CueSport TV - The Blog

As of today you can purchase a Cuesport TV Subscription.

There are two types; a pass (one-off payment) and a subscription (recurring payment).

In order to purchase one you will need to do the following:

1. Login to Cuesport TV
2. Look at the package list and decide which is for you.
3. Purchase Credits (Find it at the bottom under Your Account)
4. Apply those credits to the subscription period you require.

In the future the credit system will be removed to allow more traditional purchasing and also allow purchase via SMS text message.

SPECIAL OFFERS
Until the end of Sunday July 5th you will be able to by the following launch offers:

1 Month Pass - £5.00 (Saving £1.90)
3 Month Pass - £12.50 (Saving £4.40)
6 Month Pass - £20.00 (Saving £9.90)

All of these special offers are non-recurring so when it finishes you will have to purchase another package.

Purchase Now and save money!

Buy a Subscription

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The wait is over!

The new Cuesport TV subscriptions are now live, however, at this time they are not quite how I originally wanted them implemented. For this week only you, as a subscriber, will have to purchase ‘credits’ in advance of buying a subscription.

You don’t need to pay twice but you will need to make two transactions. The first to pay for the credits, the second to apply those credits to the subscription you require.

This will change over the next week and it will be a lot easier to purchase from Cuesport TV in due course. Once again I am frustrated but have to understand the work that Prostream are putting in to make this right. Eventually it will be a very slick interface that even allows payment via mobile telephone SMS services.

There are 23 videos that are currently part of the subscription and this equates to around 10 hours of viewing.

The first live event that will be subscription only will be this Thursday’s event from the TCC Snooker Pro-am, those of you that viewed last week know the quality of the live stream and will hopefully be back to support it.

Try purchasing a Cuesport TV Subscription now.

Let me know if you encounter any issues.

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I Have of course been watching Wimbledon during the course of the last week and particularly liked the assured performance from the only British hope Andy Murray yesterday.

It got me thinking about the structure and model of professional Tennis, something I have always been an advocate of.

Professional Tennis players are selected for tournaments (of which there are many!) based on ranking. I am wonderng whether it is about time that professional pool moved to this model?

It would mean World Ranking points being awarded for every tournament. The amount of ranking points would be determined by the quality of the tournament, factors like prize money, number of high ranked players and media coverage would of curse come into account.

I am sure it could work though if the WPA took the initiative, your thoughts?

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Back in the middle of June I annouced that Cuesport TV would be moving to subscription based content. Originally the date set for this was the 17th June, as you can see the date has passed and still subscriptions are not available.

On one hand it has meant that two live events have gone out free, which for the viewers that saw them was a bonus. For me and the company it has been a major frustration and is something not in our control.

There are videos lined up which will only be available as part of the subscription, yet we cannot release them until the paygate problems have been solved, I for one hope that this will be early next week. The original problem with the paygate provider has now been solved so it is just a case of getting the paperwork signed.

The subscription is already being taked about by some people on forums and chat rooms and as yet I have only read one negative comment about the move which is fantastic.

The subscription means that Cuesport TV will be able to provide better quality coverage from UK events but not only that. In addition International events will start being added to the subscription, content that is produced by some of the major International broadcasters.

Please feel free to comment about the nature of subscription based content below, I would love to read your ideas and thoughts on the subject.

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Last night saw the first of seven weekly transmissions from the TCC Snooker Pro-am. An event that has been running for 10 years at the Tredegar Cons. Club in Newport, Wales.

This years event has attracted Shaun Murphy, Mark Williams, Matthew Stevens and Ryan Day plus a host of other professionals and top level amateurs.

For us it was our second move into live snooker streaming, and obviously it is key with the move to subscriptions imminent, that we provide a good show. From my own point of view I think yesterday went well, the number of live viewers was small but this was due in part to the event being advertised as a paid event. I think the viewers that did watch probably would have paid anyway.

The key ingredient to the success was the mounting of a ceiling camera to give the typical full table shot we see on the BBC and Eurosport. This was quite comical really, we had brackets designed specifically for the job, however, the camera then would not tilt so all we could see was the light rig - a nice light rig, but not quite what people wanted to see.

Rather than actually start drilling into the ceiling of the TCC we made use of the suspended ceiling and using a plank borrowed from my son’s old bed set about creating a mount for the camera, it paid off and gave us the desired result. Although I was sweating it a bit with the camera precariously over the second table, secure though I must add!

The club is quite small and with 80 spectators crammed in we didn’t think there was going to be space for two cameras, but we did manage to add a second angle through the use of a tripod. The natural lighting in the club was perfect and a great nights entertainment was had.

Streaming at 450kbps is a first for us as we are normally stuck with small standard connections but the stream was smooth with no buffering and very little delay thanks to Virgin Media for that one!

Anyway you can watch the videos for yourself later on this weekend over at Cuesport TV and feel free to make a comment or two.

We will be providing live coverage again next week as well so stay tuned.

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The annual Tredegar Constitutional Club Pro-Am Snooker tournament is this year set for Live internet streaming through WebTV channel Cuesport TV.

The event which features two fomer World Champions in Shaun Murphy and Mark Williams will be live every Thursday evening starting on June 25th, there is a one week break on July 23rd with the final being played on August 13th.

In addition to the two players mentioned above the tournament has also attracted other Main Tour players including Ryan Day, Matthew Stevens, Mark Davis, Paul Davies and Daniel Wells. Alongside the star names will be a host of quality amateurs led by last years winner Lee Walker who returns to defend his title.

The overall winner of the event will collect £1750 and the runner-up receives £800, it will act as a great pre-season event for the stars and gives them valuable match practive ahead of the Shanghai Masters in August.

