Not sure how many people are aware of the weekly news show "Badminton Unlimited" on BWF's YouTube channel. I think it is an excellent show that all badminton fans would like to watch. BWF should promote the show better on their website and during tournament broadcasts. A new show usually shows up every Friday. Although last Friday's show hasn't shown up yet. Nevertheless, there are already 14 of them and they do pack a lot of interesting information. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7ZcagI0frDFe7Lo4_8IK2eIJWanQY3E
I would prefer subtitles to voicing over. Most of their interviewees are non-English speakers, and I don't think they are doing a particularly great job in translation. Better to let at least part of the viewers hear what they really want to say.
Episode 15 is now up. In this episode are Mark Zweikler, Singapore Open highlights, a Danish badminton club, and Srikanth.
I am shown for a few seconds in Episode 10 when they do the US team I am the service judge to that finals match at the US Open haha
This is a great effort in part of BWF/ING. It is a lot of work to produce a weekly video magazine like this, esp when each one is almost 25 mins long. There need to be a lot of research work done, as well as a huge production team travelling to various location in the world to interview the players and produce interesting material. To be honest though, I didn't start watching it until last night when I had a long overnight drive home from out of town. Badminton Unlimited was the perfect companion to the drive because it was sufficient to just listen to the audio with all the interviews and narration. It was interesting to learn about LXR and Marc and Arvin, etc while I drive. And it kept me awake until 3.30am. I do believe that in general, the issue is that each of the episodes are too long. It is ok if they are showing it on TV, but with short youtube attention span that most of the online population has, breaking down the video into <10min segment would keep viewers interested as well as getting more opportunity to generate more revenue for BWF/ING.
They upload it to Youtube almost a week later .. I watched the one that they uploaded today last Tuesday on TV. Here in India, the new episode broadcasts every Tuesday. In India, they broadcast it in English as well as in the regional language, Hindi.
You can see in many episodes that few professional players use different rackets in their training sessions than in real matches. Tago used Z-Force, JOJ used N90 and Mohammad Ahsan used Z-Speed.
I thought this got canceled. But they just released 5 episodes to make up for the lost time. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA7ZcagI0frBYjkhTY6X7oQRTNWUrtVJR
Agreed on the voice-overs. I wonder if they find it's easier to adapt to broadcasting not in English. After all, if you ran the show in another language, you would likely replace the narration anyway. Still, I think subtitles would be easier to translate as well and I'd definitely like to hear the players speak.
I prefer to listening players voice... because I am non-English speaker So It is tantalizing to hear English voice instead of my native language!!! I want to hear 'own words' players from my countries.... and I can do it for players voice
I know they do I great job, but they sometimes are a random with their weekly uploads. For example today they released episode : 66,67,68,69 and 70 all in one day!!!
First of all, I think it’s very good to have a weekly magazine on badminton at all, and it’s great that it has access to so many top players and officials involved in international badminton. After having watched every episode of Badminton Unlimited and its predecessor Badminton World over the past few years, I do have to say, however, that the magazine seems far from reaching its full potential. Here are the reasons for my judgment: 1) The magazine includes a lot of content that seems quite irrelevant. Take the quickfire for example. I understand that the magazine wants to show more of a personal profile of the players, but questions like “your first car” seem to be very awkward: In my view, this neither tells us anything about the player’s personality, nor is there a connection to badminton. Why not put more questions regarding e.g. playing style, tactics, what life is like for an ever-travelling professional player, how certain players managed to get back up in the ranking after injury? There are too few of such questions. 2) Every episode has more or less the same structure; there are hardly any new conceptual ideas (and therefore, sorry to say that, the magazine seems to me rather “limited” than “unlimited”). Why not – for example – have some episodes that deal with a different shot each time, starting with the clear, talking about body movement (footwork, arm rotation), common wrong technique and how to improve it. When this is over, have a new topic for the next couple of episodes, e.g. recommendations how to deal with certain playing styles of opponents. The sport seems to be unlimited to me, but the magazine seems to be too limited! 3) At times, I miss a more distinctive view. For example, whenever it is about badminton in a country that is rather unknown in the international badminton scene, it ends with something like “this country may soon be among the top in the world”. However, I do not see enough support for such a statement. Motivation of players and coaches is not enough. More criteria need to be met. So why not talk about this? What are the differences between development of badminton in countries with top-ranked players and those whose players have a rather low ranking? This could lead to a fruitful discussion and eventually improve badminton in many countries. 4) The magazine seems to deal only with the bright sides of the sport, which is another reason why I would call it rather “limited” than “unlimited”. For example, before Lee Chong Wei was banned, he was on Badminton Unlimited in almost every episode. Then suddenly, when he was banned, you could hardly find anything about him until the ban was over. Of course, there were no matches of Lee Chong Wei to report about. But why not report about the reason for the ban, not to mention a comment on it? Lee Chong Wei only slowly returned to Badminton Unlimited after the ban was over. In my view, it’s imperative that the BWF addresses also the dark sides of the sport, otherwise the BWF can’t be taken seriously. And if the BWF can’t be taken seriously, how could it promote badminton to get more attention? Okay, I guess I will get some bashing for this, but I needed to say it.
