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 You
might be thinking of bringing your little Casio 2"
portable television, or perhaps are planning a bigger move
where a lot of your entertainment equipment is coming with
you. Aside from the voltage difference - you of course won't
be able to plug that TV directly into the wall - you also
likely won't be able to use your television because the
video format for Spain (and Europe) is different from that
of the US. This goes for VCR's as well. The US, Japan and
most of the America's use a system called NTSC, which stands
for the National Television Standards Committee, while Europe
uses a system called PAL, or Phase Alternating Line. That
is all of Europe except France, who still seem to cling
to SEACAM, a format which is not compatible with either
PAL or NTSC. What are the differences? NTSC has 480 horizontal
lines for resolution with a frame rate of approximately
30 per second. PAL has 576 horizontal lines for resolution
with a frame rate of 25 per second. With the recent trend
going towards flat screen televisions (Plasma or LCD), many
now offer the ability to change between NTSC and PAL. Add
to this the light weight of the televisions and the possibility
of bringing your flat screen TV over to Spain becomes more
of a reality.
What does this mean? First, your NTSC television will not
handle a PAL signal - either over the air or when using
with a cable system. It also means that picture quality
here is a good bit better. Check out a soccer game and notice
you can see the details on the player's jerseys a little
better. This is especially noticeable with the color red,
which seems to bleed more in NTSC than it does in PAL. You
get more of a "live" feel when you are watching
shows as well. Why did they do this? Well, the folks in
Europe had the chance to improve the system a bit from the
original U.S. standard. While it makes for incompatibility
it also makes for a better viewing experience.
Another plus here is the use of Teletexto - a kind of primitive
and not so interactive internet. Teletexto allows you to
navigate through content by punching in numbers through
your remote. You can see the TV schedule, weather, soccer
league results and standings plus a number of news and sports
updates.
Many, as I did, may plan to use a TV tuner card on their
computer to watch television in Spain. The problem is many
cards in the U.S., like televisions, come only with NTSC
compatibility. The ATI All-in-Wonder is a good example.
The card sold in Europe is only PAL compatible while the
card in the U.S. only NTSC capable. There are a rare few
models out there which include both PAL and NTSC capabilities.
I think back to my first ATI card that offered PAL and NTSC
some 5 years ago (those days are long gone), or a few other
models which are still out there. However, this only applies
to the actual antenna which plugs directly into the card.
If you choose to use composite video cables you can switch
the tuner to PAL video and receive a perfectly good signal.
The downside to this is that you'll need a separate tuner,
like a VCR or cable (satellite) box. With one of the two
you can hook up to your computer but you'll need to the
remote to the VCR or cable box to change channels. Using
this set-up you'll also lose Teletexto. If you do buy the
tuner card in Spain and install it (an easy option) you'll
be able to plug it in and go, and get the use of
Teletexto.
 I've
heard it before - "Why would you want to watch television
when you're in a place like Seville?" For one things
TV here is a great way to learn the language. See an ad
for milk and now you know how to say milk, or leche, and so forth. People do watch a lot of television here -
I've not been to a household in Seville where the television
wasn't on during lunch. Without cable you have about 13
channels to choose from. 10 of those are local, with 5 of
the local channels broadcasting a lot of crap I don't think
anybody watches. On all channels commercial breaks are often
an agonizing 8-10 minutes, and in some cases you may find
yourself waiting almost 15. Start times for some programs
are also at best an estimate of when it will begin. Every
once in a while, but not often, you can catch a late night
movie in English with subtitles in Spanish. One night I
watched a movie in Italian with English subtitles on Canal
Sur 2. Interestingly it had a message that it was a screener
and not for commerical broadcast. Not sure what went wrong
at the station that night. However, TV programming in Spain
has improved a lot over the years, with more and more shows
of high production value coming out. Aside from these shows
you have 6 types of programming that dominate the airwaves:
- Talk/variety shows - every day and night with some hours of the day where
you'll find no alternative.
