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

[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.