Altitude Channel & NHL Center Ice

What were these "problems" and did Center Ice show all of their home games in HD last year?

NHLCI seemed to use Altitude only when necessary (opponent feed not available for example) and not always then either. I believe they have things worked out, but otherwise, you probably won't see those games in HD, at least not via Avs feed.

Altitude HD itself was horrible last year. I live near Denver, so it's where I end up watching the Avs games anyway (not via CI, although I have it).

Most of the problems included video/audio timing issues, no audio, SD video instead of HD, and very poor audio and video quality (almost as if they were getting compression errors somewhere along the line).

I sent Altitude email multiple times, and usually got back an automated response.

I sure hope they get the kinks worked out this year.

Is D* Center Ice different than cable? I had Center Ice last year with Time Warner and just about every single Avalanche game (both home and away) came through Altitude and they were flawless. It was rare when I didn't get an Altitude feed. I just didn't have HD then so all games were in SD. Even if I did have HD it wouldn't have mattered since Time Warner didn't offer any Center Ice game in HD. Now that I have HD with D* I was just hoping all those Avalanche games (at least the home ones) would be shown in HD.

I now have done the obvious which I previously didn't do because I didn't think it would still be available – check last year's schedule! I was disappointed to see how few Avalanche home games were shown in HD. I thought that if a game was shown somewhere in HD it would automatically be available on Center Ice in HD? I guess I shouldn't complain since Time Warner offered zero in HD, but anticipating at least 40 games in HD was one of the main reasons for switching to D*. People like satelliteracer not chiming in on the forums and giving us hope of more HD games than last year has me worried. I guess we'll know within a few days since the schedule has to be coming out soon.