MLS throws up this kind of game* occasionally, and I'm just glad it wasn't a loss. Not much to take from this one except the point...on to the next.
I will say that the choice of listening to Max Bretos on the national broadcast or the RSL crew on the radio broadcast was not ideal. I ended up listening to the radio crew, because there are…
MLS throws up this kind of game* occasionally, and I'm just glad it wasn't a loss. Not much to take from this one except the point...on to the next.
I will say that the choice of listening to Max Bretos on the national broadcast or the RSL crew on the radio broadcast was not ideal. I ended up listening to the radio crew, because there are few things I hate in soccer more than Max Bretos, but after a while their comical badness was too much and I just turned off the sound and listened to a Husker Du record while watching. Some highlights:
- Consistently pronouncing the Y in Yimmi Chara's name as a Y and not a J
- The one time that Evander took a corner, announced by the main guy, and the color guy said that "Evander could not get his head to that ball in the area, and RSL start to break"
- The gold medal winner for me, though, wasn't a mistake as much as a lack of understanding of the Timbers and their history. There was a play where the Charas interchanged the ball, and the announcer said "Chara gets the ball, and passes it to his brother Diego" and both my wife and I basically screamed NO NO NO NO NO THE ONLY CHARA THAT GETS CALLED "CHARA" IS DIEGO, YIMMI GETS CALLED YIMMI CHARA SHOW DIEGO SOME DAMN RESPECT". So not really a mistake, just...no. "Chara" has been earned by Diego, the other one's Yimmi Chara.
Since I'm 3 hours west of Pacific time, I appreciate being able to replay the games with no blackouts. Much better than ESPN+. But will AppleTV ever get someone who can work a soundboard? The crowd noise drowns out the commentators, both home and away games.
Oh yeah, the game was better than expected. I thought with altitude and short rest, Gio would trot out a rotated side. I hope they have something in the tank for Minnesota.
When we started the feed last night, the first thing my wife said, within 5 seconds, was "damn the sound on this really sucks". And neither she nor I really ever notice these things, but it was baaaaaaaaad.
I get why they'd want to emphasize crowd noise, but someone's gotta be able to get the balance right.
This seems to be a constant issue on Apple TV+ games. I have to turn up the volume a bit at times in order to hear the announcers. And the levels seem to change during the game. It was really bad at the beginning on Wednesday.
I gave up on Apple TV+ audio for MLS games months ago.
Though it does give me some nostalgia moments from the early 1970's when my mom would move the antenna around to try to get audio to work with the picture.
What I would like is the ability to AVOID being forced to see the final Score to get to a point where you can watch the replay. In some platforms, scores can be turned off, but not in all. I find it amazing that one of those is IPADs, you are forced to see the scores. They did take those off the small window, only to have a SCREEN where the score is the largest text, that is unavoidable, before you can scroll to the place to watch the replay...
There is no reason for the score to be up on the screen. I can't think of a consumer who would want that unless they were looking for a reason not to watch the game. But I don't think Apple is staffed with sports fans making these decisions, so I provided feedback to them. Of course, there isn't an easy way to provide feedback so yet another barrier in the Apple experience.
I do want to reiterate that I like having the games on a single platform, and I will continue to stick with MLS on Apple for streaming. There are just some areas where they need to improve.
You can turn scores off ... but yes, the default should be not to show it in the first place. It is like giving away the plot of the last minute of the season finale as the summary on a streaming show.
See the open thread this week (last week?) for the instructions on turning off scores on apple TV if anyone missed it.
They yammered and yammered, delivering mostly meaningless prattle about everything but play on the pitch. I want insight into what's unfolding in the match first and foremost.
They seemed like they were normally football commenters - they kept making references to MacMath "putting his foot through the ball like a 70 yard pass downfield" and to the targets of MacMath's balls "having to be like a tight end", and there was a whole lot of artificial excitement generated by guys making passes through the midfield.
Combine that with Apple's weird camera angle choices throughout the game and the Apple MLS service, which was promised to be way better than Fox due to extra cameras and 1040p throughout every broadcast, and I'm not as impressed with the Apple service as I feel like I should be. It's fine, but it's not the massive leap forward we were promised.
The quality of the stream is fantastic vs broadcast tv, but yeah- I’m not real happy in general with their choices for announcers. Most don’t have any history of the teams they are talking about and I’m really missing the hometown announcers we had before.
