Just a few short days after DISH Network transitioned 11 of its East Coast markets to MPEG-4, in comes word that it has added 21 more (all classified as "East Coast") to bump the grand total to 52 regions. In somewhat related news, we've also learned that six more DMAs can look forward to HD locals today. In no particular order, we've got Columbia-Jefferson City, Missouri; Des Moines-Ames, Iowa; Lincoln and Hastings-Kearney, Nebraska; Omaha, Nebraska; Quincy-Hannibal-Keokuk, Illinois; and Waco-Temple-Bryan, Texas joining the fray. The half dozen new additions means that DISH now serves up HD locals in 76 markets across the US, and it hopefully also means that the next wave isn't too far behind.

Read - DISH Network MPEG-4 expansion
Read - DISH Network HD locals expansion

You just have to love it, don't you? In a situation that reminds us all too much of Sony's SIXAXIS Emmy fiasco (minus the fiasco), Panasonic has taken it upon itself to boast (quite heavily) about an Emmy that it's merely connected to. You see, an Emmy Engineering Award will soon be given to the Joint Video Team Standards Committee, of which Panasonic is indeed a member. But still, it's the JVT getting the Emmy here, though Panny's doing an excellent job of taking credit. It's release on the matter proclaims that it had a whole lot to do with the creation and implementation of High Profile for H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC, a technology that enables HD images in the H.264 video coding system. What's next -- Panasonic accepting the award on JVT's behalf?

SES Americom (not letting one bad satellite get them down) has apparently found an even dozen takers for it's IP-PRIME HD-4 services, designed to add inexpensively MPEG-4 compressed HDTV to MPEG-2 IPTV providers. Not all of them were named, but Chibardun Telephone Cooperative in Wisconsin, Home Town Cable in Florida and Manti Telephone in Utah are among those soon to bask in the beauty of 32 HD including ESPN, Disney, Discovery, CNN, Fox News, MTV and others. So, if you get your TV from your phone company and haven't been getting HD yet, give them a call and see if a new set-top box in your future.

While DirecTV rolls out plans to migrate some of its customers to MPEG-4, Sun Direct TV is giving around 40 million homes in southern India such service right now. By incorporating Harmonic's video delivery solutions, it has become the first carrier in India to offer up MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) direct-to-home broadcast service. As it stands, 120 standard-definition channels are currently available to subscribers, but the operator is planning to add an undisclosed amount of HD channels "in the near future."

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.

Under a month after DirecTV announced that it would be migrating West Coast locals to MPEG4, the satellite provider is rolling out locals for the first time (in SD only for now, it seems) in Butte-Bozeman, Montana. Aside from giving residents of the area and visitors of beautiful Big Sky Resort a taste of KWYB / ABC, KBZK / CBS, The CW, KBTZ / FOX/ MNT, KTVM / NBC and KUSM / PBS, DirecTV also makes sure to point out that reception of said stations requires "MPEG4 equipment and a 5LNB satellite dish." So, the countdown to HD locals begins now, eh?

Shortly after getting word that Palm Springs, California residents can now look forward to getting their locals via DirecTV (if only in MPEG4 SD, for now), it seems that the satellite provider is urging all West Coast residents to make the switch to MPEG4. According to a note received by DBSTalk's Chris Blount, "customers with HD DNS channels will start to see crawls," which will purportedly encourage them to contact DirecTV in order to arrange for a 5 LNB dish and an MPEG4 HD receiver. Furthermore, we're also told that the new lineup will consist of CBSWHD on channel 391, NBCWHD on 393, ABCWHD on 397 and FOXWHD on 399. For whatever it's worth, the message will supposedly only reach those "in the Western half of the US" for now, but who knows when said alert will make its way east.

[Thanks, Earl]

Moto's VP was just saying that MPEG4 would take over cable too, and so it begins with its first MPEG4 STB. This new lineup of cable set-top boxes will have all the bells and whistles including; MPEG2, MPEG4, OCAP, CableCARD, MoCA and most interestingly Dolby Digital Plus -- you know the new codec commonly used on HD DVDs. We can see where this is headed already, first we'll see these new boxes in the wild and before you know it new channels will require the latest hardware -- sound familiar? It should, it's how the satellite providers did it. In the long run this will help cable bring us more HD, but considering cable co's are footing the bill for all these boxes, we'd suspect the MPEG4 rollout will take much much longer than it did for either DirecTV or Dish.

