World Cup 2014: How not to Miss a Minute

The AVForums guide to this year's festival of football takes in Recording, Streaming and Networking Options

by hodg100
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World Cup 2014: How not to Miss a Minute
The impending World Cup TV schedules will present the UK viewer with the opportunity of watching a minimum of 5760 minutes of footballing action.
To put it another way, that’s 96 hours (or four entire days) of footie in a period spanning less than five and a half weeks. Even for an addict like myself, that’s a tall order and I’m not sure that I’ll be setting the alarm to wake up for Ivory Coast v Japan at 2am on Sunday 15th June.

But this is 2014 and there has never been so many ways to record, stream and catch up with all the action so we’ve put together this little guide to steer you through.

Seeing as the European TV companies have stumped up the most for coverage rights, the matches are mostly at fairly friendly viewing times so the player’s will sometimes have to endure excesses of heat and humidity whilst we’re chilling out on the couch and watching. Most of them get paid well enough so let’s not let that spoil our enjoyment.

The opening game is quite a tantalising prospect as favourites and hosts, Brazil, take on the skilful Croatians. It takes place on Thursday 12th June at 9pm and will be broadcast live on ITV HD.
Kick Off times are fairly UK Friendly
But what if you’re out?

Well, the obvious answer to that is, ‘get your priorities straight’ but if that really is unavoidable then you have a few choices.
Record it.

Most people in the UK have, by now, grasped the concept of the Personal Video Recorder (PVR). Whether you have a Sky+, TiVO, V+, YouView, Freeview or Freesat box you should, at the very least, be able to set a basic recording, to catch up at your leisure, but there are times when forward planning goes by the wayside and the thought strikes you - whilst out and about - that you did the unthinkable and FORGOT!!

Don't give up hope, there’s a good chance that your box has a companion mobile app that will allow you to set up remote recordings.

World Cup 2014: How not to Miss a Minute

You will, of course, need to have downloaded the app to your phone and tablet and initiated the hook up between the two prior to the tournament but owners of Sky+, TiVo, YouView and Freesat (Freetime capable) boxes, at least, have the chance at recording redemption.

There are also Freeview HD PVRs from Panasonic with an app to allow exactly that functionality. Basically any manufactured after 2013 have compatibility with the new DIGA Player app and we found it worked really well in practice, too.
Remote recording apps can save your Brazilian Bacon
Don’t Spoil the Result

So with your recording(s) safely set, you’ll want to get down to the serious business of watching it and the chances are high that you’ll want to start doing so before the game ends. Any PVR worth its salt will allow you to ‘Chase Play,’ meaning you can start viewing the beginning of the game before the recording terminates.

There are a couple of potential pitfalls with that approach, however. The first and most obvious of these is that you may switch on the TV to find it is already showing the game you really wanted to view from the recordings libraries and the live score is thus revealed. That’s a catastrophic set of events I’ve had the misfortune to endure and it doesn’t bear repeating.

The simple solution to this is to switch the box to another channel prior to turning on the TV but even that can go wrong. In certain scenarios, e.g. when in the box is showing its menus or other UI, changing channels may not work so the safest bet is to ensure the box has been put in to a standby state, brought out of it again and then one can change the channel to a known safe station. You will want to avoid any news channels or mainstream stations liable to reveal results.

With coverage set to be so widespread, you will need to choose your spoiler-safe channel wisely and I’d recommend CBeebies as a totally football-free zone. So memorise the following:

Freeview : Channel 71
Freesat: Channel 601
Sky: Channel 614
Virgin: Channel 702

World Cup 2014: How not to Miss a Minute

Don’t Miss Extra Time and/or Penalties

As an England supporter born after 1966, it may seem perverse to avoid avoiding our almost inevitable elimination by one, or both, of those eventualities. Assuming we make it out of the group stages, that is.

But if you thought stumbling upon the score-line, prior to watching events unfold was painful, try the agony of watching for 90+ mins and then having the recording end before you get to see the eventual outcome. Now that is a combination of insult and injury the Uruguayan squad of 1966 would have been proud to have doled out.

To ensure you don’t suffer this kind of ignominious result, you’ll want to make sure you’re well padded. In an ideal world we would be able to rely on the broadcasters updating the various EPGs (Electronic Programme Guides) to take in to account elongated matches and, thus, the chances are your box would make the necessary adjustments in recording times. If you do decide to take the trusting position it might work out for you but, personally, I don’t have the faith - particularly where ITV is concerned.
Avoid Extra-Time and Penalty Shootout agony
But why leave it down to chance? Most recorders will present you with the option of adding time to the end of a recording manually and some even present global padding options in the user menus. TiVo owners have it particularly easy in that the scheduling a recording of a Live event always brings up a prompt to add time at the end but others may need to dig a little deeper. Check out your schedule/event manager to find out how it works with your PVR but, for safety’s sake, we’d recommend sticking a minimum of an hour on for ultimate security.

There are some boxes that unfortunately don’t allow for such flexibility. Probably the most notable of those carry the YouView logo whose software doesn’t allow for such levels of finesse. Frankly, we think it’s the one glaring omission from the PVR functionality of the platform and the fact you can’t initiate manual recordings, either, only compounds the frustration. We’ll be putting our resident DTR-1010 to the test during June and July and if it comes up short, we will be feeding back our recommendations to YouView on the matter, again.

World Cup 2014: How not to Miss a Minute

Stream It


Of course, nowadays you don’t even have to wait until your home before jumping in on the action and the fact it’s the BBC and ITV that are the UK rights holders is pretty much good news all the way. Literally every game will be available via either BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport app or the ITV Player, so if you can get a good WiFi, 3G or 4G connection - and assuming you’re allowed to consume those levels of data – there’s no excuse for missing anything. OK, you might need to be subtle about watching, depending on where you are, but good friends and understanding colleagues will know that Football is more important than them - and work!

Much as this feast of football might be your idea of heaven, it may not find such favour with others in the house. Or maybe you just want to slip away in to another room to watch a game in peace? We’ve all been there and whilst the mobile options are good, there’s nothing like a big screen to lap up the action and the excellent BBC Sport app is currently available through more than 550 smart TVs and connected devices in the UK.
BBC Sport App is an essential port of call.
You can’t fault the Beeb when it comes to providing blanket coverage of major sporting events and, this time around, they are promising more than 50% extra World Cup output over the corresponding tournament in 2010. The BBC Sport app will be providing live radio commentaries, breaking news, live streams and highlights of each and every game and it will all be available on any device, at any time.

The BBC Sport app is available on most LG and Toshiba Smart TVs produced since 2013, those made by Panasonic, Sony and Samsung since 2011. You can also get at it through TiVo, Playstation 3 and PS4 and Roku devices - including the super-value Streaming Stick - and we wouldn’t be surprised to see support added to Chromecast before the tournament begins, as we know they are working on it.

You may even be lucky enough to have a PVR that is able to stream over DLNA such as the Samsung BD-H8900, which will mean you’ll be able to watch from pretty much any Smart TV or device on the network. And for those final group matches that are played and broadcast simultaneously, check out if your TV or box has a PiP (Picture in Picture) facility. A lot of older TVs, pre the Smart TV revolution, have this and, after all, it’s the only way you can ensure to claim you’ve watched each and EVERY game.

We hope we’ve helped you AV Football nuts out there and if you have any further suggestions to add, we would love to hear from you in the comments section below.

To share your thoughts on the above, click the Discussion tab and post a reply.

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