There’s just a very generic feel to the majority of the announcers. Not a fan.
If they'd expand the radio simulcast option to include both broadcast teams, I'd be more OK with it. The Timbers radio guys aren't great, but at least they're our local version of not great, so they're much more listenable than almost any of the Apple TV idiots.
I mean, I kinda get the "generic feel" thing - Apple has deprioritized local knowledge in favor of a "consistent experience" across games, which means every game is bland and uninteresting. The broadcasters, especially in a week with Wednesday games, don't have a whole lot of prep time to do anything other than surface-level research about teams they're broadcasting, so you get a whole lot of banal generalities and not much else. It's disappointing for sure.
Honestly, I never see them. I'm a STH and I'm at pretty much every game. It's rare I re-watch more than just highlights of home games, which always look fine because, well, highlights.
My problem is mostly with the generalization of the MLS broadcasting pool. Local TV team announcers, as much as I didn't like Ross Smith, are critical for giving that extra layer of nuance and color and local knowledge, based on hanging around the team at media availabilities and on flights and stuff, to the things they say, and also for cultural things specific to teams, like the Chara example I mentioned above.
When you're a broadcaster working for Apple and they say "you'll be in Salt Lake on Wed night, in Austin on Saturday, and then in Foxboro on next Saturday", there's not a whole lot of time to get deep knowledge of any of the six teams you'll be responsible for calling action for.
All the Apple TV commentators are competent at their jobs; none of them are interesting, because that's not what they're getting paid for. Even Zivin has blandified, because that's the job now.
I was probably too harsh about this broadcast. I'm all for the occasional diversion to learn more about individual players and their back stories or other interesting tidbits. But last night at least, the match itself seemed of secondary importance.
Generally, I like Apple's camera work better than what we had before. Last night, though, the closeups felt too close at the expense of what was playing out. The sound mixing problems that marred the first 20 or so minutes happen too much. I'm guessing Apple will get all of this smoothed out with experience.
It reminds me of several years ago when the Sounders announcer (Arlo White I believe) used to refer to every single free kick as a "penalty kick". He did it for game after game after game.
It amazes me how some people with no knowledge at all of the sports they are announcing are picked.
MLS throws up this kind of game* occasionally, and I'm just glad it wasn't a loss. Not much to take from this one except the point...on to the next.
I will say that the choice of listening to Max Bretos on the national broadcast or the RSL crew on the radio broadcast was not ideal. I ended up listening to the radio crew, because there are few things I hate in soccer more than Max Bretos, but after a while their comical badness was too much and I just turned off the sound and listened to a Husker Du record while watching. Some highlights:
- Consistently pronouncing the Y in Yimmi Chara's name as a Y and not a J
- The one time that Evander took a corner, announced by the main guy, and the color guy said that "Evander could not get his head to that ball in the area, and RSL start to break"
- The gold medal winner for me, though, wasn't a mistake as much as a lack of understanding of the Timbers and their history. There was a play where the Charas interchanged the ball, and the announcer said "Chara gets the ball, and passes it to his brother Diego" and both my wife and I basically screamed NO NO NO NO NO THE ONLY CHARA THAT GETS CALLED "CHARA" IS DIEGO, YIMMI GETS CALLED YIMMI CHARA SHOW DIEGO SOME DAMN RESPECT". So not really a mistake, just...no. "Chara" has been earned by Diego, the other one's Yimmi Chara.
*yes I used that wording intentionally.
Since I'm 3 hours west of Pacific time, I appreciate being able to replay the games with no blackouts. Much better than ESPN+. But will AppleTV ever get someone who can work a soundboard? The crowd noise drowns out the commentators, both home and away games.
Oh yeah, the game was better than expected. I thought with altitude and short rest, Gio would trot out a rotated side. I hope they have something in the tank for Minnesota.
When we started the feed last night, the first thing my wife said, within 5 seconds, was "damn the sound on this really sucks". And neither she nor I really ever notice these things, but it was baaaaaaaaad.
I get why they'd want to emphasize crowd noise, but someone's gotta be able to get the balance right.
This seems to be a constant issue on Apple TV+ games. I have to turn up the volume a bit at times in order to hear the announcers. And the levels seem to change during the game. It was really bad at the beginning on Wednesday.
I gave up on Apple TV+ audio for MLS games months ago.