[Via Mediaexperiences2go.com]

The 19th has come and gone and there still aren't any new HD channels on DirecTV. They've even updated their HD website indicating October is the month to expect more HD -- that's not stopping us from checking for new channels vigorously. It's not all bad news, as DirecTV 10 is transmitting a few HD test channels, which are not only encouraging, but also gives us the opportunity to ensure our setup is ready whenever DirecTV 10 is. Of course you need an MPEG4 STB, Ka/Ku dish, but you also need a b-band converter. It might be worth it to check out the test channels for yourself, as some are just now realizing they have a bad b-band converter or incompatible multi-switch. To help discover your exact problem tune to channel 498, 480 and 481 -- check out the pics after the jump to know what to expect -- and if you can't see what we see, then head over to DBSTalk.com for some help.

DirecTV's new hardware rollout has been in the making for some time and now the latest addition to the lineup has been officially unveiled at CEDIA. The HR21-200 was leaked last week, and we've seen prototypes at other shows, but now the prosumer DVR will finally go into production around the end of October and offers some nice features for custom installers -- or anyone who's serious about their home theater -- like being rack mountable without a Middle Atlantic shelf, having a built in fiber HDMI port for long runs, or double the storage capacity of the HR20 (about 100 hours of MPEG-4 HD). In fact, the only downside seems to be the omission of OTA tuners, which is a non-issue if DirecTV HD locals are available in your area, but that can be a drag until DirecTV adds all the HD locals in every market.

Anytime it's possible to reduce the about of bandwidth required without reducing the picture quality, we're for it. MPEG4 is finally rolling along and getting picked up where it works, and one of the places it works is with cable channels like HBO and Starz. This is even more true when they're delivered with MPEG4 by the provider, 'cause as great as MPEG4 is, if the signal started out as MPEG2, then it can only get worse in the conversion process. So with some help from Motorola MPEG4 encoders, Starz is joining HBO in distributing their feeds as MPEG4 and saving providers bandwidth in the process.

It appears that DirecTV is mailing letters to their customers to let them know that just because they have the latest HD dish, multi-switch and HD receiver, it doesn't mean they're ready to receive the new HD channels this fall. The possible missing piece is included with every MPEG4 capable HD receiver, but not usually installed. It is that little box called the BBC, (B-Band Converter) that must be wired in-line between the dish and the STB and is not currently needed, but will be if you want to enjoy all the HD goodness that will start beaming down from DirecTV 10 sometime next month. If you haven't thrown it away yet, go ahead and get it connected, otherwise call 1-800-DirecTV and say B-Band at the prompt to receive another one for free.


Thanks Carl!

Never before have we seen such an anticipated satellite launch. The DirecTV 10 launch is different because it's the first step for DirecTV to fulfill their unbelievable claims. So if you can't get enough of this stuff, follow the read links to the discussion, or join the a live chat. Also, the launch will be televised on channel 570 via DirecTV. We don't know about anyone else, but we'll have our fingers crossed that everything goes as planned and DirecTV will stay on schedule to make this baby operational on September 15th.

Read -- Satelliteguys.us
Read -- DBSTalk.com

While we were all hoping that DirecTV's latest satellite named DirecTV-10 would go off without a hitch on June 20th and bring all those HD channels they've been promising, but I guess we're not that lucky. It looks like the rocket is ready to go, but the bird was not delivered on time. At this point, they are shooting for July (6th?), but haven't said exactly when yet, we don't know about everyone else, but we will feel much better when this thing is in orbit and beaming HD goodness to everyone.

DirecTV has done a great job of reminding everyone how many HD channels they will be adding this year, but for whatever reason they don't say exactly when or how. Sure most Engadget HD readers know that the current MPEG4 satellites in service are specifically designed to spot beam HD locals, and it would be a waste to transmit national HD channels. DirecTV's priorities aside, now that DirecTV is providing HD locals all over the US, it is finally time to launch two new DirecTV satellites that are specifically designed for national HD channels. The first of which is DirecTV 10 and seems to be scheduled for a Russian launch on June 20th. If everything goes well, it will be operational in time for those new HD channels due in September.