The World Baseball Classic is live on Channel 117

Comcast Channel 117 normally shows a live video feed of the departures drop-off at Sea-Tac Airport, but for some reason they've decided to reach out to an audience other than aviation enthusiasts and broadcast the World Baseball Classic. Every game that's tape-delayed by ESPN can be seen live on Channel 117, which is also digital channel 7.2.

This will come in handy Wednesday night for the Korea-Japan grudge match. ESPN's showing it at 10pm, but 117 will interrupt their comprehensive airport coverage to show you the game live at 7.

This bizarro Channel 117 also shows KIRO news occasionally, so our guess is that it's some pre-HD KIRO feed. Any TV freaks or HD fans out there, please enlighten us in the comments.

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By Seth in News on March 13, 2006 2:19 PM

Comments [rss]

J

Wow. Nice hack. This is one of my favorite posts ever. I feel like i just got a gift :)

(btw, anything you guys can do to more prominently feature commments? so much scrolling!)

Marcos

This is what's known as a "digital substation" - part of the new era of digital TV. Every over-the-air network gets a few of them, they're often used for weather or other programming. I'm not sure that anyone knows exactly what to do with them just yet. I'm also not sure how they play into must-carry rules for inclusion on cable... In Houston the ABC affiliate is showing live WBC games on its digital substation as well.

I thought this was some ABC/ESPN synergy going on, but apparently ESPN Syndication is syndicating the live games in local markets... it would appear some local stations apparently think it's worth it to get the games and then show them on the digital substations... which have pretty low viewership... so maybe the games don't cost much to get.

ABC News used a digital substation for gavel-to-gavel convention coverage in 2004.