1. It Could Be A Real Pain In The @$$ To Set Up...
The WWE Network is not the same as paying for a TV channel and tuning in at your leisure. Honestly, its potentially a bit of a pain... The WWE Network can be viewed on TV with Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku streaming devices, PS3 & PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360 and, of course, smart TV. If you have any/all of those, together with a strong, reliable broadband connection, then well done you. The Network can probably also be viewed via tablet PC or a laptop hooked up to your TV. DISCLAIMER: For those of you reading this that are tech savvy computer-friendly types, the following argument will come off as spurious and overly simplistic, but theres really nothing at all that can be done about that. Sorry in advance. The fact is that watching online content on your TV can be a MAJOR annoyance. Sure, you can hook the TV up to a laptop, tablet, streaming device or games console, maybe even a net-ready Blu Ray player - if you happen to have such gadgets and gizmos knocking around (or the money to buy them). However, if you do, youre quite possibly in the minority. The majority of the British public does not have smart TV yet and in fact, most still watch DVD as opposed to Blu Ray, on the grounds that it is much, much cheaper. Most of us can view online content only on home computers, or maybe smartphones (which again, not everybody has). Selling a televised product is much easier, as the vast majority of homes in the UK own a TV set and watching is therefore as easy as tuning in and enjoying the show, but even in 2015 web-exclusive content still comes with a Damoclesian question mark hovering above it at all times. In short, you dont just buy the Network, get it installed and then sit back and watch. Instead, youre dependent on WiFi connections being strong enough NOT to cop out on you (PS3 owners will be especially sympathetic to this point) and you could even end up investing in technology that, quite frankly, may not work out too well for you. The Internet, wonderful though it is, can be extremely temperamental and unreliable at times. Not everyone has perfect WiFi, remember. If you order the Network without owning any way to play it on your TV, youll be forced to watch from your desktop, tablet or phone, none of which is an ideal scenario for viewing a 4+ hour Pay Per View event. ...So, is the WWE Network worth your £9.99 a month? All things considered, wed have to say yes. If youre a real wrestling fan, the WWE Network will pay for itself from day one, if only for the massive video archive and access to all the Pay Per View events. In fact, if you regularly order WWE Pay Per Views online, youd be a fool not to become a Network subscriber. Provided you can get it to work and afford the subscription fees, the £9.99 a month charge is a total bargain (as long as you dont have any smug American friends, that is). In addition, WWE will likely increase its amount of Network only programming also, which is something youll miss out on otherwise. Its been fashionable to slag off WWEs newest big money venture recently, but we reckon that the Network was a brave and ballsy move on the part of the WWE and were happy to support it. All things considered, were saying yes to The WWE Network.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
