Satellite TV Guru

Atlantic Broadband serving Western Pennsylvania, Parts of West Virginia, Miami Beach, parts of South Carolina and Maryland/Delaware has announced that it will launch three new HD channels. Atlantic Broadband is now offering 37 high-definition channels. The three new HD channels are:

FOX News HD

History HD and

Science HD

The cable operator in a surprising move has announced a reduction of its cable charges by $8 or more from New Year day, depending upon the service of the subscribers.

DirecTV has started launching local public television stations in high-definition. The satcaster is first to launch Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) high-definition channels and has added in 14 markets on Dec.3. DirecTV is also confident that more markets will have local public television stations in HD before the year end. Local PBS stations in HD is available in following markets :

Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Iowa City-Dubuque, Iowa; Chicago; Davenport, Iowa-Rock Island-Moline, Ill.; Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, Norfolk-Newport
News, Va.; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Waco-Temple-Bryan, Texas.

DirecTV now provides local HD programming in 115 markets and the satcaster has announced that local PBS stations will be launched in all these markets.

Comcast has added three new high-definition channels in Kent and Sussex Counties in Delaware and Caroline, Dorchester, Somerset, Wicomico and Worcester Counties in Maryland areas. Comcast’s new HD channels are the part of its high-definition expansion plan in which the cable operator has been delivering new HD channels in many areas. Following are the new channels added :

Speed HD

Fox News Channel HD and

FX HD

Comcast has also said that it has many new HD channels lined-up and will be added very soon.

Major League Baseball Network(The MLB Network) is all set to launch on the New Year day, exactly a month left for the network to go on air. Tony Petitti was appointed as President & CEO of MLB Network in June is working hard to launch the network as announced. Before joining MLB network, Mr. Petitti, had been executive VP and executive producer of CBS Sports

The network will broadcast 26 live games a year and will produce more programming to serve the fans 24-hours a day.

The MLB Network will be launched in approximately 50 million cable and satellite homes which will exceed any other cable television launch in history by approximately 20 million homes.

Mr. Petitti said “There are many people here at Major League Baseball who has been working on this nonstop for the better part of 12 months to bring the channel live.”

Time Warner Cable will continue its broadcast of local channels in GreenBay, Wisconsin and the cable operator is negotiating with three local networks to extend its contract and expected to extend the same before the year end. The cable operator has struck a deal with LIN TV on Oct. 29 to carry WLUK, Channel 11 after a month’s break. Now Time Warner is negotiating to extend the contract with following stations:

WGBA - Channel 26

WBAY - Channel 2 and

WACY - Channel 32

Time Warner subscribers can also expect some more HD channels to be launched very soon.

The first American provider of bundled telephone, cable television and high speed Internet service delivered over its own fiber-optic local network, RCN Corporation has announced that it will launch the 24-hour television sports network Setanta Sports on November 30, 2008. The network will available on channel 549.

RCN subscribers will be provided with following sports events by Setanta Sports:

Barclays Premier League

Six Nations and more

RCN Corporation will deliver the sports network to its subscribers in the areas of Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, Washington, DC Metro, Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY.

RCN Senior Vice President, Strategic and External Affairs & Programming Richard Ramlall said “Setanta Sports is a tremendous addition to our current international sports programming, given the extreme popularity of soccer among our customers. We’re very excited about bringing this exclusive soccer and rugby coverage to our customers.”

RCN will provide a free peek at Setanta’s exclusive live soccer and rugby coverage and other programs when RCN offers a free view from December 8 through December 22, 2008.

Dish Network has launched a 24-hour Spanish channel Pasiones on channel 834. Dish Network has added the new channel dedicated to soap opera and telenovela genre. Pasiones is available to DishMEXICO and DishLATINO package subscribers.

The new channel is to provide programming produced in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Uruguay and the U.S. “La Baby Sister,” “Porque Diablos,” “Tormenta de Pasiones,” “Puerto de los Milagros,” “Metamorfosis” and “Kachorra” are some of the high-quality soap operas.

Juan Pablo Santos, Pasiones General Manager said “The soap opera is one of the most important entertainment sources in Mexico and Latin America, thus we are confident that the Hispanic audience in the U.S. will celebrate the arrival of Pasiones - the only channel that offers a perfect mix of variety and quality of telenovelas from across Latin America.”

The fifth largest cable provider in the United States, Cablevision Systems Corporation serving in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and parts of Pennsylvania is scheduled to launch four new high-definition channels on December 5. The cable operator will add following high-definition channels:

Bravo HD - Channel 745

CNBC HD - Channel 771

Sci-Fi HD - Channel 748 and

USA HD - Channel 738

Cablevision also has plans to add many new high-definition channels. The cable operator also expected to launch Versus HD and Golf HD on full time feeds on channel 719 and 787 respectively.

The St. Louis, MO based Suddenlink Communications operating in 19 states with approximately 1.3 million subscribers has added three new high-definition channels in Muskogee last week. Following are the new HD channels added in Muskogee TV programming line-up:

Animal Planet HD - Channel 758

Discovery Channel HD - Channel 757 and

The Learning Channel HD - Channel 756

With these new HD channels added, Suddenlink providers 12 HD channels in its HD Basic tier service.

AT&T has added 30 new high-definition channels to its U-verse TV subscribers on Nov.3 Now AT&T has announced that it will add many of premium movie channels like HBO and Cinemax very soon. U-verse TV subscribers can expect following channels added very soon.

5MaxHD

TMAXHW and

WMaxHD

Many AT&T subscribers received the message that above channels will be launched very soon and many are expecting CSNBA HD, CSNC HD, Future HD and some of the Soccer channels like FSC HD, Gol TV HD.