Welcome to the new year fellow geeks! Hope you made it through with most of your fingers and toes. Of course if you didn't hurt yourself with fireworks, I can imagine a lot of you SkyCable subscribers (legal or otherwise) are still hurting from the recent loss of the Solar Entertainment Channels, which has become quite a source of geeky traffic in recent weeks.
Now that the dust has settled, let's see what we're left with and what our options are...
Well, the new channels are pretty much out and here's what things look like initially:
- Balls (Channel 34) - This is their sports channel and rough replacement for Solar Sports. It's available to all subscribers.
- AXN Beyond< (Channel 35) - This is another AXN-derived channel that tends to focus more on science fiction and fantasy shows like Supernatural and such. It's trying to address the sci-fi shows normally shown on Crime and Suspense. This channel is available to all subscribers.
- KidsCo (Channel 38) - Previously announced as part of their free line-up, KidsCo is apparently for SkyCable Gold users and up and is pretty much just another kiddie channel.
- FoxCrime - (Channel 50) - This channel is pretty much filled with crime shows and documentaries like Law and Order so in case you're hurting for that side of the Crime and Suspense programming, then this is the place to go. It's free for all SkyCable subscribers.
- Maxxx (Channel 51) - This is their current attempt at being the butchest channel on the block. It's mostly daredevil reality shows with some wrestling-type action thrown in. Imagine JackTV without the Comedy Central programming (which is what I enjoy a whole lot more) and you get this. It's free for all subscribers.
- Velvet (Channel 53) - This is a hodge-podge of the kinds of shows you're normally see on ETC and ETC 2nd Avenue like re-runs of older seasons of America's Next Top Model and weird reality TV shows like Gay, Straight or Taken. Oh, and instead of getting NBC news programming, you get fluffier ABC news shows and *gasps* THE VIEW! Oh the horror...still, it's free for everyone if you're into that sort of thing.
Of course they're not perfect replacements, but it's a start I guess. I can imagine both Solar and SkyCable are hurting because of this change in arrangements, although I don't see hordes of people leaving SkyCable just yet.
They've also done a lot of channel shuffling in their line-up. The Disney Channel is now free for everyone and can be found on Channel 47. At the same time, The Lifestyle Network has moved to Channel 52 to be closer to Velvet.
Solar seems to have made drastic changes and started offering a lot of their programming on local UHF channels. A lot of Crime and Suspense shows are now on RPN 9 (Channel 14). ETC shows are now the main component of SBN 21 (Channel 16) and ETC 2nd Avenue shows have pretty much replaced RJTV 29 (Channel 19).
You can visit the SkyCable homepage for a complete list of their new line-up. And for all those sports fans, SkyCable tried to present alternatives in terms of locating all your favorite basketball and wrestling shows on local channels like ABC 5 (Channel 10) or on their current sports channels ESPN and Star Sports.
Yeah, I know, they're pretty sucky alternatives.
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