IPTV

The AFL announced today that it had reached a three year deal (2012-2014) with Fox Sports for weekly AFL coverage on FOX Soccer Plus (FSP).  FSP is the subscription channel counterpart to Fox Soccer (formerly Fox Soccer Channel and before that Fox Sports World).  The cost will be $14.99 a month and FSP is available to customers of DirecTV, DISH, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, most Time-Warner and Brighthouse cable systems, Cablevision, Cox, BlueRidge, Bendbroadband, SureWest, FullChannel, Frontier, and RCN cable.  The AFL was unable to come to a deal with ESPN for continued coverage on their outlets.  Coverage will be two live matches per week typically (will vary occasionally) plus all finals live. The AFL Winners weekly highlight show will be available on FSP also. AFANA will post more detailed schedules in the next few days and update all of our TV pages to reflect this change in coverage. (TV pages have been updated)  Canadian TV coverage will remain on TSN2 with one live match per week.  (Addendum: 03/23/12: MHz has confirmed they will continue coverage this season with games on Monday nights at 10:00 PM EDT, repeated on Saturdays at 4:00 AM EDT.  Matches will be edited to 2 hrs and they will not carry the highlights programs ("AFL Winners") this season on Saturdays. Also, FSP on some Time Warner systems which offer the Sports Pass package of channels,  FSP will be just $5.99 -- price may vary slightly in some areas.)

Major changes have been announced to the AFL weekly highlights programs and online coverage by the AFL.  Details were made available to AFANA in the past 24 hours.  (There are no other changes we are aware of besides what is reported here.)  The traditional AFL highlights programs have been replaced by a FOX Sports produced program called "AFL Winners" and the the online service previously provided by Aussie Sport TV (ASTV) has been replaced by LiveAFL.TV.  The new service is supposed to support platforms other than the Windows based PC's including Apple Mac's.  (We have not tested this as yet but there are at least two reports that it does work on Macs.)

The new weekly

(Ed. note:  This service appears to be defunct as of early 2010.)
A new TV service has debuted which offers sports fans and ex-pats an opportunity to watch Sydney television from the comfort of their residence in the USA provided you have a broadband connection.  TVfromOZ has begun operations and utilizes "Slingbox" technology to deliver television from Australia to your PC or TV.  Initially Channel Ten and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) are available with more channels to be added soon.   Any sports, including AFL coverage and other programming that can be seen on over-the-air (OTA) television on those channels will appear just as it would if you were in Sydney.   Slingbox is a "place-shifting" technology available here in the US and has, up to this point, been used primarily to allow people to watch their home television from a remote location such as a hotel room or on their mobile telephone or Blackberry.

TVfromOZ will offer several options to fans:

NexTV, an internet based TV service, has made the following offer which has been extended to AFL fans.  AFANA republishes this with their permission and without compensation.  If you do take advantage of the offer, please tell them you saw it here on AFANA.com  Click on "read more" to see the full offer.

Dear Footy Fanatics!

GET READY FOR THE AFL FINALS!

Setanta e-mailed it's subscribers with a notice today making the case for former ITVN subscribers to sign up for NexTV (see our earlier article on NexTV).  The notice also mentioned the on-going problems that former ITVN subscribers have had getting their monthly credit card, checking, and debit card payments to the now defunct ITVN stopped -- see this thread.  (AFANA agrees with the notice below... call your credit card company or bank and place a fraud report!).   We are unable to excerpt the text of the Setanta e-mail because for reasons unfathomable to AFANA, the text is available solely embedded into an image, worse it is white text on a black background in a small font.   (Dumb!)  Here is the notice they sent out:

Setanta issued this to one of their mailing lists tonight; we reprint it as it was received.  From our math, the monthly charges will be about $22.97 to receive Setanta by NexTV.  AFANA will be discussing the service with NexTV and report further at a later date.

Dear former ITVN subscribers of Setanta Sports,