The Rugby Channel is New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

's only channel dedicated to the national sport of rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

. When live matches are not on, the channel screens classic games and documentaries relating to the sport. It was the only channel committed to showing all major matches in the widescreen

Widescreen

Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....

 16:9 ratio popular with newer television sets, but from August 2008 SKY Sport changed to widescreen as well after MY SKY HDi

SKY Network Television

Sky Network Television Limited , , is a New Zealand pay television service. On 30 June 2011, Sky had 829,421 subscribers, which comprises:*808,617 digital subscribers*20,840 other subscribers...

was launched. Today there is no actual advantage of watching a live test match on the rugby channel over watching the game on SKY Sport as the Rugby channel is not broadcast in HD. However Rugby Channel viewers can exclusively watch the press conferences following major rugby matches.

External links

• The Rugby Channel at LyngSat Address