The HD Corner – Random Thoughts

Some random HD thoughts:

CBC’s ratings pretty much sucked for the Thursday opening night games. William Houston notes that strict competition from Thursday night’s Prime Time lineup, such as Grey’s Anatomy and Survivor, were likely were mitigating factors for the viewership numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I like Dr. Meredith Grey as much as the next guy (she looked way better five years ago in Old School by the way), but how can you not tune in to watch the Battle of Ontario? I’m sure tonight’s numbers will be back to normal for a classic Habs – Leafs matchup. Let’s hope so, or the media buyer for the Tim Hortons account might pull the plug on airing the new “brother – goalie” commercial if ratings don’t improve quickly.

This being my first year of hockey watching with a Bell ExpressVu HD receiver, I was hoping to be able to watch the random games shown on HDNet this season. Unfortunately this was not the case, at least for Wednesday’s Panthers – Rangers barn burner, which wasn’t available to regular HD subscribers. Chances are it was only shown on HDNet in the U.S. It appears this is a similar case to how Versus (aka OLN) games are only available in the U.S., unless of course you have forked over the 200 bones for the Centre Ice Package. If HDNet does eventually show games in Canada, as opposed to HD Josh Tesh concerts, you will be the first to know.

The aforementioned Panthers – Rangers game was in fact shown on one of the four Centre Ice HD channels available on ExpressVu, so it wasn’t a total loss. And yes, Ville Peltonen does scare me in HD. To my knowledge Centre Ice HD channels are not offered to Shaw subscribers, so chalk another one up in the ExpressVu column.

Finally, I caught Harry Neale’s Buffalo Sabres debut last night during MSG’s broadcast of the Sabres home opener against Mr. Hillary Duff’s Isles. It was a foregone conclusion that Neale would do his usual schtick of “he’s really trying to bleed to get that extra two minutes added to that high-sticking penalty”. It’s OK Harry, I still love you.