I wonder if Directv will make the substitution of Universal Sports for Versus permanent. US is currently scheduled only to the end of the month.
Personally I would welcome it, I’m sick of the Versus crew. The lower key, more informative and accurate US was a breath of fresh air.
I’m probably going to switch to Comcast witch has both Versus and Universal Sports. I like that US has more triathlons including ITU but how am I supposed to watch bull riding now?
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time warner cable has both right now and i hope it stays that way, i like VS for TDF and the spring classics but the tri coverage on Uinversal with ITU and for the IM’s (CdA and China so far) has been much better than what I saw on VS in the past
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For now, it’s nice, but I will be very cranky if they don’t resolve the issues come NHL playoff time.
For those that watch Universal Sports on cable or DirecTv: How is the picture quality compared to Versus?
I can get Universal Sports on a digital subchannel 39.3 but apparently subchannels don’t have as much bandwidth allocated as the main NBC channel 39.1. So Universal Sports looks like a grainy internet video expanded to fill the TV screen. I thought it was just the European cycling video feeds at first but all the shows look like that.
It wasn’t HD but if you sit far enough away you can’t tell 
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For those that watch Universal Sports on cable or DirecTv: How is the picture quality compared to Versus?
I can get Universal Sports on a digital subchannel 39.3 but apparently subchannels don’t have as much bandwidth allocated as the main NBC channel 39.1. So Universal Sports looks like a grainy internet video expanded to fill the TV screen. I thought it was just the European cycling video feeds at first but all the shows look like that.
The quality on cable is dependent on you local cable company. Before Versus went hi def, it did not look too good either on satellite, about the same quality as Universal over the air.
Aside from hockey season, I enjoy Universal much more than versus.
However, at least with comcast in Chicago, only versus comes in on HD.
So unfortunately, that makes for alot more watching great looking bull riding than shitty looking ironmans.
I have DirecTv but have always received Universal Sports OTA (4-3 in the DC area). Picture quality is fantastic.
As noted it would be tough losing VS come hockey time.
I’ve got Direct TV. I thought the commentators for the Vuelta on Universal were pretty good. They don’t have the flair of Phil and Paul but they were knowledgable and not distracting or annoying. The content on Universal is almost all Olympic type sports while VS is 80% redneck with a few team sports and endurance sports sprinkled in. Universal icovering cycling worlds is nice and they’re even supposed to be having some euro cross. The big thing is VS still has the Tour rights. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Count me in on the hockey withdrawal from Versus. That said, I’d call the recent switch on DirecTV a fair trade.