ESPN Game Plan/Full Court in HD?

[DLS]

Does anyone know if the ESPN college sports packages will be broadcast in HD this year? I recognize that it would be dependent upon the individual game being produced in HD.

If DirecTV does intend to provide games in HD, when available, will it require an MPEG4 receiver, or will an MPEG2 receiver be sufficient?

Last year, they were in SD and the quality was so low that we rarely took advantage of our subscription. If they are going to remain in SD, I want to cancel the subscriptions before the seasons starts.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Regards, Dan

 

[iceturkee]

i haven't heard or read anything regarding this. i would, at least, hope that maybe directv would show all the alternate saturday night games of the week (on ABC) in hd. last year, if you had game plan, you got the games outside your region in SD.

 

[DLS]

Thanks, ice. One can just hope.

Regards, Dan

 

[DLS]

Just in case anyone else is interested, here is the response I received to an e-mail I sent to DirecTV regarding the availability of the college sports subscriptions in HD.

"Thank you for writing us back about ESPN Full Court or GamePlan in HD. I'm sorry that we are not currently able to offer these sports subscriptions in HD. As you can imagine, HD programming costs a lot of money and takes up a lot of bandwidth to broadcast. We are working to add more satellites to our system to increase the amount of programming that we are able to broadcast in HD. We have already launched two new satellites since last year, and are hoping to add another two by sometime in 2007.

As technology progresses, and HD becomes more cost effective, you will find that more and more programming will be offered in HD, until HD becomes the industry standard. We are working towards that goal and we appreciate your patience while we work to make the future of television viewing a reality.

Your feedback helps alert us to areas that need improvement, so thank you for your e-mail. I have forwarded your comments to DIRECTV management.

Thank you again for writing and stay tuned to directv.com for the latest news and information about our service."

I found the implication that HD is a future reality interesting. I also found it interesting that when I called to cancel my subscription (they won't let you do it on-line) that they didn't even ask me why. I will wait a month or so to also cancel my Full Court subscription.

Regards, Dan

 

[Brewer4]

Thats the same canned response they've used for years. I've seen it verbatim. Ignore it.

 

[DLS]

Brewer,

Do you mean that this is a response that hasn't aged well? <vbg>

Regards, Dan

 

[Brewer4]

Brewer,

Do you mean that this is a response that hasn't aged well? <vbg>

Regards, Dan

Aged well? Its actually a crap response. Its the same thing they say when they dont know the answer. So it really doesnt mean anything one way or another. Just a can that should be flushed.

 

[MrMars]

This might be one of the first years there is actual HD content to show in Gameplan.

ABC started doing one regional 3:30PM ET game in HD a week, I could see that going up this year (nothing official about it yet), but I doubt they will do less HD this year then last.

LFS did the ACC Basketball Tournement in HD last year, so would say it is at least possible they do the weekly ACC game in HD. (Again nothing official)

Whatever or not they show it is a different issue all together but in the past Gameplan was nothing but SD produced games anyway.

 

[Brewer4]

I think we are going to see a lot of Gameplan type HD showing up after D10. It will all be limited on the source broadcast but I think Directv will show it in HD if it originates that way. HD Sports is their bread and butter right now.