on business was told that he had to use a local currency credit card to pay more and also had one story of supporters who'd set it up in the UK prior to their holiday, paying the required sum, and when they got to their destination, were asked for a further 130 euros!

So, what I'd like to hear from the greater SZ public at large is their views on iFollow, whether it's an improvement or not and any particular issues they might have found so that it can be fed back to the providers.

Over to you....

Kay,I've used this service in Spain (where I live) regularly and in France and Sweden (on holiday) already this season.It provides an excellent service for football fans abroad.The full cost for 46 league games (and our friendly with Brighton) was 130 euros.I've also used ifollow to watch a couple of Fulham games so far this season (in France,when SUFC weren't playing)) for an additional cost of 5 euros per game.You need to have an address outside the UK and a foreign credit card to access this service.Obviously,I can't speak about those people accessing the service illegally in the UK or those trying to do so on an ad hoc basis while abroad on holiday.

As long as you're watching games on a laptop or pc (ie not an ipad) there's no problem watching video and getting commentary at the same time.

Edit.Only time I had a problem accessing the ifollow service was on an overnight cruise boat from Oslo to Copenhagen.I assume that was because the ship's wifi provided an open not a closed service and ifollow don't want their payservice going out to everyone.:winking:
 
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There is a way around the paying in local currency thing. But it’s a bit of a pain in the arse to set up. Follow the instructions here:

http://watch-efl-ifollow.com/


For what it's worth I signed up to Bond VPN and paid my £53 - had problems downloading, and they basically abandoned me after promising to send a different download set of instructions.
If you sign up, they will respond (or not) online and nowhere else. Revolut has also been less than full proof. Check the reviews.
 
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