Good to see a game available on free-to-air again. Good on SBS!

A little surprised that neither 7, 10 nor 9 were keen for a free broadcast of a Sunday arvo NBL match. Obviously from a mainstream perspective, this probably isn't the greatest outcome considering most tune into SBS as a specialty broadcaster in much the same way as Foxtel. If you're flicking to SBS, you're doing it knowing your particular program is on.

SBS would be easier to deal with than the other FTA channels, particularly with the way they dedicate themselves to sports on their networks. I think NBL should take advantage and convince them to broadcast a pre-game show on SBS which shows highlights of matches from Thurs-Sat, top 10 plays etc, assuming it's produced by the NBL

Excellent news getting the NBL back onto FTA and on a channel not as driven by ratings like a commercial network.

Oh lawd the Facebook comments

sbs will do professional job as they do with all there sports

I know very little about TV sports productions, but if it was as easy as just clearing space wouldn't they have grabbed the NBL a while ago?

The NBL took over production from Fox Sports this past off-season.

Last season, Fox handled it. All GEM did for their Sunday game was re-broadcast the Fox game, with a studio bit to cover Fox's pre-game and half-time content.

Prior to that, Ten held all the rights.

Are other games still on foxtel?

Every game is live on Fox Sport 3s and Fox Sports 3 HD

Every game is live on NBLTV through Computers/Laptops, Tablets, phones, Telstra TV and presumably AppleTV

One Sunday game each week is live on SBS and SBS HD

Will it have subtitles?

No, but there will be Cantonese, German and Greek news during the half time break in SBS' coverage, languages alternating each week.

It's airing live, it can't have subtitles.

They'd be closed captions.

...that's not what distinguishes subtitles and closed captions

Hmm. Seems from further reading that they'd be subtitles, but they'd have to be delivered via the closed-captioning system.

Subtitles display only what is spoken by a character. Closed captions refers to subtitles for every sound (even falling objects and onomatopoeias), while subtitles refers to spoken words only.

Well that ended the joke.

hehe soz

There will be subtitles for when Homicide Williams rambles about himself.

ANT-MAN!

Hopefully we don't have to put up with him and his rubbish again this season.

I don't think you will have to hear from him because he has a full season gig in Lebanon I think. But he was absolutely awful. Atrocious. Woeful.


I think Steve Carfino is back, though. But after a season of Homicide, I think we can all deal with the Carf.

I really hope we get to here more from Derek Rucker, he was amazing last season.

Do we get Heal or does his WNBL stuff prevent him from having the time? (does he still do WNBL stuff?)

How about this for a retro line up:

Brisbane & Cairns - Terry Kennedy & Brian Kerle
Sydney & Wollongong - Bill Woods & Steve Carfino
Melbourne - Steve Quartermain & Dean Templeton
Perth - Tim Gossage & John Gardner
Adelaide - (I can't recall his name) & Darryl Pearce

KET, the WNBL team that Heal coached folded at the end of last season so I assume he would be available.

Ricky, the great John Gardiner passed away a couple of years ago, so that Perth lineup is just a little bit too retro.
Dennis Cometti is calling his last ever AFL game in a couple of days though.

IIRC, Cometti was the #1 ticket holder for the Cats last season? Would be awesome to see him call some games in Perth.

Not sure if these forums can handle two Ricky's.. I might have to change mine.

#TheOriginalRickDawg

or

#WickyGwace

Can anyone remember the Adelaide commentator?

Maybe I should drop the space.... Rickydiculous

Carf the Barf ??

I was going to make a new topic but there's no content on there yet so...

http://nbl.tv/

Nothing loads when I access that site?

Saw content on there late last night, a mix of games from the last 3 decades and saw a doco in there too, looks to be a great catalog.

That's odd...why take it away

Yeah, it was empty when I checked it last night and it's empty again now.

It will take your money, though. And then prevent you from logging in.

So far, significant downgrade on the old NBL TV.

Must have been about 10:30ish when I checked.. was definitely stuff under each heading, including Perth vs Tianjin, old Hunter Pirates games, old semi finals from early 2000's, Andrew Gaze Doco, random Wildcats game from 1990.

Must still be testing stuff out, really hoping to have it ready soon though, so much stuff goodies to go through.

Too early to give a thumbs down, they never officially said a launch date. Not sure where the other sites got the screenshots about the 27th, it may well have been up for a bit as a test only.

