Being that cricket is in the air in India, it's no shock to hear of all these broadcast deals getting inked at the eleventh hour. Now, Asian Television Network (ATN) has announced that it has purchased the exclusive Canadian rights to broadcast the Champions League Twenty20 Tournaments cricket series for the next three years. The 2008 series will be aired live and rebroadcast on ATN's CBN and ATN-Cricket Plus in the Great North, and more importantly, the events will be telecast in high-def across Canada next year. Not quite sure too many Canucks will choose this over hockey, but having the option sure will be nice.

Toshiba's XD-E500 has already taken the US and UK (among other locales) by storm, but outside of Japan, no one in Asia has yet been able to bask in the glory of this unit's peerless upscaling technology. Until now, that is. Said deck has just made its way down to Singapore, and it's reportedly selling for S$199 (or about $133 in American greenbacks). Some may say that's a fair price to ask for something that makes vanilla DVDs look better than the director ever intended, but we're sort of dismayed that no free movie rentals are thrown in here. Spoiled, we know.

Just last week we heard that Warner Bros. was ending its home video / DVD business in South Korea due to rampant piracy, and now we've got a report from China suggesting that sophisticated pirates are duping buyers with faux Blu-ray Discs that are actually DVDs. As the story goes, movie pirates in select parts of Asia are ripping bona fide BDs and then burning them in AVCHD format (which uses 720 horizontal lines of resolution compared to Blu-ray's 1,080) on writable DVDs. Word on the street has it that these discs are being offered for around $7 each, and they even boast the BD hologram and the iconic blue hues on the packaging. Reportedly, none of the discs have made it outside of Asia just yet, but stay sharp should you ever get the urge to snag a discounted BD title while traveling abroad.

[Image courtesy of UberGizmo]

While the US of A is gritting its teeth and hoping the world doesn't implode when it switches completely to digital TV next February, many other nations around the globe are just now setting up their own timeline. For China, the magic year looks to be 2015. Professor Huang Yong, the deputy editor-in-chief of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, recently stated that program production would be "turned from analog to digital" seven years from now, though he didn't say what kind of technology would be used for digital broadcasting. Knowing China, though, it'll cook up something the rest of the globe has no interest in for the sake of saving on licensing fees.

[Image courtesy of DayLife]

It's been awhile since History HD landed an international distribution deal, so it's quite refreshing to see the channel finding its way to yet another huge market: Japan. Beginning October 1st, History HD will begin broadcasting "HD content languaged in Japanese with a mix of local programming, plus series and specials from the History catalog, such as Cities of the Underworld, The Universe, Ancient Discoveries and Ice Road Truckers." There's no specific mention of what carriers will be hosting the station, but here's to hoping it's headed to yours, and soon.

The NHL may not have the viewership in America as, say, the NFL, but that doesn't mean it can't find fans elsewhere. In a rather unexpected move, Hong Kong-based All Sports Network (ASN) has signed a multi-year deal to posses rights for broadcasting NHL matchups throughout much of Asia (India, South Korea and China included). Over 130 upcoming regular-season games will be televised on ASN's Yes TV along with the All-Star game, playoffs and the Stanley Cup Final. The good news? The broadcast rights include "all forms of television, including HDTV." The bad? Japan, Australia and New Zealand have been excluded from the agreement.

[Image courtesy of The Globe & Mail]

Gettin' antsy, are we Sony? Barely a month after the Entertainment Merchants Association pumped out a report suggesting that Blu-ray Disc sales could exceed that of DVDs by 2012, along comes a bullish Sony VP from the Asia-Pacific region to state otherwise. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's Tim Meade has asserted that the "sales volume of BD movie discs may surpass that of DVDs in 2011," following market reports in the US that indicate that the "global sales ratio of Blu-ray movie discs to DVDs will rise to an estimated 40:60 in 2010." Can't knock a guy for being hopeful, right?

