NCAA Football and Basketball on BEV

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I may be looking at BEV to replace Videotron when my contract ends in 2 months. One of the key reasons for the move is access to College Football and basketball.

I read through this thread:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=69640&highlight=college+football&page=6

and noticed a lot of unsatisfied customers with the package. I did not see much related to college basketball.

I'd appreciate it if anyone who had the college sports package would give their satisfaction level with the selected and broadcasted games. I care more about football, but also enjoy basketball, so comments on the programming for both would be appreciated.

Many thanks.
 
With basketball it's hard to tell for sure because there's games almost every day, but as far as I can tell they've shown pretty close to 100% of the ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU games, and a pretty good dose of regional ESPNplus games (mostly Big East and Big 12).
And the HD feeds have been picked up when available.

I think the issues during football season were related to transponders being shared with other higher profile packages (NHL, MLB) and the NCAA package would get the short end of the stick when there was a schedule conflict. The transponder shuffle in December seems to have straightened that out as far as conflicts with the NHL goes. I see that the 2 NCAA HD channels have transponder 23 to themselves right now. Hopefully it stays that way, because in 2006 when they didn't have the conflicts the schedule was very good (again, close to 100% of games from the ESPN family of networks.)
 
Also there is no guide for the season on the bell.ca web site for that package...ypou can only know which game will be playing according to the electric programming guide. When I was at EV agents didn't had information about upcomming games, they could only go see in the daily programming guie of the bell.ca

Since that package is much less popular than NHL Center Ice or NFL Sunday ticket lots of agents don't know about that package.
 
But you can make a pretty good guess by going to espn.com and checking their schedule.
 
The NCAA packages is one of the reasons I won't be going back to Shaw anytime soon.

Football: You'll see games you won't see anywhere else, with a good helping in HD. I'd agree that not all the ESPN HD games were shown, but certainly a good chunk, and if they get their satellite stuff figured out, it should be better next year. They also have a highlight game in HD on Saturday nights in fall. Plus, you get every imaginable bowl game. For instance, they had 2 Hawaii games late in the season which determined their undefeated season and trip to the BCS (which is another story altogether). Although they were on late, I would record them and watch them Sunday morning before the NFL games.

Basketball: Games almost everyday. Typically one a night in HD. They had the UNC / Duke game w/o annoying Score HD multiple tickers - No Simsub!!

For $99 this is a bargain IMHO.

Mark
 
Thanks to all of you for the comments. That certainly makes ExpressVu a much better alternative right now. Outside of movie channels, College football and basketball are the only programming I care a lot about. And I'm certainly not getting much satisfaction with Videotron in that regards.


Thanks again.
 
Ive been quite pleased with BEV NCAA stuff, whatever ESPN does bell will surely pick up, and as far as HD whatever ESPN is doing BEV picks up, ESPN does only have the 2 HD channels ESPN and ESPN2 both HD, ive seen plenty of HD this basketball season, but just seeing CBB is the important thing. The Score, Sporstnet and CBS will be covering all the Tourney stuff, With the addition of the scorehd and sportsnet 2 HD channels, it will be interesting how they handle the brodcasts, will we see 4 different CBS hd games or just one on 4 channels? Time will tell.
 
I agree with most of the comments, the coverage is not 100% and could be better if they iron out the programming and transponder kinks. For $99.00 it is a bargain and not available anywhere else. Baal is very knowledgeable on what is going to be shown each week and is also active in lobbying BEV to get ther act together with regard to this package. At the beginning of the NCAA football season we were getting games but of sub standard ESPN Gameplan quality, ie MAC Conf USA etc and we both lobbied BEV to pick up the ESPN/ESPN2 games which is SEC, Big 10 BIg East etc more upscale market games. If they follow this advice next season we would have the coverage we expected from the 2006 season.
 
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