Did Anyone Notice?

[jtwex]

Some how I dont know if this is not some huge standoff with comcast to see who blinks first.

Nail on head here, Stone, as a buddy of mine is high up the food chain with Comcast & that is their little game being played. Making the claimed "Leader in Sports" sweat this out with ridiculous pricing is funny when they themselves were using similar arguments over the NFL channel.

 

[Jhon69]

Did anyone notice that DirecTV dropped Universal Sports (which replaced Versus) on October 1st?

I don't think anyone did as I have not seen any mentions of the channel being dropped online.

But overnight I did get an email from someone at Universal Sports asking for people to contact DirecTV to bring it back.

I have a feeling DirecTV won't be getting too many phone calls over that one.

First DirecTV did not offer Universal Sports as a replacement for Versus if you used your remote to highlight channel 604(Universal Sports) it told you that DirecTV was only providing that channel for xx amount of days(I forgot how many).
Versus channel 603 is still in the DirecTV guide.

 

[Big Dawg 23]

I tried watching the channel, however SD on my 37" looks like garbage. If it is not HD I usually don't watch it. I would watch ESPNU more but its hard in SD. Luckily HD will be in a early 2010.

 

[susanandmark]

I think most markets do as well.

Universal Sports is available in only 38 markets over the air. So hardly "most."

 

[sportsfan42]

Universal sports I dont see as a long term channel. It plays the same olympic cover over and over again. Honestly I be surprised if it not on anything more then temporarly during big events like the olympics for additonal coverage.

And no I can compare channel loses as we moved 1 channel out of people's packages and espn classic move has been a top call trend all month of september. ( which is amazing considering it competing with nfl st calls )

We dropped it not because of the channel drop but basically I was paying $12.99 a month which will pay for half of my ST for basically 1 channel. Almost everything was blacked out and I didn't need to watch the same thing on 100 FSNs. I figured I would lose more when letting the Sports Pack go but I didn't really give up anything, I was just too dumb to realize I was getting #$%#@#%$%!. ESPNU was bigger for me than Versus, cagefighting is good but I like football and college bball better.

 

[Dog6869]

Yes I did Scott last Friday Night was when the channel ended
I called D* the CSR told me the channel was only added so we could watch the Vuelta a Espana and then D* was shuttting it down..

 

[Jimbo]

Actually, the online feed is NOT the same as the TV (not always) and we live in the country so we don't have great Internet speed available. It's slow DSL (1.5 to 2 MB ... on a great day), so watching TV online is pretty impossible for me ... Not that I even WANT to watch TV online. I want to watch TV on TV and, in the case of Universal Sports, I want to record it.

You do know, you can watch the NFL, NHL, MLB and just about any other sport online, right? So, does that make it OK if they're pulled off the air (TV-wise)? And you can watch a lot of the prime shows on Hulu, so it's OK if DirecTV drops the networks, right? Obviously, that's ridiculous, but it's the same theory.

And, PS, a LOT of people who have DirecTV, have it for the same reason we first got it ... Cable wasn't/isn't available in their area. That was DirecTV's first major market. So, I'm hardly the only one in this boat.

Again, just because a channel isn't important to you, doesn't mean it isn't important.

Hey Susan & Mark,
Where did Scott or anyone else say that it was not nessasary or not needed ?

 

[Tony1097]

yeah I knew that Universal Sports was going away Oct 1, the same day the NHL season started so I figured it was there just to hold us over until Versus returned in all it's glory

 

[Mike0616]

Because we live in a so-called "white area," more than 65 miles from our "locals" so we couldn't get a signal even with our own tower.

Then move! :devil:

There are loads of folks that receive their OTA channels at distances in excess of that. It takes a proper tower, a high-quality antenna, and in most cases, a rotor. We have been looking at moving from this metro area to an area where the locals are quite some distance away and it has shocked me just how good some of the setups I have seen are. I have an OTA setup here to pick up all the channels that D* does NOT carry, but did it years ago when HD was being introduced. BTW, the areas we are looking at do not have the "locals" offered by D*, but since the SD versions are available, being able to get them OTA will be a deal-breaker for me.

 

[stonecold]

I will say that i tend to live 6- to 70 miles away from my towers and i get all kinds of channels. I just have a high quality antenna and I really did not spend much on it at all. less them 80 bucks.

 

[bryan_j_t]

I'm sure that there are far more people upset about missing espn classic compared to VS right now..

For me, I like to watch the Bruins, but I'm not going to be upset about missing a game on VS once a month or however often they are on..

come playoff time, im sure that there will be more complaints about VS not being on, if they haven't reached a deal, compared to the amount of people missing ESPN classic now

 

[bobj2004]

I get Universal Sports on my Local NBCs local digital sub channel for free over the air.

I do not watch the channel as its all reruns so I removed it from my channel list.

I wish they would add there local Weather Channel back or something better like Retro TV.

 

[paulman182]

There are loads of folks that receive their OTA channels at distances in excess of that. It takes a proper tower, a high-quality antenna, and in most cases, a rotor. .

And in my area, a couple thousand feet of feedline and rotor wire, someone to clear a road to the hilltop, and an ATV to get it all up there.

 

[Mike0616]

And in my area, a couple thousand feet of feedline and rotor wire, someone to clear a road to the hilltop, and an ATV to get it all up there.

and having driven through that area quite a lot, have seen that lots of people have taken that approach. Lots of serious fans there who are not going to miss UK basketball, no matter what it takes.