Whoa there, Sony. Usually your designs are fairly impressive -- sleek, if nothing else -- but this all new BRAVIA T Series is most certainly not pretty. Boasting "powerful side speakers with a choice of Dual Tweeters or a 3D Woofer [saywha?] with side duct for a complete entertainment experience," these sets sacrifice style in order to flank a set of speakers on the side of the panel. For those that can look beyond it, you'll find a BRAVIA Engine 2, Intelligent Picture and MPEG Noise Reduction, with models ranging from 19- to 32-inches. The new range is scheduled to hit the Asia-Pacific market next month for undisclosed prices -- not like you'll be inquiring anyway, right?

[Via SonyInsider]

Heads-up StarHub subscribers -- MediaCorp HD5 is getting set to launch on July 28th, just in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics to begin in August. Additionally, users can expect to see Sports HD (slot 304) starting on August 14th, which will provide access to high-def versions of 92 Barclays Premier League matches and weekly US PGA Tour events. On the upside, said station will be added gratis; however, HD Showcase will be removed when this one launches. Aside from the baffling switcheroo, we are pleased to hear that StarHub is aiming to offer five high-definition channels before 2009 dawns, though there's no word on what other two will (hopefully) join later this year.

In order to facilitate the digital TV changeover in the region, the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) recently laid out a standard spec for both SD and HD set-top boxes. They're still talking things over like interactive TV, MPEG-4 licensing fees, a standard for digital sound and 720p/1080i transmission, but expect this to push forward digital TV efforts in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Another part of the deal is a new ASEAN HD Centre to facilitate HD co-productions in the area, so even if your vacation doesn't include Southeast Asia more HD content could be headed this way.

National Geographic HD has been on the international warpath of late, blazing trails to Austria / Switzerland, India, Germany and Sweden. Now, we can add a few more foreign locales to that list. MEASAT Satellite Systems has just landed an agreement with National Geographic Channel Asia that will enable Nat Geo HD and two other SD channels (National Geographic Channel and Nat Geo Wild) to be "distributed on a MEASAT -operated satellite to pay-TV operators across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa." The trio of channels will be distributed via the MEASAT-3 satellite, though it wasn't specifically stated when any of them would go live.

As expected, Russia is getting an influx of HDTV, now that Comstar-Direct has soft launched its high definition service. Featuring the Discovery HD, MelodyZen, Luxe TV and Voom HD channels, plus 10 HD movies via VOD. The IPTV service runs over ADSL2+ modems and HDTV decoders Comstar plans to roll out over the next two years as part of its modernization project. The EngadgetHD Russia readership will hopefully be part of the 80% of Comstar subscribers expected to have HDTV access -- and some additional channels -- by the end of 2009.

Couple the fact that the standard of living in China is set to rise substantially in the coming years with the perpetually dropping prices of flat-panel HDTVs, and it seems quite easy to see how some analysts are predicting huge HDTV sales in said nation this year. According to research firm DisplaySearch, LCD shipments to China are set to jump 70-percent this year to nearly 15 million units while plasma sales nearly double to over 1 million. Interestingly, the looming Beijing Olympics aren't being pinpointed as the main driver, or even a passenger, to be honest. For starters, the Chinese government canceled May Day holidays this year, "a major shopping season," and Lehman Brothers' James Kim even went so far as to note that the "Olympics can help sales, but it won't change the market fundamentals." If only they knew how fantastic the long-jump looked in 1080i...

Just a few short months after four theaters here in America were blessed with a number of Sony CineAlta SXRD 4K digital cinema systems, two Cathay Cineplexes in Singapore are getting to enjoy such luxuries, too. Sony is reportedly installing its latest CineAlta 4K SRX-R220 digital cinema projectors, together with the LMT-100 Media Block servers and LSM-100 Screen Management System, in the flagship The Cathay Cineplex along with one other less notable venue. Apparently, the project is slated to reach completion "early next year," and according to the president of Cathay Organization Holdings, it is looking at the possibility of introducing said technology into its cinemas in Malaysia and Dubai. Now, if only these things would totally infiltrate more theaters in the US of A, we'd have no reason to be completely envious.

[Via DCinemaToday]