Al Jazeera still facing World Cup problems
Its been tough going, this World Cup. There have been major upsets, arguments off-field and blaring vuvuzelas, not to mention our nails, which are starting to resemble half-chewed dog biscuits. But possibly the most frustrating for Middle Eastern viewers has been the inconsistent performance by the Al Jazeera Sports network, the satellite company that has exclusive pay-TV rights to broadcast the World Cup.
We first noticed problems (as many of you did) during the opening ceremony. Dropped picture, inconsistent audio and commentary that was, well, not what we paid for. These broadcast outages (most during crucial moments like the opening half of the WC’s first match) were not just localised to the UAE either, we received word that the network was going down in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, to name but a few of the countries affected.
With Al Jazeera charging up to US$150 for its one-month World Cup package, viewers were outraged. That said, many believed Al Jazeera would clean up its act, sort out its network issues and bounce-back after its lacklustre performance. Sadly, that has yet to happen.
We’re still getting reports from you readers that transmission has remained sporadic since the opening weekend. The group A games (played last night) had consistent drops in signal, with some commenting that the picture quality was worse than streaming sites. We’ve also noticed this ourselves, and the most consistent feed available still has moments of dropped audio and video.
From a network as big as Al Jazeera, it’s really not on.
The Sports channel has been rather quiet on the matter, save for a few mentions during the coverage, like scrolling words on the bottom of your telly or commentators apologising for poor performance. The channel made a brief announcement after the opening weekend, claiming the broadcasts carried by Egypt’s NileSat and Saudi Arabia’s Arabsat were being deliberately jammed. The company didn’t say who was behind the jamming, or what the jammer’s motive might be.
A spokesman had this to say:
“Al Jazeera Network is currently investigating the sabotage of the transmission of the 2010 Fifa World Cup coverage that was deliberately jammed on the Nilesat satellite. Al Jazeera is taking every possible measure to uncover those behind the incident and to hold them responsible for the interruption of the signal that affected its audience in Middle East and North Africa region”
According to Al Jazeera Sports, FIFA is still backing the network and condemns the sabotage.
We don’t know much about sabotage, but many viewers have blamed Al Jazeera’s network and its lack of capacity. With the launch of the World Cup, Al Jazeera Sports starting broadcasting more feeds to more viewers around the region, including HD and 3D channels (which take up an awful lot of bandwidth). If Al Jazeera lacked the capability to stream such data-heavy broadcasts around the Middle East, it would explain the inconsistent video and audio feeds.
Save for that one announcement, Al Jazeera has kept its lips zipped, presumably while they hunt down the ’sabateurs’ in question. But while the hunt is on, viewers around the Middle East continue to face terrible World Cup coverage with hardly any technical support. There is still no word on whether Al Jazeera will compensate paid-for viewers for its shoddy streams, and there has yet to be an official apology from the network.
More on this as it comes in (and lets cross our fingers that tonight’s England’s game isn’t ruined too).
[UPDATE: We've just had an interesting bit of information, it seems to cut down on possible capacity problems, Al Jazeera Sports will be removing all English language commentary from its HD channels. James Butler writes:
Starting the 22nd of June, Al Jazeera Sports HD stopped the English commentary permanently. Now both audio streams on both HD channels stream Arabic (from different commentators). Matches are now only available in English on standard definition channels.
We've repeatedly tried to get in touch with Al Jazeera for a comment, but all lines seem to go unanswered and our emails are ignored]
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4 Comments
Thanks Thomas for you excellent articles, you are one of the only bloggers in the ME region who is bringing into light Al Jazeera’s disastrous handling of the WorldCup broadcast, which i believe is the only way for us to keep them under pressure.
Thanks to your article, and alot of complaints to service providers, Al Jazeera sports has RESTORED the English Commentary on its Al Jazeera HD (High definition Channel) on the 25th of June, though the issue continued un-noticed (or noticed) by them for 3 days!
Here’s hoping they keep the English commentary on HD for the rest of the world cup.
i m working in Qatar, has subscribe or bought the al-jazeera smart card for this worldcup but the live telecast was horrific, every 10-20 minutes there will be a ‘compelling’ break of 2-5 minutes. What a shame? the worst worldcup experince i ever had….
After frantic searching, i finally found a website to vent my frustration about Al JAzeera Sports! You are absolutely right, they have stopped streaming english commentary for Al Jazeera HD, in between they have restored it for 2 days, but now the issue has returned, with no correction or response from Al Jazeera whatsoever. When you select the “secondary” audio stream from decoder, you still get the commentary in arabic.
I was at the bar yesterday for the USA vs Ghana match, we were all upset that we couldn’t watch the HD channel on English (we used to be able to before), had to switch to Jazeera worldcup channel which is standard definition, but even so the image quality is extremely poor (comparable with youtube).
I really hope Al Jazeera restores the English commentary on the HD channel for us again. I am really upset and i’m sure everyone is about this whole worldcup tv fiasco.
Watching the semi final last night, waited until the last minute sitting on the HD channel and still all in arabic. Had to watch it on the Worldcup channel in english, but the picture quality is very poor. Of course looking through Al Jazeera website etc and there is no info from them. Thanks Thomas for the information, at least there is someone out there reporting what is actually happening and informing us poor viewers that paid to get a A-classed product and ended up with something from Youtube.