The action starts at 7:30pm UK time and is exclusively available to Cuesport TV subscribers.

A subscription on the channel can be purchased from £2.95 ($4.75) which allows access to the subscription content for a period of 24 hours. Longer subscriptions are available and will work out cheaper.

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The TCC Snooker Pro-am which features the likes of Mark Williams, Shaun Murphy, Ricky Walden and Ryan Day will be streamed live on Cuesport TV starting on June 25th.

The tournament that is played in a social club with two snooker tables will have matches being played concurrently, due to space restrictions and bandwidth on site it is only possible to stream from one table.

However, as the other matches will also be of interest to our viewers we will be recording the second table for later broadcast.

What is going to be exciting about this is that it means for the first time we will be able to test HD recording and subsequently streaming. It will mean that the HD footage will only be able to be watched at around 3.5meg but the quality should be excellent.

Both the live stream and the HD recordings will only be available as part of the Cuesport TV Subscription which is due to launch iminently. It has already been delayed by two days due to solving some issues with the payment processing company.

HD is always something we have wanted to try but due to bandwidth issues and time constraints in the past it has thus far not been possible, this could be the future of Internet streaming as more and more companies are now trialing it. The BBC i-player now features HD versions of their programmes and cycle team Cervelo now stream HD content over at Bartape.net.

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Over the next few weeks I am going to be offering reviews of some of the web’s best billiards cue stores.

To kick off the series I have selected a US retailer Billiards.com - one of the companies biggest calls to action, in my opinion, is the fact that they will not be undersold. If you find a product cheaper they will beat it.

Discount Pool Cues and Supplies at Billiards.com come from all of the leading brands that you would expect to see in a US cue retail store. Leading manufacturers like McDermott, Predator, Viking, Lucasi, Samsara, Cuetec and Schon can be found amongst the 5000 products that are in stock and ready to ship today.

For US based customers there is also free US ground shipping available when spending $75 or more which encourages the user to spend that extra bit of money in order to gain on the shipping costs.

The Site

The site itself is not flashy or full of gimmicks, quite the opposite, it is very easy to navigate with the left hand side links listed by product category. In addition to this if you know what manufacturer you are already looking for then you can use the drop-down menu on the left hand side to browse all products by that particular company.

Finally on the product navigation there is, as should be in any web store, a search function. The product search has also been enhanced by the addition of some of the leading brands logos down the left hand side. These link directly to the product pages within Billiards.com.

The product pages themselves are laid out very cleanly with a nice big image so you can see what you are buying straight away. I would say that the main category page can look a bit clustered because of all the manufacturers logo’s but it does not detract from the usability.

In addition to being able to buy pool cues the site has some extra enhancements to keep you around for longer and to make it more of a community feel. For example there is a search function for local pool halls and billiard stores and there is a comprehensive list of news articles and instructional content to make your game better.

All in all a very well laid out site with many good functions.

Cuesport TV Rating: 4 out of 5

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June 20th 2009 will see the very much anticipated £1000 per-man 10 ball challenge between Raj ‘Hitman’ Hundal and Ricardo ‘Indiana’ Jones.

Raj Hundal, the 2005 World Pool Masters Champion and regular on the International tournament scene, is rarely seen playing in one-on-one challenge matches. A player that is flamboyant and exciting and believes in hitting the break hard will come up against a UK based player he has known for over 10 years.

Ricardo ‘Indiana’ Jones is the house-pro at top Cambridge pool venue Mickey Flynn’s and is regularly seen playing challenge matches against some of Europe’s top players. Most recently Ricardo lost a very tight match against Dutchman Alex Lely. This particular money match went hill-hill. Jones, who has also represented the UK in the World Pool Championships in the past is probably regarded as the underdog on paper.

Jones recently commented “…alot of practice is required because I know I’m gonna have to produce a near fautless display to win…I, like him [Raj Hundal] consider myself part of the old-skool, the way American Pool used to be played with powerful breaks and great shot making.”

It is going to be an absolutely cracking match and Ricardo Jones is not a player to be underestimated and Raj will have to work hard if he is to win the match. There is due to be a return match and this is already pencilled in for Hounslow, the home of Raj Hundal, but lets get this one out of the way first.

The match is being played for £1000-per-man and starts at 7pm (UK time) it is a race-to-25 that is expected to go close to the wire - the match is being shown live on pay-per-view by WebTV channel Cuesport TV. You can purchase the match from just £2.95 ($4.75) which will allow you 24 hour access to the channels subscription service.

Visit: Cuesport TV for further information.

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The Legend’s Tour returned this weekend with 32 players from all across the UK. Ross McInnes won event one back in April and is favourite to lift event 2 as well. You can find the draw updated below for the knockout stages:

Last 16 Draw

• Mick McGoldrick 5 v 0 Karl Clarke
• Chris Karaniki 5 v 4 Stuart King
• Steve Chambers 0 v 5 Ross McInnes
• Ralf Adcock 2 v 5 Wayne Dutton
• Harry Patel 5 v Andy Lyndsay
• John Day 5 v Carl Fitzsimon
• Martin Rothwell 1 v 5 Roger Blank
• Maltese Joe 5 v 2 Steve Cook

Watch it live here: http://www.cuesport.tv/LegendsTour-Event2-Leicester-Live

Quarter Finals

• McGoldrick 1 v 5 Maltese Joe
• McInnes 5 v 3 Dutton
• Patel 2 v 5 Day
• Blank 1 v 0 Karaniki

Semi Final

• Maltese Joe v John Day
• Ross McInnes v Karaniki/Blank

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