Options for watching Winter Olympics?

January 15, 2006 2:59 PM

What are my options for watching the 2006 Winter Olympics on television? I live in the northwest US and have cable, which carries the NBC channels, but I really don't want to watch their fragmented, melodramatic coverage. I'm open to getting a satellite system.
posted by neuron to media & arts (6 comments total)

How close to the Canadian border? Any chance of getting the CBC by antenna?
posted by gavia at 3:25 PM on January 15, 2006

I live in Seattle and always watch it on the CBC (Comcast cable). You'll get tons of curling that way.
posted by matildaben at 4:21 PM on January 15, 2006

If you can get CBC, absolutely switch to that. It'll be your last chance to catch their fine coverage of the Winter Olympics (the Canadian television rights were bought by CTV for Vancouver 2010—goodbye Ron and Brian, hello... Rod Black *shudder*). Though NBC has been better about not showing only American athletes and events, the CBC has far more complete coverage, and will very likely show more events live as well. The only thing you'll miss out on are smaller sports (though often they will be included in highlights packages) and prelim matches/runs (those are often shown on cable channels while the CBC runs the marquee events; I don't know what the quality of the secondary American coverage is like, but it's probably competent).
posted by chrominance at 4:31 PM on January 15, 2006

CBC if you can, although the NBC coverage on MSNBC and CNBC isn't bad (based on their Summer Olympics coverage). If you watch the MSNBC/CNBC coverage, you'll see bits of it in the "prime time" NBC coverage.

Ideal would be the CBC Satellite feed in addition to the broadcast, but I don't think that's available through DirecTV/Dish.
posted by jlkr at 4:57 PM on January 15, 2006

Get a TiVo and fast-forward through the melodrama. Also, figure skating at double-speed has got to be more exciting.
posted by mai at 1:27 PM on January 16, 2006

I'm gonna post this as a new question, but thought I'd add it here in case anyone is still viewing this thread on Feb 10th. I too live in Seattle and much prefer the Canadian coverage (less America-centric and therefore covers the more interesting competitions like Finland versus Italy cross country skiing). But I want to know the best strategy for TiVo without winding up with hours and hours of things I'm not interested in while still recording all my other favorite shows.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:31 PM on February 10, 2006