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DirecTV Adds More HD
April 3, 2008
DirecTV customer woke up yesterday morning with even more HD channels from the satellite HD leader.
Added to the lineup were Disney HD, Toon Disney HD, and ESPNNEWS HD.
ESPNNEWS HD has to be one of the best uses of the full HD screen of any channel I have ever watched. The top, the left side and the bottom of the screen are loaded with all kinds of stats and sports news. The in studio video and most of the game highlights are in HD in the video screen on the right part of the screen.
There is a news crawl on the bottom of the screen and besides showing the latest news headlines it boldly states, “ESPNNEWS HD is available on DirecTV and select cable operators.”
Surprisingly ESPNNEWS HD is missing from Dish Network, as ESPN and ESPNNEWS has been mentioning most of the week on broadcasts that the new ESPNNEWS HD channel would be coming on Wednesday to both DirecTV and Dish Network, however the channel never made it to Dish Network. The folks I have spoken with at Dish had no idea why ESPN was advertising that it was going to be on Dish, in fact a few of them said that the ESPN announcement surprised them.
Dish Network is currently getting ready to rollout new HD to their customers, but no word if ESPNNEWS HD will be one of those channels. Earlier this week Dish Network took control of a few transponders that were vacated by Sky Angel, which has ended its DBS distribution in factor of an IPTV based solution. It is expected that Dish will use these transponders to expand its HD offerings both nationally and with local HD programming.
DirecTV still has some space on its DirecTV 10 satellite for national HD content, and in addition they will be able to use their new DirecTV 11 satellite that launched last month. The DirecTV 11 satellite is expected to be ready for use by September.
Posted by Scott Greczkowski on April 3, 2008 | Comments (1)
