Free Centre ice Preview

whoo hoo, get to see a few out of market games, maybe see Heatley fall flat on his face in SJ (doubt it though)

CCgotITcovered wrote:any news on Rogers's offering the same

I can't remember 100% but I'm pretty sure they've done something similar in the past

Rogers is giving two free months if you sign up for a year.

wprager wrote:

strachattack wrote:I ordered the Super Sports Pak from Rogers a few days ago. They had a deal giving two free months but you have to commit to the full year. It's not worth it for me because I always cancel the service once the Playoffs start. I used to be able to order NHL Centre Ice on it's own but they no longer offer it alone. You have to purchase the full sports package. I used to get a few dollars off per month too because of the bundle deal but they no longer offer that either. I was dissapointed but I have no choice living in Toronto.

NHL CI is not HD, is it? There are three things I would need before I order any more sports: 1-more money; 2-HD content, 3-more time to watch it all. #3 is pretty close to an impossibility at the moment, and #2 will probably take a few more years, which should give me time to tackle #1.

#1 would be a good thing at any point, not necessarily just for sports
#2 isn't realistically happening (on Bell, anyhow) - to fit more HD on the same bandwidth, they'll just have to compress more, so what's the point?

Streaming the games on the net while pretending to do other work is workable for me...

I can't comment about BEV, but with Rogers I get OMNI-HD and (I think) even a second OMNI2-HD. No reason for those two to be in HD. None at all. Then there's Treasure, Oasis and some other "specialty" channel. They had them on free preview and they were about as useful as that high-def loop they play on their TVs at The Bay. Pretty to look at but, seriously, why bother? And with sim-subbing there's usually a lot of overlap going on. If they had dynamic compression (that is, compressing as much as needed to fit the available -- but variable -- content into the fixed amount of b/w) then you could squeeze even more.

Now, with cable, they can regain a lot of the b/w by getting rid of analog. It's probably going to take a few more years, though. The other boost would come from MPEG-4 compression. I don't know if satellite (BEV in particular) are using MPEG-4 yet, but I would guess it's not used everywhere yet. That should give them additional room for more HD content.

Bottom line, do any of use, really, want or need more HD channels, or just a better allocation of HD technology to deserving sources?