- U.S.
shows - well dubbed, they have managed
to pluck some of the best sitcoms (if there is such a
thing) and dramas from the American airwaves. That includes
the Simpson's (twice daily) and even a few HBO original
dramas. If something does well in the U.S. it will make
it over to Spain, although often these shows don't last
because they simply don't appeal to Spaniards. There is
some entertainment which is universal, while some is too
"cultural" to make an impression.
- Sports - football (soccer), toros, motorcycle, formula
1 and bicycle races, tennis, basketball (Spanish League)
and more.
- Movies - many each week, most of which are from the U.S. Three
things they do with them that I like a lot: 1) show letterbox
versions a lot; 2) do not cut nudity, violence or "offensive
scenes" in most R-rated movies; 3) every so often
they show a movie without commercial breaks on Canal Sur.
- News/Documentaries - news is twice a day much like the U.S.. Canal Sur 2
offers the most documentary programming, especially on
cultural and nature topics.
- Reality - from Gran Hermano (Big Brother equivalent) to Isla de
los Famosos (Survivor with celebrities) there are a good
amount of reality shows to choose from.
Another media offering which is typical in Europe is Teletexto.
If you're television supports it you can get news, sports
scores, weather, horoscopes and more in the form of a text
display on your screen. I like to think of it as a primitive
internet, and it sure comes in handy when arguing who is
where in la tabla during fútbol season.
Spanish providers
 If you're looking at subscribing to cable you can widely expand
your television viewing. You have two options as it stands
today, Digital Plus being the dominant player in the market. Digital Plus was
two separate companies in Via Digital and Canal Satelite Digital.
Canal Satelite bought out Via Digital and now you can get
a wider selection of channels on the new Digital Plus service.
You can choose from basic to full-blown packages, and while
the choice of channels may not be the 200-300 you can get
in the US or UK, you'll have plenty of time to waste with
the options. Channel lineups are listed on the two sites below.
I've noticed there are differences between the two major players,
but not too much. Some English friendly features: When available
on movies, you can watch the versión original (V.O.),
which is the English audio track. Many sitcoms and other shows
from the U.S., including The Simpsons and Seinfeld,
are broadcast with the two language tracks. On rare occasions
you may find another language such as Catalan or German. This
second language track is only offered on cable or satellite
television, as I have never had any luck picking up this track
on non-cable channels through the SAP (Second Audio Program)
function.
A similar offering of channels can be found on cable television
service offered by Auna,
which is commonly referred to as Supercable. There are small
performance advantages to Supercable such as the lack of rain
fade (signal interference due to heavy rain - hardly ever
a problem in Seville) as well as the speed of the interactive
guide (painfully slow and terribly clumsy in Digital Plus).
But Supercable also has a limited service area, which works
fine in much of Seville and urban areas, but is difficult
to get in parts of the city as well as in rural areas. Digital
Plus offers more channels and has no problem with a service
area because it is a satellite service!
Finally, a new service by Telefonica
has just been launched to the major urban areas (over 100,000
in population) called Imagenio.
This is television over broadband, or as they are calling
it, IPTV. You rent a cable box, so to speak, for about 7 Euros
per month and then your ADSL line is used to deliver 45+ channels
as well as a larger library of video on demand, including
movies and many unpopular series. We took a look
at the listings for series, and there is very little you would
want to follow. The advantages include more movies to choose
from (paying for each one of course) plus the ability to watch
them when you want, even rewind, fast forward or pause! Wow
this sounds great, doesn't it? Well, for now there is much
to be desired for this service. For one you have a much smaller
offering of channels and are missing some important ones for
sports lovers like Canal Deporte 1, 2, and 3. There are also
a limited number of movie channels. And Telefonica has made
it clear that expansion of the service area is more important
then expansion of channel offerings (which is not part of
their immediate plans for the moment). Recent news puts 200
channels on the system by 2007. We'll wait and see. Perhaps
expanding the service area is good, because worst of all is
this service has a range of 1-2 km from the central broadcasting
area, which happens to be in Plaza Nueva. The central service
area is where the content or programming is pushed to you
over the ADSL line. This means if you are any further than
1 km from Plaza Nueva you will have problems such as losing
your internet connection many times during the day as well
as break up in the signal for your television. Essentially
you will pay more to receive a low quality service for both
television and internet. We were sold on Imagenio
for about a week after someone from Telefonica called pushing
an oferta, which we accepted. One week later the
contractor for installation called us, indicating all of the
problems we would have because of the range. The coverage
is getting better and there is hope this will be a good rival
to Digital Plus in the next year. As for the ofertas,
well if you follow the link above you'll see telefonica has
about 30 of them. Enough to confuse the hell out of you and
make you forget all together of Imagenio as an option. For
more information on sports programming see the section
below.