Though it does give me some nostalgia moments from the early 1970's when my mom would move the antenna around to try to get audio to work with the picture.
What I would like is the ability to AVOID being forced to see the final Score to get to a point where you can watch the replay. In some platforms, scores can be turned off, but not in all. I find it amazing that one of those is IPADs, you are forced to see the scores. They did take those off the small window, only to have a SCREEN where the score is the largest text, that is unavoidable, before you can scroll to the place to watch the replay...
There is no reason for the score to be up on the screen. I can't think of a consumer who would want that unless they were looking for a reason not to watch the game. But I don't think Apple is staffed with sports fans making these decisions, so I provided feedback to them. Of course, there isn't an easy way to provide feedback so yet another barrier in the Apple experience.
I do want to reiterate that I like having the games on a single platform, and I will continue to stick with MLS on Apple for streaming. There are just some areas where they need to improve.
You can turn scores off ... but yes, the default should be not to show it in the first place. It is like giving away the plot of the last minute of the season finale as the summary on a streaming show.
See the open thread this week (last week?) for the instructions on turning off scores on apple TV if anyone missed it.
They yammered and yammered, delivering mostly meaningless prattle about everything but play on the pitch. I want insight into what's unfolding in the match first and foremost.
They seemed like they were normally football commenters - they kept making references to MacMath "putting his foot through the ball like a 70 yard pass downfield" and to the targets of MacMath's balls "having to be like a tight end", and there was a whole lot of artificial excitement generated by guys making passes through the midfield.
Combine that with Apple's weird camera angle choices throughout the game and the Apple MLS service, which was promised to be way better than Fox due to extra cameras and 1040p throughout every broadcast, and I'm not as impressed with the Apple service as I feel like I should be. It's fine, but it's not the massive leap forward we were promised.
The quality of the stream is fantastic vs broadcast tv, but yeah- I’m not real happy in general with their choices for announcers. Most don’t have any history of the teams they are talking about and I’m really missing the hometown announcers we had before.
There’s just a very generic feel to the majority of the announcers. Not a fan.
If they'd expand the radio simulcast option to include both broadcast teams, I'd be more OK with it. The Timbers radio guys aren't great, but at least they're our local version of not great, so they're much more listenable than almost any of the Apple TV idiots.
I mean, I kinda get the "generic feel" thing - Apple has deprioritized local knowledge in favor of a "consistent experience" across games, which means every game is bland and uninteresting. The broadcasters, especially in a week with Wednesday games, don't have a whole lot of prep time to do anything other than surface-level research about teams they're broadcasting, so you get a whole lot of banal generalities and not much else. It's disappointing for sure.
Have you found Timbers home game broadcasts to be different now that Apple is broadcasting?
Honestly, I never see them. I'm a STH and I'm at pretty much every game. It's rare I re-watch more than just highlights of home games, which always look fine because, well, highlights.
My problem is mostly with the generalization of the MLS broadcasting pool. Local TV team announcers, as much as I didn't like Ross Smith, are critical for giving that extra layer of nuance and color and local knowledge, based on hanging around the team at media availabilities and on flights and stuff, to the things they say, and also for cultural things specific to teams, like the Chara example I mentioned above.
When you're a broadcaster working for Apple and they say "you'll be in Salt Lake on Wed night, in Austin on Saturday, and then in Foxboro on next Saturday", there's not a whole lot of time to get deep knowledge of any of the six teams you'll be responsible for calling action for.
All the Apple TV commentators are competent at their jobs; none of them are interesting, because that's not what they're getting paid for. Even Zivin has blandified, because that's the job now.
I was probably too harsh about this broadcast. I'm all for the occasional diversion to learn more about individual players and their back stories or other interesting tidbits. But last night at least, the match itself seemed of secondary importance.
Generally, I like Apple's camera work better than what we had before. Last night, though, the closeups felt too close at the expense of what was playing out. The sound mixing problems that marred the first 20 or so minutes happen too much. I'm guessing Apple will get all of this smoothed out with experience.
It reminds me of several years ago when the Sounders announcer (Arlo White I believe) used to refer to every single free kick as a "penalty kick". He did it for game after game after game.
It amazes me how some people with no knowledge at all of the sports they are announcing are picked.
But he had a British accent, so was automatically an authority in Seattle on football.
Lol.
The most glaring error to me was when they were talking to the coach Josh Wolf about something. In my head I thought “you meant Gio right?”