Participant Observations 7/3/18 - The season is just 15 days away!!

Let me start by saying how excited I am for this new season. While I'm the first to admit that it's unlikely to be as compelling and as even as last year, I nonetheless am keenly waiting to see the players back in action and the best game on earth getting underway again. Some recent observations over the summer:

1) The summer has been good as far as AFL goes. i actually really liked the AFLX competition, and I think a franchise model run into Hong Kong for 2-3 weeks over the summer is an awesome idea. Retired players, young guys who otherwise wouldn't get a chance, in a new country is awesome. yes, some tweaks need to be made, such as turning down the glitz, and some rule tweaks, but overall I loved the free-flowing movement.

2) The AFLW has gone up a notch and is far more watchable this year. Still plenty of room for improvement, but I know a lot more of the players and have even watched the one panel show on Fox Footy occasionally.

3) The JLT pre-season has been less impressive. i love the fact they play the games on regional venues, but the quality - from what I've seen - has been horrendous. But I'm also glad it's only 2 weeks of competition. Heaven forbid if we had to live through 3 weeks of this shIt.

4) I've noticed that when watching Fox Footy via chromecast the vision is ok, despite suffering fidelity issues (as mentioned previously), but when I watch it via my gaming computer, there's an issue with frames dropping. This isn't restricted to Fox Footy - it happens on other channels as well. I'll need to do some more testing, but from what I've seen online, it may be because I'm using a HDMI cable to connect the PC to the TV screen. This is disappointing from Foxtel, because my other streams on the PC do not have this problem.

5) I found this thread online, where people seem to share ideas about getting AFL without having to pay for it. Might be worth keeping here in case I ever want to go back to it:

https://discourse.bomberblitz.com/t/watching-afl-on-a-tv-without-foxtel/3932/88

Interestingly, one of the posts says: "Also, side note, this is one of the most regularly visited pages from Google." But It's somewhat recent, but it does cover many of the options I've looked at before, such as using a VPN to access Watch AFL, the CrownBet option, and so on. One option that may be worth investigating is this Kodi service: 

https://kodi.tv/about

6) Also saw this advertisement on TV today - really interesting that it personalities the piracy experience. Effective tool! I have no way of arguing with this - yes piracy might be overstated by the industry, but creativity wants to be paid!

But in summary, let me return to my starting point...I CAN'T FUCKING WAIT UNTIL THE SEASON STARTS!!! WOOOOOO...I'm just gonna leave this here for now: