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This is the biggest 4K sports package yet, and it's just for Canada

This is the biggest 4K sports package yet, and it's just for Canada

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While 4K sets are common, live 4K content is rare

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If you're a baseball or hockey fan with a subscription to Canadian cable giant Rogers Communications, next year is gonna be a rookie season to remember. The telecom announced today that it will broadcast every Toronto Blue Jays game in 4K, and it's throwing in 20 "marquee" NHL games in 4K to boot. As we wrote last year, 4K TVs have become one of the industry's big selling points, and tech giants like Amazon and Netflix are producing a good amount of original content in 4K. But major sports programming like the World Cup and NFL haven't made any serious moves to broadcast in that new standard, making an upgrade to a 4K-compatible set a lot less compelling.

Rogers, of course, doesn't sell television sets, and so has an ulterior motive in spending the big bucks necessary to pull this off. Along with its announcement of new 4K content, the company is pushing its Ignite Gigabit internet service which it claims will enable a 4K streaming experience on par with cable television.

"Until now live TV broadcasts in 4K have been few and far between."

"4K TV sets have been in the market for some time, and 40 percent of all TV sales are likely to be 4K this holiday season. However, until now live TV broadcasts in 4K have been few and far between and customers have not been able to get 4K set-top boxes," says Guy Laurence, president and CEO of Rogers Communications. "We are solving both problems in one go with the world's largest commitment to 4K broadcasting and a new 4K set-top box for customers that will allow customers to see sports and entertainment in the highest resolution and with the fastest internet speeds."

While gigabit internet service is become increasingly common, it has been hard to justify that much speed for the average consumer. Rogers does its level best to make all that bandwidth seem like not just a luxury, but a necessity."The number of devices connected to the internet in the home is increasing and they are consuming more internet every month," says Laurence. For $149 you get the total package of all-you-can-eat internet, with the only caveat being that you must live in Ontario, specifically the greater Toronto area. Drake would accept nothing less.