It's taken my money and not provided a product. That's pretty clear thumbs-down territory.

If there's no product yet, don't take any money. Not difficult.

A step better would be not having a publicly-visible site at all, to be perfectly honest. And particularly now that it is visible, some transparency about the actual launch time (or worse, day) would be nice.

I suspect they didn't count on us NBL nerds to try the old nbl.tv url.

I'm not able to sign up or pay for anything on it, maybe they were testing the very moment you tried to pay...unfortunate timing for you if that's the case.

This isn't meant to be publicly known yet, definitely too early to give a thumbs down lol

Why would anyone try to pay at this point? The product is not officially launched yet, right?

How far along the sign-in process can you get? It still seems fine to me.

I signed up on mobile, and I can log in there, but there's only a link to the app on the mobile site. Don't really want to waste another $5.40 to test signing up on the web and see if I can then log in there.

The NBL.TV website was, until yesterday, a form allowing sign-ups to a newsletter to be kept up to date on developments with NBL TV, so they're definitely aware people might try it.

They also keep advertising NBL TV, without any information about it, so someone going to the old website doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. And at present, it seems it would also take their money in return for literally nothing.

This is seriously poor form from the NBL at this point.

Why would anyone try to pay at this point? The product is not officially launched yet, right?

Videos are back up, still can't log in.

They don't have dates on them, though, which is going to make it difficult to sort through. I only have dates for the games I want to watch, not rounds.

At least one game isn't even that specific, and just lists the year.

By all means snoop around and see what's there, but if you find something in its incomplete form then "If there's no product yet, don't take any money. Not difficult." could easily be rebutted with "It's buyer beware if you go around the internet paying money to random unlinked web pages"

How can you tell it's in its incomplete form? It looks entirely complete.

Looking through the archives, it doesn't seem like there's much there. If the front page shows everything, it's only 88 games.

Looking on the bright side, the only Wildcats grand final games present are G2 1987, G3 1993 and G2 2003. We were promised all grand finals, so there must be more to the archive than what is showing at the moment.

Yep, they said they will be adding more along as they go, it's a lot of tape to digitise. 300 hours+

I'm guessing the list we've seen won't be the full list on launch either as it might just be test entries as mentioned.

Yep, they said they will be adding more along as they go, it's a lot of tape to digitise. 300 hours+

The way I read it, the 300+ hours is the launch number (the current 88 games reaches about half that, assuming two hours per game). There'd be way more footage than that in the archive total.

It would be really nice if we could get a straight answer from the league about what's going on.

Yeah def expecting heaps more to come, hopefully in the thousands of hours, with full seasons even.

My imagination shows a low level grad sitting in a small office room somewhere doing it all lol

I also expect them to release slowly so as to get us coming back for more.

Would love to have it all ready in time for the weekend, but doesn't look like its gonna happen. Just better be ready before the 6th.

I just want the Bearcats games from May of 1984 and the Bankstown-Forestville game from April 12, 1981. No idea if that footage even exists though.

The 1991 Illawarra-Melbourne game is there, which is good. That and the 1993 Melbourne-South East game are, I think, the only two from my lengthy want list that made it in.

The 2001 Kings-Crocs game was used to advertise NBL TV though, so presumably that will be added by launch, whenever launch is.

This is getting incredibly frustrating at this point. It was irritating when the 27th went past and nothing happened, but now that it's all there and you can see it and click on things...seriously, just give us a day and time.

Also worth noting that a few of the games from the early 80s are thirty-minute versions only.

My very first post about the lack of games acknowledged the likelihood of more games being added.

The NBL shouldn't have to announce anything. If the website exists and is taking money, it has an ethical and legal obligation to offer the product or service advertised.

Was there an outside chance of this happening? Sure. Was there a chance I signed up, got in, and found no videos? Sure. Does that make it acceptable on the NBL's part? No.

And indeed one classic game and a bunch of ABC games have just gone up. Still can't log in, though.

I don't really understand what else needs doing at this point. They can accept money and create accounts, and there's enough footage there to keep everyone busy while they add the rest.

> How can you tell it's in its incomplete form? It looks entirely complete.

> it doesn't seem like there's much there.
> If the front page shows everything, it's only 88 games.


So ... you're saying it looks incomplete? :p

Seems as though theres a bit of backend stuff that still needs to be worked on, at least with Telstra sign up.

All the pages are being updated as we speak though with more content, etc.

