Just received an e-mail from Sky about the price rise.
The joyless sods trying to spoil a world cup final day :-|

When will this rip off end?

Only when everyone decides to quit! Mind you, plenty on here think it's very good value and anything but a rip-off
If you are in it just for the sport then the best (legal!) option is Now - a bit more awkward than the Satellite service (either another box, HDMI from your laptop or app if you have LG TV) but at £32/month (weekly and daily options available) + no contract it's the option I take.
My month runs out next week and I'll re-join for the Tests.
Wonder if someone has the basic entertainment package + sports they would be beter off with Now - as you could probably let the entertainment package run and dip into the sports as and when?

No West Indian? Strange.

Freddie stood next to Athers guess the whole they don't along thing was nonsense

They are standing next to each other for aesthetic reasons. Ward and Kumar are a lot shorter. Freddie had a slight dig in his opening comment. Atherton is Sky's best for my money

I like Nasser purely coz he takes all the jokes about him well but Atherton is great too listen too

Personally think Freddie gets on with Athers now anyway.

Flintoff not been that bad really, surprised me that.
flintoff will suit the verdict if Sky ever uses him more.

Flintoff ripping him to bits on twitter. To me that suggests they are mates again.

Any one else find Ian Ward's mealy mouth apologies for 'bad language' laughable. They are the fault of the host broadcaster according to Ward. The host broadcaster is the ICC isn't it? Wonder how the host broadcaster stops England players swearing the the heat of the match?

The host broadcaster are blamed as Sky could drop the stump mic levels if they wanted.

Wish they'd stop the musical highlights during the overs. Can't see what that adds to the game? It's something that crept into golf and is slowly creeping into other sports. Leave it till the end, huh?

Yes its really annoying. The one they did just now even sounded like the same music that they use for the golf.

At least not as many clips of the crowd very few balls today

Very interesting to watch today (couldn't resist the opportunity to see England in a world final, so bought a NowTV pass). I assume that Sky have been opting into the World Feed at the start of each innings with a full play of the titles and an advert for one of the tournament sponsors throughout the tournament? Rather bizarre - I can only assume that this is contractual, but it is very weird to see adverts for products and services not available in Britain and adverts not intended for the British market.

It was also tremendous fun to see a Sky programme end with a Sunset and Vine endcap - again, this must be contractual, as S&V are producing the ICC feed.

I did like the World Feed coverage, though. I'm a sucker for an S&V production, and the graphics are so much better than the 2015 World Cup graphics (hey, that's the biggest improvement in the last year; not the England team's performance!) - nice to see DIN back as the font, harking back to the glory days of C4 cricket. And a really nice VT at the start of the World Feed programme, just a pity that they botched up the play out of it, so it started to play, then stalled, then Nasser Hussain introduced the show, then it played again.

Does anybody know how the world feed presentation elements are working this time around re Star? Previously, when Star was running the world feed, I guess that the studio footage was of the Stat panel/analysis and that this was offered as the World Feed. Now that it's an independent production from Star, do Star behave like Sky do (i.e. Their studio bits are just their own wraparound and they then opt into the world feed) with S&V providing a World Feed programme or does the Star presentation go out on the World Feed?

Madmusicans ICC and Star are doing their own things.

ICC have been mostly using Wilkins, Slater and Pommie Mbangwa as Anchor and lead man for the games, with 2 analyst being from the comms pool of the game.
Star been using Harsha bhogle as presenter, with pundits being Lee, Laxman and Warne for the past few days and if Bhogle at the ground pundits from the ground will join them as well sometimes.

ICC Tv stuff is the world feed.
Also nothing new about the adverts thing, Uefa do it all the time same with fifa, this was just the first time ICC did it.

Have to say the coverage was better than it was for the last ICC right cycle everything flowed better, it probably helped that Star could concentrate more on the Hindi part of the coverage and let ICC do the English coverage.

Thanks for that. I had suspected that the ICC and Star would be doing different things. I must say, I thought that the ICC programme (which we got pretty much wholesale from 10 minutes before the match until the 'flash' interviews were done) was very good indeed. How come the ICC are using Alan Wilkins, though? Is he actually popular with the Indian audience? I always thought that he got world feed commentary gigs because he was a manager at Star, so put himself on the roster. But now the world feed isn't coming from Star, there's no reason for him to be there, is there? Back in 1999, if you were to ask which members of the BBC commentary team would still be commentating for the TV world feed on global events 17 years later, Wilkins would be near the bottom of your list (just above Dougie Donnelley). Fair play to the man to keep himself in the frame!

I know that FIFA and UEFA sometimes require broadcasters to take sponsorship bumpers from tournament sponsors (especially in the Champions League, for example) but I have never seen such a blatant out-of-territory advert as the ones for MRF tyres, that mobile phone network and another product that I don't even know what industry it is in!! Only the Nissan advert was remotely suitable for the UK market. I don't know what the ICC or the relevant sponsors think that they are getting out of this arrangement. The first time I saw such an advert (near the end of the coverage of the women's final) I had assumed that Sky had opted out late. Totally bizarre!

That phone/sports thingy ( onstar?) is available in the uk aimed at the Asian market i think

yep it is Although the UK version is very very limited.
http://www.media247.co.uk/bizasia/st...-in-ukusa-2015

Hotstar is the indian version of Sky go.

Guessing ICC got more money for it.
Alan wilkins mostly covered the women games and the less marquee games.
Michael Slater was first choice with Pommie 2nd choice.
Michael Slater covered all the big games.

Also Wilkins is freelance now he mostly works for any broadcaster that is looking for a commentator now, not sure yet if he given up on his Golf and Tennis presenter/Comms job for Star yet.
He usually presented Wimbledon and UK open (golf) for Star.

ICC/Sunset + Vine or whoever need to sort out some better directors for the next tournament. Ones who aren't so clueless about which end the ball is going to on a run out. Too many times key moments were missed with the director going to the wrong place or doing a pointless close up.

The one criticism I would have is them trying to play in replays and other EVS stuff between balls (obviously unless something worthwhile has happened). I find that quite irritating and some other cricket broadcasters do that too

MadMusician - Oppo Smart Phones are sold here, as are other Oppo products. Their BluRay Players are considered among the best on the market.

I do love a nice cold pint of Hotstar

The F1 Broadcasting Blog reports that the T20 Final averaged 1.04m.

So a bit higher than the last England group game the previous weekend - though not much - about what we might have expected given the competition from PL football and the F1 (whereas the group game had very little competition).

Would be interesting to see a peak figure - given that the cricket ended (with the dramatic final over) after both the PL and F1 had finished.

http://f1broadcasting.co/

Thanks for reporting this. Also, given the 'event' nature of the final (rather than a group match), I wouldn't be surprised if Sky had a larger-than-usual amount of NowTV subscriptions/viewers for this match. I certainly fall into this camp - a cricket match of national importance that happened to fall on a rare Sunday off for me meant a no-brainer to pay 7 quid and spend several hours in front of the screen watching the match. I doubt I was alone.