Unfair Practice

Once again, TV Cabo appears to be abusing its near monopoly position.

Eurosport is showing the Shanghai classic snooker tournament - hardly a mainstream Portuguese sport. During the interval between frames, Eurosport showed just enough adverts. Then a flash of snooker and a new, low-definition logo saying "Eurosport - publicidade". Then a long advert for Sport TV, the logo again, and back to the snooker mid-frame.

Who are the TV Cabo directors trying to kid? It was an amateurish stunt, surely without Eurosport's knowledge, pulled by someone who thinks they are untouchable. Totally unacceptable, in my view, but TV Cabo is the only TV supplier available to me...

No surprise then that one of Henrique Grenadeiro's dirty tricks during the PT takeover battle was to strip TV Cabo out of PTM. No point handing such power over to Sonae, is there.

Out of the Box

After years of resistance, I finally gave in to temptation and joined the "more money than sense" community of TV Cabo powerbox users this weekend. The girl in the TV Cabo shop was very efficient, but I was appalled to see her copying personal data off a computer screen onto a pre-printed triplicate form so that physically sign it and then take away the duplicate copy. The form would then have to be input to the system, so why not let her do that part up front and then just print one off for me to sign? PT Group, don't you just love it!

I rushed the box home and set it up in time to see England beat the Welsh at rugby (hurrah), but from there onwards it's not been a good weekend. Porto's feeble effort in losing to SCP, failure to stay awake to watch the Grand Prix and then a dismal match between Aston Villa and Liverpool left me wondering if the 24 euros per month for the next 12 months will be a good investment. At least the Ferrari that won the GP was not driven by Schumacher. Looks like it will be a good season there at least.