ITVN Technical Problems Plague Merseyside Derby

One of the biggest matches of the season for fans of both Everton and Liverpool was ruined today for those viewers subscribed to ITVN.

The IPTV company that provides Setanta Sports over a broadband connection on to your TV set was plagued with technical problems. For example, here’s a letter from one irate ITVN customer (just one of many I received this morning):

Gaffer, I’m trying to watch the Merseyside Derby, and I noticed that the ITVN reception was especially troublesome this week – something I attribute to the number of fans that must be tuning in the match (no technical basis for this assumption – just a gut feeling). So, the picture is fine for a while, then pauses, then returns (but not a restart from the same place – it has skipped over the time period that was paused).

Then I start to notice that this problem is very regular and predictable. Specifically: one minute on, and twenty seconds missed; one minute on, and twenty seconds missed. From 23:02 through 24:02 (gametime), my picture is fine, then the screen pauses and the game resumes at 24:22. This has persisted THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF – and I missed Sammy Hypia’s own goal as a result.

Question: could ITVN be rationing like California’s power grid? Rolling Blackouts, so that say instead of 300,000 people getting the match, they could provide the match to 400,000 people without upgrading their servers…?

I watch more on FSC than I do on ITVN – largely due to the inconvenience of hooking it up and picture quality problems, but I’ve never experienced anything like this. Thanks, Dave Morris Richmond, VA

Recent requests by EPL Talk to interview ITVN have been ignored. At this rate, they risk losing their customer base who have subscribed to Setanta Sports.