Sky Satellite
An update after a friend and I had a conversation about alternatives
to the Spanish programming. I don't claim to be breaking any
big news with this, but it was nice to know that getting Sky
satellite network, and English satellite service, is possible
in Sevilla and Spain. So many expats from the UK around the
Costa del Sol have been doing this for some time and have
the advantage of a UK address so they can sign up for the
service. I thought this may be one of the problems in getting
the service, since I don't have an address in the UK. However
I've learned that there are several reputable companies based
in the UK which act as an intermediary for Sky service. You
simply set up the dish, buy the set-top box from them and
provide a credit card. They provide the billing address and
make the payment after charging your card each month. So what
might this cost? It's a bit steep, although I think the numbers
could be less with self installation of the antenna. For my
friend he dropped 220€ on the set-top box, postage included.
Then another 450€ for installation of the antenna -
you'll need a size of at least 1.3 meters to get the signal
in Sevilla. Packages just depend on what you want and range
from £20 to £60. Channels such as NASN, the North
American Sports Network, run for about £10. Everything
in my friend's house is set-up and working well for about
a month now. All seems good until I show up at 3am on a February
night for the Duke-Carolina game. I'll soon have the link
up for the site/company which provides this service, plus
any others I may come across. Note: just about every web site
or company which wants to get you connected will tell you
how the law in Spain and the E.U. gives you the right as an
owner or renter to erect a satellite dish to receive your
service. It is much easier when the dish is a small one, and
not the 1.3 meter dish you need to set up to receive Sky in
Sevilla. You do have the right, but that does not mean you
will get permission, nor please your neighbors by taking them
to court to get permission.
Internet and BitTorrents
This isn't a bit about live television streaming on the internet.
While I've watched a few things in a postage stamp size window
the pickings are pretty slim and of course the quality poor.
If you have a broadband connection then I happily refer to
file sharing. Discovering bittorrents, or torrents, has been
a godsend for following some of my favorite shows such as
the Simpsons and the Amazing Race. Download a small application
and then head out to look for files on a lot of pages and
directories. Simply type in “bittorrents” in Google
and you will find plenty of pages. Some of the good ones have
them classified as movies, series (i.e. TV Series), music,
and games. You are a at the mercy of what people want to offer
up, but most of the popular series and shows are listed, and
most are available the day after the original air date. The
great thing about bittorrents are the way it works –
it takes advantage of the unused upload bandwidth of each
individual user so that other users can download the file.
That is, at the same time that I am downloading the file or
show I want to watch I am also uploading the same file to
users. In general, when more people are downloading a file
my download speed actually increases rather than decreases.
I won’t get into all the specifics because other, more
technical folks can explain it much better. But don’t
be afraid to try if you have little experience. Simply download
a program – there are several to choose from. Then find
some listings on a page and click on the link. Most downloads
come in a format like MPEG or AVI which you can watch with
windows media player. I warn you that it may take several
hours or even a day to download some large files, but you
can start downloading before you go to bed and then wake up
the next morning to an episode of your favorite show. I like
this over programs like Kazaa, etc. which like to install
spyware (there is a spyware free version, too). But this is
as simple as it gets and you just need a lot of hard drive
space or at least a CD burner so you don't cram your cpu full
of large files.
