Does anyone know what is happening to the documentaries and other non live cycling content on gcn +?
Flo - 150/year, Peacock - 7/month, Max + B/R - 26/month
Yeah, they only just switched this year for MTB WC, and it must be at least a 3-5 year deal. I doubt that RedBull will ever get it back.
This really angered me. They outbid the fantastic Redbull (with Rob Warner) free broadcast, then 9 months later put it all behind a paywall that many wonāt want to pay.
I really hate this behaviour.
Mtb was always separate from the rest of the corporate cycling world for me. Iāve followed it for my whole cycling life and now itās gone.
I saw an ad that UCI mountain biking (āXCO World Seriesā) would be on Max. (In the U.S.)
Yes, and thereās a random article on the internet saying Max is coming to NZ at the end of 2024.
Not much use of next year, and they have already signed away the rights to a bunch of the other HBO properties for NZ so I think theyāre talking s#!t
I really loved what you guys did! You will be missed!
Which frankly sucks with Max being the most expensive of the 3 cycling streaming options now in the US. As others have mentioned, it just makes the sting of the loss of the Redbull coverage a year ago worse. The only bike racing I really watch is MTB, but $26 a month is absolutely ridiculous and not worth it to me. I thought maybe it was a bit premature last year when the comments section on Pinkbike absolutely lost it over Redbull losing out on the coverage rights, but now, not so much.
Any recs for VPN software? Looks like there are a ton of options out thereā¦
Nord VPN works well for me. And what are the tons of options?
Interested in this too. I may be able to pay a friend in UK for them to subscribe and give me the login info.
There are a ton. I briefly worked for a company that had a VPN product. They are mostly the same but itās worth checking their privacy policies.
Off the top of my head: ExpressVPN, Tunnel Bear, CyberGhost, Hotspot Shield, IPVanish, NordVPN.
FWIW Iāve used Tunnel Bear for a few years and itās been solid.
Which UK service are you guys subscribing to? Is there one there that has rights for all of the races?
Discovery Plus.
That said, I think we need to expand our thinking. As of today, thereās two options: Eurosport Player and Discovery+. Eurosport Player is supposed to be phased out in Jan but Iām not sure it will be phased out in every country.
Regardless, the price of either Eurosport Player or Discovery+ varies between countries in Europe. If youāre really trying to min/max you arenāt restricted to UK only, in theory you just need to find a way to sign up from any of the countries that will have Eurosport cycling coverage and ideally the cheapest country. Youāre going to VPN it regardless and the different language feeds will still be available.
I use Proton VPN
For me the limiter is where I have a willing accomplice to pay for the service.
I know there has been speculation about getting pre-paid credit cards tied to a specific country and using those to sing up, then VPN to access. Has anyone actually tried this?
Anyone know the exact time GCN+ is shutting down (with time zone)?
Donāt know when precisely so you should definitely start binging anything you wanted to see. Could be any time soon, up to around 24 hours from now.
If you want to download them, no harm in spilling the beans now. You can use chrome to get the url for master playlist m3u8 and then use youtube-dl to pull down the full video. I installed youtube-dl with chocolatey, but this will be platform specific.
Then open the gcn website with the chrome debugger pane open (F11). Start the video you want. Filter to m3u8 and get the index.
You need to specify the video quality + which audio track you want. -F arg lists them.
And you end up with something like:
youtube-dl -f bestvideo+audio_0-English <<index.m3u8>>
Gotta work the commandline a little quicklyā¦ the urlās expire after a time.
Iām based in the US.
I created an account on Discovery+ while VPNād to the UK.
I tried to use my Card from Wise (funded with English pounds) but that payment was rejected. I also tried via Paypal and that was rejected as well.