Thursday, February 05, 2009

ITV is rubbish, in nearly every way possible

Just how rubbish is ITV? We lost our coverage for a few seconds before the goal in the Everton v Liverpool game last night, but we did see Dan Gosling's goal. A lot of people didn't and ITV has had to issue an apology, here. The Mail has the sequence in lurid detail and is calling this Goslingate.

I always think a consumer boycott cleanses the soul. Trouble is, we're running out of options. Rachel fell out with Sky after Louis chalked up a phone bill doing interactive games when he was 4. I had a dispute with NTL (now Virgin) over their inability to deliver a service and their zealous pursuit of a £30 debt by putting debt collectors after me. Setanta just doesn't work at our house. I don't know why, and they tried to put it right, but I've had it with them as well. Which leaves the free to air BBC and ITV.

We have a Thomson Freeview 6300 box which is full of bugs. There are programmes saved which crash the whole thing and can't even be deleted. We get random programmes about the Lottery saved on it which take up hours of disk space. Last night's football highlights didn't record, though I did download something called Microsoft Silverlight to view them. I always feel slightly grubby using Microsoft software and thought, typical ITV, again.

I do like BBC's computer based iPlayer. Very user friendly and very reliable. And I do like channels such as BBC3, Dave and BBC News. And I like Sky Sports News. The kids like Dave and CBBC. And that's about it. ITV's channels are all full of complete crap. Even their weather last night gave no feeling or indication of what the weather was going to be like today. It is the palest of imitations of everything BBC do. No wonder it is collapsing before our very eyes.

But what I really (really) resent is the move to digital TV and the analogue switch off. The technology is too flaky and the service too haphazard.

2 comments:

Nigel Barlow said...

Michael,

You may like this that has been doing the rounds on You Tube

http://thoughtsofnigel.blogspot.com/2009/02/itv-covers-moon-landing.html

Anonymous said...

Michael,

Agree with you about BBC iplayer - it just doesn't compare to the ITV version either.

Though you "can't" get it outside the UK, I have somehow managed to by-pass the blocks and can keep up to date with goings on back in Blighty thanks to Auntie's iplayer (and Marple Leaf of course1). What's even better is it costs me less to watch the beeb here from the desert than the cost of the license fee! Go figure.

Chris

PS - no mention of the result at the weekend?