Australian Football Association of North America

Thanks for the comments. About the whole NFL thing though, I know I receive High-Definition Widescreen games of the NFL during the regular season I just find it so strange how North America is so far behind in that regard for even adopting widescreen programming. You guys are right, not everything in the UK and Australia is HD but almost 100% of programming is Standard Definition Widescreen both through digital terrestrial broadcasts and satellite platforms like Foxtel and Sky. The UK/Australia did the digital upgrade the "smart" way compared to North America. When they adopted digital broadcasting at the start of the decade they immiediatly adopted Widescreen even if they couldn't yet broadcast in HD unlike North American that stuck with 4:3 on digital platforms until full HD rollout.

Whether to subscribe now really comes down to how badly do you want the footy?   Treat any possible cancellation cost for ITVN as part of the equation.  If you are willing to spend $X or more to get the footy (including any cancellation cost) for a few months then it's a no-brainer.  Get ITVN and keep it as long as you need it.  If the cost is too high, then don't.  

I watch the coverage on a wide-screen analog TV.   My TV is left by default in that  mode and it works fine but ITVN isn't going to give you HD right now.  As we note in the TV FAQ,  HD will come but not this year.   It's simply too expensive to feed all those bits live and too few international customers are in a position to utilize it.   Not all the matches are being recorded in HD yet in Australia -- it's a network by network thing.   I expect that will change over the next season or two.  For the record, the taped coverage is 16:9 source video but was deliberately downconverted for North America, which is part of the reason the picture quality was so crappy when it was on Fox Soccer Channel (which in turn supplied Fox Sports World Canada).  As far as anamorphic widescreen vs the 4:3 format, the lesson here is that ITVN takes the Setanta US feed.  They feed their channel to match the viewing needs of the overwhelming majority (or perceived majority) of the DirecTV viewers.  That will change, too, in a few years.  With the mandatory conversion of over the air broadcasting in the US to digital by Feb.19, 2009 it will drag us along the format curve as well. 

There is no defense (really) for illegal file sharing but that shouldn't be read to mean I don't understand why fans are doing it.  Some are doing it out of desperation because they can't get the coverage any other way.   I wish we could make wider distribution happen right now but we can't.   I suppose I have a "longer" view of things because after a dozen years of working on this, I try to remember how far we have come and the frustrations we've faced along the way.    Most of the fans who watch now weren't footy fans in 1995 or before and don't remember those days or have only romantic memories of the early 1980's on ESPN.  What is forgotten is that ESPN was in so few US homes in 1980 that it pales by comparison to where Setanta is now.

Setanta on ITVN has 3 servers to choose from and I suggest trying all of them if you have low speeds or dropouts.   I find #2 or #3 work better for me than server #1.