Below are some helpful links to get you started – there
are plenty of programs and sites about this, and I am surely
a late entry into all of this. As with a lot of file sharing
of this nature be prepared for a few banners on the sites
(with links to files you want) advertising some adult content.
It’s just the way it goes. I have recently switched
to Azureus,
a very good client for downloading.
Bars
Most of you will have only the option of going to a bar to
watch the game. One good location for many sporting events
is the Texas
Lone Star Saloon, or the Tex Mex Bar as most
call it. It's close to the cathedral located on Calle Placentines,
25. Every week they show two live NFL games. They also show
NBA games and a tape-delayed (1 day) broadcast of the NCAA
basketball final on Sportmania. For the NCAA final the place
is packed, but unfortunately this past year Sportmania decided
to show highlights and the final result of the game right
before broadcasting it. For those of us who avoided the news
all day so we could watch it as if live were quite upset.
You can catch any Betis or Sevilla away matches here on pay-per-view
as well, and the crowds are pretty good. If you like the Premier
League or other European league soccer games they are likely
to carry them, too. These guys do a good job of showing what
you want to see - normally you can pass by outside and check
out the chalkboard where they post what games or events they'll
have that day.
One bar, Flaherty's, (located at Calle Alemanes, 7, right next to the Cathedral)
would not show the NCAA Final no matter how many Americans
wanted to go to their bar. I've since spoken with the owners
who were kind enough to invite me to lunch one day after seeing
my complaint on this very page. I have to admit, it was a
nice change to have someone want to sit down and chat a bit
rather than quickly sending me a hate email. I like these
guys, and they have assured me that my last experience was
just one person behind the bar who didn't know what they were
talking about! So, if it's a big game and not showing at 3am
they will do their best to put the game on. You can check
in anytime to see if something is schdueled to air. If you
bring a few people along the day of the game I'm sure they'll
appreciate you more!
Another option might be Merchant's Malt House,
located on Calle Canalejas, 12 (on the corner of Canalejas
and Gonzalez Abreu). They carry every Betis or Sevilla match,
as well as English Premier League and UEFA matches ona big
screen television. They likely have other broadcasts as they
mention they broadcast major sporting events, but I have yet
to enter in this bar. I'll have more info soon. If you are
looking to catch a Betis or Sevilla match when they are playing
away just listen for the shouting in the bars. What was once
a choice of a few places is now a choice of thousands which
carry the games in the city.
Online
A question often asked when living abroad. In some cases if
you have a broadband connection you can watch a game or sporting
event online. Yahoo Platinum did me a great service in offering
almost the entire NCAA
tournament one year, and they planned are to offer it
again in the following year for $9.95 per month. The service
was then switched to CBSsportsline.com, who previously had
the rights but chose Yahoo as the platform to launch the service.
Access is $9.95 for up to 37 games, but unfortunately they
blacked out games in your local area - meaning if you have
a U.S. billing address with a local zip code close to the
team you root for, they may black out those games thinking
you get a local broadcast, even if you live in another country.
They denied this but still blacked out some of the nationally
televised games. I received an email apologizing and saying
they were working on a solution for international users. The
way around it would have been to use a card with a different
billing address, but even that didn't work. Why they think
a blackout is necessary is beyond me - who would choose a
2 inch pixilated image over their 27" screen in their
living room?! The Elite 8 and Final Four were delayed by five
days, but all of the opening round games were there. The size
of the screen was maybe 2" x 2" but it was good
enough to see the action. You could also flip between any
game being played, plus there were highlights posted within
a few hours of each round. Had my connection
been a little better I would have had better clarity and a
little bigger screen size. In 2006 the NCAA Tournament was
offered online by CBS for free. The pros to this service:
you don't have to pay. The cons: CBS doesn't have to offer
any customer service nor adhere to any kind of quality standards.
