Well, I've received and watched (twice) the LONG version of the latest
World Cycling Videos Tour de France and I have to tell you that this
year the coverage bears a faint resemblance to the past versions.

To start with - if you have high fidelity sound you will find in many
places that Phil and Paul are completely drowned out by background
noise SUCH AS MOTORCYCLE NOISE! In places they are drowned out by other
commentators in another language.

You can somewhat rectify this by disconnecting your stereo sound system
and using just the small tinny speaker in your TV set so that isn't
exactly insurmountable. But the sound production this year was the
worst yet. Though I have to say that in the past they haven't had any
noticeable problems.

And the coverage seems to be mostly the full length coverage of the
mountain stages. Now of course that's where all of the important action
occurs in the GC but in the past they didn't seem to be quite so
spotty. There ARE after all, other stages than the climbing ones.

Finally I have to complain about the scenic crap inserted just to fill
up space. I love France and it is a beautiful country but surely Chris
Boardman is more interesting on a Tour de France tape than pictures of
French castles from a helicopter.

I don't know what happened this year since World Cycling Videos have
done a great job in previous attempts. And I hope that next year they
do better than this.

But I have to say that although it is still worth buying the long
version, it is a shadow of what it should have been.