Giro d'Italia for cycling fans

dendavis

Pub Member / Supporter
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Lifetime Supporter
Oct 10, 2003
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Metro Denver
For those fans of cycling, the Giro d'Italia is something that can only be enjoyed on Sunday broadcasts of the week's highlights, on Versus. However, for a minimal fee, and if your dish gets 119, you can sign up for a one month subscription to RAI, the Italian station, which broadcasts the actual race, daily. I signed up today for $9.95. When the event is over, I will cancel for a $5 fee, but, for daily coverage, it is worth it. The signup can be done from the DISH Network website, but the cancellation must be done over the phone with a CSR.
 
Or if you're too cheap you can always just get the weekend 2 hour set of highlights on Versus at, I believe, 5pm Easter / 2pm Pacific.

I miss the days when they used to do complete coverage of all three Grand Tours. Oh well... at least I'm hopeful for HD coverage of the Tour de France.
 
Is the second audio in English?

Not that I can figure out. I did the "preferences-8-4" drill, the 622 is set on English. Unless I am missing some other trick, though. Sometimes when watching a British production I have to put on closed captioning if the Cockney is too heavy:)

Also, the RAI program guide only loads out to about two days ahead, this after I did a check switch to get a programming download. So I am hoping it will keeping adding the cycling as the program shows up on the guide, having set it as a Pass.
 
It's not looking good for Giro coverage from RIA (600). The only thing that I see in the future regarding Giro or ciclismo is todays Preshow. I'm kinda bummed out on this one. I did find out that coverage can be found on Universal Sports website. That seems to be the best option for us folks in the USA.
 
Agree. . Oh, well, at least we get it, although it was fun listening to the Italian announcers. Of course, one could never tell if they were as colorful as Phil Liggett, after all, how does one say "throwing the cat among the pigeons" in Italian?:)
 
I just checked RAI (channel 600) and it seems like they are broadcasting the Giro (except Saturday). The Universal web coverage was good but it is going to be a lot nicer to watch it on the DVR.
 
I just checked RAI (channel 600) and it seems like they are broadcasting the Giro (except Saturday). The Universal web coverage was good but it is going to be a lot nicer to watch it on the DVR.

Found it too, but no thanks to the program guide. Strange that both Universal and RAI on screen guides lack this information.
 
In Los Angeles, Universal Sports is a free, over the air digital sub-channel of the local NBC affiliate. It's digital channel 4-04. It's not showing up correctly in the program guide, but it did air multiple times today. Fewer commercials than Versus and their Tour de France coverage but they also lack Phil and Paul. Amazing what a difference they make and you don't realize how much you miss them until they're not there.

I wish Dish had Universal Sports HD. It's a great channel. Probably the closest thing we've got to a real life "The Ocho".
 
In Los Angeles, Universal Sports is a free, over the air digital sub-channel of the local NBC affiliate. It's digital channel 4-04. It's not showing up correctly in the program guide, but it did air multiple times today.

My guess is that if you live in one of the 50 largest DMAs you've got a 50% chance of your NBC affiliate broadcasting Universal Sports on a subchannel. In the SF Bay area it's 11-3. In Las Vegas it's 3-3.

I checked the schedule, they have a two hour show from 9AM to noon (west coast) every day of the Tour.
 
In Los Angeles, Universal Sports is a free, over the air digital sub-channel of the local NBC affiliate. It's digital channel 4-04. It's not showing up correctly in the program guide, but it did air multiple times today. Fewer commercials than Versus and their Tour de France coverage but they also lack Phil and Paul. Amazing what a difference they make and you don't realize how much you miss them until they're not there.

I wish Dish had Universal Sports HD. It's a great channel. Probably the closest thing we've got to a real life "The Ocho".

Universal Sports was a great place to see additional Olympics coverage last summer. One can get a lot of cycling coverage, sometimes more than one expects, but, still, it is a good source.
 
They had all of the FIS World Cup skiing events, I think almost all of the World Cup long track speed skating, bobsled, luge, ski jumping, cross-country skiing, etc. If it was a winter sport, they had it.

Best thing I actually saw on Universal Sports was a raw feed of the US National Figure Skating Championships. No announcers, no interviews, etc. Just a raw feed of the event showing all of the skaters. It was quite nice.

Pretty cool channel... just wish there was an HD version of it on Dish. Now that would be sweet.
 
Yeah the Giro has been on our local USN affiliate, WTHR 13-3, quite a bit, so that's another way to get some free daily coverage.
Honestly I doubted they'd do much with USN, but I'm pleasantly surprised how many sports aren't locked up in ESPN or FOX vaults.
The compression on USN is pretty bad though, at least OTA on WTHR. It's already the second SD subchannel competing with NBC HD 1080i 13-1, and I don't know whether the fast action sequences just make it more obvious but it seems more bit-starved than 13-2, the SkyTrak Weather Network.
 
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