I'm especially glad to see documentaries in there, little gems they are.

So ... you're saying it looks incomplete?

Be nice if we could at least see full descriptions of games.

"One of the classic encounters of all time from Boondall. This was only the 2nd time out of just three in NBL"

The second time that what? There's also one that cuts off at 'unbelievably, '.

Presumably when you load the game the full description will appear, but even with an account you still have to take that extra step. If I'm in the process of choosing a game to watch that's a time-waster.

Jesus relax KR it will probably get launched early next week around Tuesday or something.

That late, you reckon?

Given that it hasn't launched yet, even if it's ready now it probably makes sense to wait until after the weekend to launch it, since the AFL & NRL will then be finished and everyone can swap over into full basketball mode.

Except for those who don't care about football and have their first and last free weekend of the year now that state leagues and the ABC are out of the way.

Either way it'd be nice to actually hear something concrete from the league, instead of 'it will launch soon'. Because to me, when you say 'soon' and the website is up and functioning, that means hours, maybe a day at most.

haha might want to relax a bit there KR. Have a bit of faith.

I don't know exactly how kosher it is to repeat a post i've already made, I agree with your point KR in that...

It's annoyingly typical for the NBL to 1) provide little to no information; 2) the little information provided isn't followed through with - making it hard to take the NBL on its word; 3) everything is always provided last minute.

Video games manage it months or years in advance, I'm not sure why NBL TV can't. Particularly at this late stage.

iOS app has reportedly been updated to support NBL TV. Why do basketball-related things always seem to work out for those with bad taste in phones?

Also worth pointing out that the NBL has pinned the announcement of NBL TV to their Facebook and Twitter pages, so it's plenty visible. Someone just commented on Facebook after trying to sign up and failing. Signups are also failing via the iOS app.

They need to say something, one way or the other, ASAP. Because this now looks functional to almost 50% of the smartphone market.

I think the website and app are still being developed and aren't necessarily meant to be used just yet, hence the reason there has been no official announcement of it opening.

Also, if the NBL is reading this:

1. "You can watch multiple NBL games each week live and on-demand." You need be consistent in what you're communicating and how you're communicating it. You're better off saying "Every game available each week live and on-demand".

2. Under "Programming" you forgot to add a full stop at the end of the paragraph, that's inconsistent with the "Watch NBL Games" and "Exclusive" blocks.

3. Under "Programming" you published "acces" instead of "access".

4. Under the Telstra Pass you published "If you are you'll receive an ALL access pass to everything for free!", it should be "If you are you’ll receive an ALL ACCESS PASS for free!"

5. Under the Schedule, January games are listed first then October.

6. The games displayed on the main page aren't round 1, they're in 4 months time.

7. Under the schedule the home/away side is completely inconsistent.
First, it's 36ers v Hawks for the Hawks' home game.
Then it's United v 36ers for 36ers' home game.
Then it's United v 36ers for United's home game.
And then it's Bullets v 36ers for Bullets' home game.

8. There's no information regarding what time the games are, or where they are being played.

Some of these might be technical things to be fixed still, but the first 4 points - while perhaps pedantic - make the thing look lacking in polish.

In which case there needs to be an announcement that it's not open. Because it looks to iOS users as though it is, as well as to anyone going to the website. An Android update can't be far away.

Also looking at the thumbnails, some of the games are 16:9 footage squashed down to 4:3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0CXapSoXfc

Not bad, but the video quality needs to be HD.

Given they've advertised publicly NBL.TV.......

But they haven't linked to that YouTube video from anywhere else, so it can't count any more than the existence of the NBL TV site does.

No more token errors, it's just an endless sign-in loop now.

I've gone through the iOS app a little...I like the filtering better than the web version but there are no descriptions visible at all until you click on a video.

Neither has any ability to use the date the game occurred to search, sort, or filter, though.

The Android app just updated, and I'm able to log in and watch the classic games.

Still no ability to log in on the website though.

SBS looks set to broadcast every single NBL game.

The NBL.com.au schedule has a SBS logo against every single game.

Does that mean those will be live on just on delay?

Sounds pretty good..
But I think it might be two games a week...

You are right Camel 31. Looks like they've changed it to 2 games a week (at least that's what it is for Round 1). Was all games live on SBS.

Hopefully they will eventually have all games on SBS because the masses has SBS and alot of people don't subscribe to foxtel.