The service through Real One offers MLB games, and there is a fee to view the entire season. You can
watch the games and playoffs online by subscribing
here. ESPN offers their college football package online
as well, and I have found this to be of good quality. If you
sign up early enough there is a discount as well. But the
fact that they charge the same amount for the online version
as the cable or satellite version is a bit of a rip-off in
my opinion. These are not the same quality product! And beware
of phantom blackouts even though 1) you use a card with a
European billing address; 2) they allow you to purchase this
outside of the U.S.; and 3) there are no games being broadcast
in my local area! The worst part is that ESPN just doesn't
answer any emails sent to them. Despite the fact that I spent
over a $100 for this service, they feel I do not deserve an
answer. I like the ESPN site, but when it comes to customer
service, well they don't get the job done. There is also a
Real One SuperPass available for Europe which includes UEFA
and Wimbeldon coverage. I have yet to use this since I receive
broadcasts of these games.
Cable or Satellite
If you have cable or satellite with the right package you
can see a number of games. Canal+
Deportes shows NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB and NCAA basketball
games, including the Superbowl and NCAA basketball Final.
There is also full coverage of UEFA Champions League and one
Sunday night game per week from La Liga. The selection and
frequency of NCAA basketball is somewhat limited. Sportmania
shows at least 3 tape-delayed NFL games per week, plus an
assortment of NCAA basketball games. Here is the breakdown
of channels and what they offer:
- Canal+:
Superbowl, Wimbeldon, NCAA Basketball Final Four and Championship
(live at 3am), 1st Division Spanish League Sunday match,
UEFA Champions League, NBA. These are also carried on
their three sports channels below.
- Canal+ Deporte 1:
UEFA Champions League, English, Italian, German, French,
Portuguese, Dutch, Argentinean and Brazilian first division
soccer/football leagues.
- Canal+ Deporte 2:
NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, golf, rugby, Spanish Pro Basketball,
boxing, tennis.
- Canal+ Deporte 3: tape-delayed broadcasts of the above two channels,
some special events and from time to time a live game.
- Sportmania:
International and National Soccer; NCAA, NBA, European
Basketball; Sailing, NASCAR, golf, tennis, boxing. Most
events are tape delayed.
- Golf+:
all 4 Grand Slam events, PGA Tour, PGAET tour, Grand Slam
Cup, WGC, Ryder Cup and more.
- Eurosport:
Olympics, European Cup (soccer/football), motorcycle racing,
French and Australian Open (tennis).
- Eurosport News:
All news, mostly covering European sporting events and
leagues.
If you have Sky network you will be much happier, with NFL
games and more. You'll also get NASN which offers everything
a good American sports fan misses: NCAA basketball and football,
other college sports, NFL games, hockey and more.
 If
you are fortunate enough to have a good TV and a video or
DVD player you can rent movies at several locations in Sevilla.
There is a Blockbuster or four around, which is always a
choice. Video
Drugstore seems to be a competitor and their prices
are reasonable - you can rent two older DVDs (ie: not new
releases) for 1,95€ and keep them for two days.
A new release costs around 2,50€ and you have one
night to watch it. Prices rise depending on it being a holiday
or weekend. In recent comparisons I see that Video Drugstore
is a much better value than Blockbuster, Mainly because
Blockbuster keeps titles on the New Releases rack for up
to 6 months after Video Drugstore, meaning they will charge
you more. Then they have a recommended section which are
older films that people like, for which they charge more.
Finally they have catologo which are the older
movies that people are less likely to rent and so they are
cheaper. There are smaller stores around the center and
throughout various neighborhoods as well, but the selection
tends to be fairly limited. Be prepared for most places
to ask you not only for ID but some type of proof of where
you live - a lease with your name on it, or one to two bills
from a utility to show you've been in the same place for
a while. DVDs have the advantage of the extras, but also
the original version language tracks which make it nice
if you miss hearing Dustin Hoffman's real voice. Some DVDs
will not have the same bonus materials you will get at home.
Not always the case but I've noticed some missing material
more than a few times.
 Helpful Information & Links |
Video Drugstore locations:
web: videodrugstore.com
Carretera Carmona
La Florida - near Puerta Carmona
Blockbuster locations:
web: blockbuster.es
Avda. Cruz del Campo, 60
C/ Felipe II, 7
Avda. República de Argentina, 41 |
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