Canada service in US

[Kevin Vahey <crimson@channel1.com>]

In the past couple of years I have "helped" several local watering holes
in getting setup with the Bell/ExpressVu service. Simply the key is to
have a postal drop with an address in Canada and just pay everything up
front with a credit card.

All my "customers" would prefer dealing with a US based company but no one
offers the amount of soccer matches from Europe the way they are available
on services such as TSN, CTV Sportsnet and Headline Sports. Quite simply
this is the only way that these locations can obtain the matches the
customers want and in the Boston area there is great demand.

One thing about CBC's C Band service always baffled me. CBC offered 3
feeds on C Band in the clear ( Montreal, Northern (from Yellowknive) and
West ( from Vancouver) but the main feed from Toronto has never been
available. The Montreal service is run almost as an afterthought to CBFT
and to say the least local cut ins are handled in a sloppy manner. You can
see this on hockey games when segments like "Coach's Corner" are sponsored
by Bell but in Quebec someone else does, but you always see the first
second of the Toronto ad before Montreal breaks away. 

The French C band went digital nearly 2 years ago.

 




On Sat, 30 Sep 2000, Garrett Wollman wrote:

> <<On Sat, 30 Sep 2000 12:07:57 -0400 (EDT), Sven Franklyn Weil <sven@gordsven.com> said:
> 
> > Interesting...does anyone in Canada own any of the required recepetion
> > and decoding equipment to pick up these digital signals?
> 
> Sure.  Bell ExpressVu costs peanuts a month and includes all of the
> major networks in both languages and most timezones.  There is a
> competing DBS service whose name I'm blanking on at the moment which
> also carries those services.  (DBS lineups, as with wireline cable,
> are regulated by the CRTC.)
> 
> If you know the right people, it's possible to get one or both of
> these systems in the U.S. (presumably what Larry meant by ``gray
> market'').  With the Canadian dollar at near-record lows, it's
> possible to get every single service available in Canada for less than
> many people pay in the U.S. for basic cable.  (However, the satellite
> footprints are engineered to favor Canada, so only people in the
> northern tier of states can receive the signals on a consumer 50-cm
> dish.)
> 
> -GAWollman
> 
>