Is ChessTV Premium Only Now?

     I just went to ChessTV and noticed only Premium members can access it
starting tomorrow.  Is this a permanent situation?  My Diamond membership
just expired and it has not been renewed yet(It was a Christmas gift and the
person who bought it for me said they will renew it but I don't want to be rude and call them and bug them about it).
     I understand this is a business but couldn't we wait until the end of the
12 games of the World Championships to change the policy?  The first 3 games
were available to everyone and a lot of fun! 

I have a feeling it's because of the world championship and the big increase in traffic. They were getting a lot of spam... Maybe it's in reaction to that?

I hope it is only temporarily! Hopefully we can watch the remaining matches.

l'm sure the chat could have been disabled were it such a problem (and yes, I saw the millions of mostly pointless messages per second).

ill post an explanation in the forums soon. tomorrow's round 4 will be viewable by all membership levels.

Chat doesn't take up a lot of bandwidth.  Video does.

WHAT? i think chess TV is the one of the best features of the site and shud be available for every1, its a great way 2 learn and get ur games analysed and i think that option shud be for all. IM dpruess if u r reading this thn plz change this, its not good for the site cuz so amny non premium members r excited about this and they will be hugely disappointed  

     Oh good!!! We get to watch Round 4.  One other thing, today the microphone
was so soft I had my volume on high and still had trouble hearing.
     Also, will we be allowed to watch "Your Games Analyzed" on Thursdays or
is that also going to be for Premium only?

ALSO i just noticed that it is only for platinum and diamond memberships ?  i m really disappointed personally, i use to look forward to it so much but as a gold member i cant access it anymore. is there anyway we can change this ? cuz this totally SUCKS!

everyone can watch your games analyzed.

honey, saying that it's a great feature (which i'm very happy to hear) does not mean that it can be available to everyone for free. the broadcasters don't work for free and the video bandwidth was extremely expensive with the large crowds for the world championship. who is going to pay for that? the answer is: the people benefitting from the programming (members) have to.

abuse what youngpro?

and regrettable though it may be when we charge for a feature and you can't afford it... if we don't charge for it the result is that *nobody* gets to enjoy it, because we simply can't provide it.

hey Dpruess i totally understand about premium members only watching the world champs broadcast but i m glad that analysis thing is available for every1, thank u !

Exactly.

ok youngpro, yes, both basics and premiums may spam nonsense into the chat box. but that's not what is costing us *tons* of money in bandwidth. the premium members do pay for that bandwidth though.

there will still be at least 4 rounds of the world championship covered with free broadcasts viewable by all, the next being tomorrow (game 4) with myself and shankland.

Which will be awesome .

Lol I can watch the game on the Net, and I don't particularly need someone to talk about it.

here's a more extensive explanation of the current tv situation: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/support-chesscom-tv

I'm looking forward to commentary by Pruess and Shankland.  I was not a fan of the GM-talking-down-to-FM format.  

dpruess,

Is there any way to access the previous coverage of the games on chess.com - if I have missed the live TV broadcast? 

The site is great.  I am a proud premium supporter and always will be! Thankyou kindly.

yes indeed there is darkknight, though this feature has only been available for platinum+diamond for some time now.

go to chess.com/tv . in the lower left of the viewer there is a place that says "on-air" and then to the right of that "on-demand." click on-demand. a list of shows pops up in reverse chronological order. go through it and select the show you like! i only organize and title them once every 1-2 weeks, but in general from the dates you should be able to figure out what the most recent 1-2 shows are. pretty much everything is saved there... several rounds of Carlsen's Nanjing triumph last fall; 25 episodes of your games analyzed; the very first ever chess.com/tv broadcast...

let me know if you have any trouble with that. and thanks for your support!!