More March Madness solutions

My partner-in-blogging, Eric, talked a bit about his love for March Madness in his last post. I am a big fan of the tournament as well, and I wanted to talk about how TDS TV is going to make my March experience quite a bit better.

Let’s start at the beginning. TDS TV offers an incredible selection of channels. Last year for the first time, all games were slated to be broadcast live. The NCAA has decided to broadcast the games the same way this year and the stations carrying the games are CBS, TNT, TBS, and TruTV. CBS is included with the Basic Programming package and the other three are all available in the Expanded Programming tier. Since all the channels are available in high definition, I am a very happy customer.

If you’re a tournament nut like me, you’ll have multiple televisions in your living room so you can watch each game at the same time. I have a 60” television where I have the biggest game on…or the one with the closest score…or the game with the least time remaining. I’ll rotate the rest of the games on the smaller screens as the need arises. I realize not everyone has the interest in being so hardcore, so there are a couple alternate solutions.

If you don’t want to set up multiple TVs, streaming games on mobile devices can be a great option. If you have a smartphone or an iPad there is an app out there called March Madness Live. For the obnoxiously low price of $3.99 (or at least that was last year’s price and hopefully won’t increase when it’s released for this year) you can watch every single game live online. You can download the app via iTunes or Google Play and watch on any device, or visit the NCAA website and log in from there. I have a 23” touchscreen all-in-one computer, and then my iPad is 11”. So I’m going to put those on a table where everyone in the room can see them. The iPad is a little small, so I’ll put the game with the lowest priority on that screen.

While trying to stream games over a slow connection might be problematic, I haven’t had trouble with my TDS Internet. When I got TDS TV I also ordered TDS Extreme Internet which is 50Mbps speed. I have fiber optic cable connecting my services to my home so I have the ability to get very high speeds for my internet connection. My previous provider didn’t offer Internet speeds high enough to stream all these feeds at once—this year, there’s nothing stopping me. There will be nothing quite like experiencing every minute of every game for an entire day. I think at least 6 people have signed up to come over to my house and watch the tournament.

My TDS TV and TDS Internet service will make for a seriously incredible couple weeks of basketball watching. And, even if you only have one television and no mobile devices in the household, you can record the games and watch them at your leisure with the Connected-Home DVR. It’s nice to have viewing options and, thanks to TDS, you’ve got a lot of them!

—Austin