Television Relocation

[bjarvis]

We've had Bell ExpressVu, the Canadian direct TV satellite service, for years but we had the receiver attached to the main television in the living room. Not a bad thing except that Kent tends to monopolize that set. There are a number of shows from Canada I'd prefer to see rather than the local cable offerings, especially the National, the 10 PM CBC news program.

After some effort and re-threading of cables, we've moved the Bell receiver to the basement TV in line-of-site from my computer room. Kent can watch the drek he prefers upstairs while I expand my knowledge with life-enriching programming from the Dominion of Canada. Or, as Kent tells it, I can now watch "The Simpsons" from five different time zones instead of being restricted to EST.

And I can make my sci-fi friends jealous by watching the new "Dr. Who" series from broadcast instead of downloaded bitstreams from the Internet. :-)

Now to ditch Comcast entirely to go with DirectTV...

Comments

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

It's too bad the US bought Peter Jennings rather than Peter Mansbridge. :-) Is he still going strong?

And the legalities of satellite TV have always been an amusing sideshow, with millions of Canadians bootlegging into US services (illegal in Canada for lack of required CanCon.) By reciprocity I suppose Expressvu ought to be illegal in the US. Snort. :-)

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

Yup, Peter is still chugging along, albeit with considerably less hair than the photo you included. :-)

It's such a pleasant change to listen to Radio Canada news in French, and to get regional updates from the Maritimes, prairies, the west and the extreme north. I was following terribly behind in the happenings of metropolitan Iqaluit (light snows in their weather forecast for today, btw).

I just can't figure why CBC, CTV, Global and others aren't carried on US satellite services. The rules and regs seem designed to annoy customers more than anything else.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Directv ran Newsworld on its lineup for awhile, but then replaced it will Al Gore's Current. (see http://mhking.mu.nu/archives/074153.php) The long split is mostly because of Canadian cultural regulation -- Canadian companies can't advertise on non-Canadian media, so they live in a walled garden and have difficulty breaking into a much larger market. The BBC has succeeded fairly well at going global, which tends to stomp smaller Commonwealth countries' efforts in the area. In the long run I expect good programming will be available regardless of where produced.