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Bresnan Communications adds Outdoor Channel HD
Bresnan Communications, the 13th largest cable operator in the US, has fittingly added Outdoor Channel HD to its lineup in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Given the areas in which it serves, it makes sense to offer up an outdoor-oriented station in high-def, which Randy Brown, senior vice president of affiliate sales and marketing, completely agrees with. Let us guess -- fishing will be the most watched sport.
Bring it: CBS to offer March Madness HD VOD
Not to be outdone by the ACC's deal with Raycom and ESPN, CBS has announced that it's teaming up with cable co's to bring viewers HD VOD (video on demand) segments from the NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Tournament (aka March Madness). Right out of the blocks from round 1, the CBS College Sports Network will assemble highlight reels from 63 tournament games, daily tournament recaps and historical pieces. Comcast and Bresnan are the first to carry this programming, but we're seriously hoping that this catches on with a lot more carriers real quick-like. Price to get these VOD segments: free. Watching your friends' brackets go up in smoke, HD-style: priceless.
Bresnan talks 50 HD channels by end of year
In the linked interview, Bresnan Communications' VP of strategic engineering, Pragash Pillai, doubles the company's earlier HD channel plans for 2008, moving the mark up to 50. He also indicates that figure does not include the couple hundred hours of HD VOD (video on demand) that's also planned for the year. The tech plans detailed by Pillai are interesting: Besnan has about 96-percent of its systems at 750 MHz and above, and will be moving to 256 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) to get the most out of its bandwidth. In the end, he expects 2.5 HD channels per 6 MHz QAM channel. Looking to 2009, he also expects to see rollout of MPEG4 to homes as necessary. This kind of long-term planning is encouraging to see, especially from a smaller player -- infrastructure improvements are costly, and only companies that see the HD future will be prepared to keep growing their offerings and feeding our appetite.
Bresnan adds eight HD channels + HD PPV
What is it with cable companies rolling out the new HD channels lately? Mind you, we're not complaining! Bresnan (Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and Utah) is the latest cable company to show up to the party, and they've brought eight new channels: TMC, Food Network, HGTV, TBS, History Channel, USA Network, SciFi and Lifetime Movie. Oh yeah, they've added an HDPPV channel which includes GameHD and TeamHD also. Bresnan has also announced that their customers who pony up $10 per month for an advanced set-top box will get access to 25 HD channels by the end of 2008.
