Fox Sports Dropped By Nps

[Diamond Jim]

As of December 31, 2004 NPS (National Programming Service) will drop FOX SPORTS NET from their 4DTV digital package due to lack of interest. At this time there are approximately 10,000 subscribers to the service and NPS is not receiving enough revenue (I can understand that at $126.00 per 6 months) to justify uplink and transponder fees. Since no other service has FOX SPORTS NET this means that they will no longer be available on C band.

Now, my pesonnal opinion: I have subscribed to FOX SPORTS NET for over a year. I believe that the service is not worth the amount of money that they are asking. A) You have to subscribe to every channel no matter what region you are in, you can not subscribe to separate channels, B) MLB, NHL (when there was such a thing), NBA are blacked out on the channels that are not in your region. Which means you pay for 'em, but you can't watch 'em, C) the only good progamming is the "live" games, all other time slots are filled with constant reruns of infomericals, Best Damn Sports Show In Town, The Sports List (I will miss looking at Summer Sanders ), game replays and I Max. D) On the plus side, all college sports are broadcast in the clear, the downside you can have 8 or 10 regional channels doing the same game.

I did not intend to renew my subscription because of the above reasons plus I have found that most of the FOX SPORTS NET "live" games can be found on C, Ku Band and DVB.

I would like to hear some feed back from any of the other 9,999 subscribers.

 

[charper1]

I also find it VERY easy to find backhauls or feeds of most of what the charge an arm and a leg for.

 

[Mr Tony]

very true
On a typical night, you can find 5-6 games...weekends are endless the number of games. And this is just with KU band. Jim, since you have C-Band, you have alot more options that I do.
Latelly, first thing I do is scan SBS6...whiole thats scanning, I flip through the channels on the analog (same polarity) and see whats on there. Thats how I've been finding college hockey games.

I know this is kinda OT, but if you had it mostly for college sports, you can usually find them for free

 

[Diamond Jim]

The main reason I got it was for NHL games. I would stay away from the morning paper and SportsCenter and watch the replays in the afternoon. That would avoid conflict with the wife in the evenings. Now that there is no NHL, it doesn't matter. Also I will miss the Cub games on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday because they were always on Fox Sports Chicago with the remainder of the weeks games on WGN.

One thing I failed to mentioned last night about the black outs was that it was kinda strange. Some of Fox Sports are on AMC 4, they let the games (MLB, NBA, NHL) through from all regions about 85% of the time, the others on AMC 1, they were blacked out 85% of the time. Another odd thing was that games would be blacked out on AMC 1, but they had three overflow stations, for what reasons, I do not know. But you could go to any regional channel, if the game would be blacked out, then go to any of the overflows and 9 times out of 10 the game would be in the clear, go figure.

It is a rarity to find any type of professional game in the clear, but in the words of Jerry Garcia, "I will survive."

 

[mkm4]

As of December 31, 2005

December 31, 2004

 

[Diamond Jim]

December 31, 2004

Sorry, correction has been made. Thanks.

 

[rjc3895]

Ok. I realize that I must find a way to justify (to my wife) the expense for getting a receiver with blind scan. In the meantime, are there any particular SR numbers that usually show the sports feeds. I don't mind manually scanning the frequency ranges, but there is no way I can do that with the SR. (Oh how I hope to win that Fortec! )

 

[Diamond Jim]

I really don't know it the SRs follow any pattern for certain categories of programming, but I do know know that channels will lease a certian TP and use the same FR and SR for an entire season. For example, North Dakota Fighting Sioux Network has been on G3, 12000, 4800 for the last 2 seasons

 

[Mr Tony]

I really don't know it the SRs follow any pattern for certain categories of programming, but I do know know that channels will lease a certian TP and use the same FR and SR for an entire season. For example, North Dakota Fighting Sioux Network has been on G3, 12000, 4800 for the last 2 seasons

JIm
last year they were at 12041 H 4880

(and a MUCH better signal quality)

 

[Diamond Jim]

last year they were at 12041 H 4880

I might be wrong, but I could have swore that I left it programed in from last year and it locked right on this year. I can't remember.

 

[rjc3895]

Thanks.
I'll start keeping track of the Symbo Rates that have quality signals.