What, is this some sort of sick joke or something? The host nation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, South Africa, will be unable to watch the action happening in its own backyard in high-definition. According to a recent report from Johannesburg, the SABC "has no plans to broadcast the 2010 FIFA World Cup in high-definition for South Africans." Instead, Switzerland-based Host Broadcasting Services (HBS) will film the games in HD for other countries. The trouble is that an overwhelming amount of South African citizens would need to procure a digital set-top-box in order to view the content in high-def, and considering that HD adoption in the nation is already low, it's simply not a high enough priority to bother with. Of course, political pressures could lead to change in all of this, and for the sake of the locals yearning for more high-def (and technological progress in general), we certainly hope so.

Satellite heavyweight Intelsat is shaking up the summer programming schedule from its usual list of reruns and walking dead cancelled TV shows by sponsoring Live Earth: The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis. The 24 hour concert scheduled for July 7th, will be its largest HDTV undertaking ever, eclipsing even the World Cup, with uplinks from 8 stages around the world sending high definition feeds of artists including Snoop Dogg, Madonna, The Police and others to an estimated 2 billion viewers. The only channel with the full event in high def will be Universal HD starting at 4 a.m. on the 7th. We can't decide which is the better cause, environmental awareness, or something in HD to watch this summer, but with this we don't have to choose.

[Via Multichannel News]

While the World Cup in Germany led to skyrocketing HDTV sales, additions of channels, and worldwide recognition (South America notwithstanding), things have remained up in the air regarding the HD status of the next go 'round. While we've found that HD would be coming to South Africa at least partly in response to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we still weren't exactly sure if everything would pan out so smoothly. While Sony's hoping to get into the football madness itself, SABC -- the host broadcaster for the matches -- has officially (and finally) acquired its first "outside HD broadcast unit" featuring "the latest in high definition technology." Moreover, the nearly $15 million unit is said to be "the first of its kind" on the entire continent, and will hopefully deliver the crystal clear picture and sound we HD sports lovers crave. If you're troubled that such a luxurious unit must wait three agonizing years to be put to good use, take heart, as SABC is already broadcasting "international cricket matches" with its newfangled toy.

The good 'ol days could be coming to an end soon. Analysts are indicating that the predictable nature of LCD TVs could stop soon and it's kind of our fault. You see, around here, we report all these cool, new products that are coming out soon and in turn, you don't buy the current model. Plus, there was that whole World Cup fiasco where the manufactures hiked up the production lines but people didn't buy nearly enough of 'em. Because of both of these things, primarily the second one, there is an over-supply of these panels and the predictable price dropping nature of flat-panels maybe coming to an end soon. This isn't to say that they won't drop in price overtime, just not to the extreme they have been over the last few years.

This last quarter was suppose to be another 'golden quarter' for display makers thanks to the most watched event in television history. These manufacturers were expecting the World Cup to help flat-panel shipments score. (sorry, had to) While shipments did raise 3%, it wasn't the goal (sorry again) that they were expecting. Plasma makers were expecting somewhere near 8% instead of the 3% they ended up with. The World Cup just didn't garner the amount of demand that was expected.

Following up on a story we reported last week about preparing Africa for the World Cup in HDTV, Sony released some news about the 4k (or 4,000-plus-pixel capable) projectors they demoed at this year's World Cup broadcasts in South Africa. Using a projector that is capable of 4k resolution (four times the normal 1080 lines of high-definition resolution), Sony claims their Silicon X-tal Reflective Display (SXRD) projector helped with the first live HD transmission on the continent.

The projector can drive either four different 1920x1080-pixel screens, or be combined into one 4096x2160-pixel monster display. At up to 18,000 lumens, it's also obviously designed for outdoor venues and movie theaters, but it's great to see yet another area getting exposure to the superb detail and color of high definition. We thought HD was all over the place for the 2006 games, but it's clear we can expect even greater display and broadcast technologies when the 2010 games roll around.

Do you think we'lll have to wait for the World Cup games in 2010 to get the ultimate in HD display and transmission technologies like these, or will all this be old news by then?

In case you didn't have your fill of high definition round-ball football action during the World Cup on ABC & ESPN, Major League Soccer wants you to remember we play some soccer in HD over here too. They've scheduled 10 of the remaining 15 HDNet broadcast games, 7 of which will be exclusive to the network. All are broadcast in 1080i and 5.1 surround, the list of games scheduled so far follows.

The Dolphins Stadium might have some competition for "World's Largest HDTV screen." Philips installed 34 very large high-def screens all across Germany for sports fans to enjoy the world cup. They were 77m2, but by our math, that doesn't top the Dolphins Stadium massive 114m2 screen. Sorry Philips, unless our math is off, your screens are big, they really are, but not the largest. What's cool about these screens though is that Philips installed an Ambilight system behind of them that would make the screens appear bigger then they really are. Tricky Philips, tricky.

Did anyone have the opportunity to see one of these screens in action? What did you think?

HDTV is coming to South Africa just in time for the 2010 World Cup. A broadband company, Sentech, is set to roll out Digital Terrestrial Televsion, or DTT, just in time to met the governements requirment. This system is set to cost them one billon Rand, 140 million US, to roll out and will take up to five years for a complete installation. The 2010 World Cup is going to be hosted by South Africa and FIFA demands that the country has the ability to broadcast high-def. We wish them all the luck and speed they are going to need in order to upgrade an analog system to high-def in four years.

We've got some experience with glitchy HDTV/DVR set top boxes, but it looks like things are even worse over on the other side of the pond. With almost all their HD customers only recently buying sets for the world cup, many are using the digital connections and experiencing a lot of problems like picture and sound dropouts. Specifically cited is the implementation of HDCP, as many have been able to get around the problems by switching to analog connectors.Of course this doesn't do much for customers expecting a sharper picture out of their digital hookup or maybe have spent a lot of money on a digital cable they can't use, but SkyHD and even some TV manufacturers may have to update their software for this to be fixed.

Glitch ridden high-def rollouts are becoming all too common, particularly for the "lucky" few who were able to get their service installed prior to the World Cup, but this may explain why some service providers are so unwilling to even enable the HDMI or DVI outputs on their boxes. If it doesn't work, there is a resulting shifting of blame between the provider and TV manufacturer while the customer's problem continues. Same problem with rolling out CableCard, neither side wants to take responsibility for making it work if there's a problem.

Did anyone catch the US Open over the weekend? It was a great sporting event that was butchered by piss-poor HD coverage. There wasn't a five minute interval that didn't have at-least three SD camera shots in it. The event was supposed to be in HD but ESPNHD and NBC continually switched to non-HD. This is somewhat of a common thing on a large course like Winged Foot but both stations insisted on presenting us with Stretch-O-Vision. Normally, ESPNHD would put their logo bars on the side, but that didn't happen this time. One of the best SD camera shots was of a golfer teeing off and they switched from their HD feed to an SD feed and you could clearly make out the other high-def camera that was just on.

Now we know many of you had issues with the World Cup coverage but there is no way it was worse the the US Open.

While the guys playing in the World Cup are professionals, it seems the stateside broadcasters are still very much amateurs when it comes to displaying the beautiful game. I've caught a couple games since the tournament started, and while the quality of the broadcast is excellent. You can see everything very clearly and the sport is more fun to watch in widescreen, as you can see the positioning of the players better. While it is almost enough to wipe the nasty taste of the Winter Olympics debacle from my mouth, and doesn't have the HDTV compression problems cited in Korea, there are still some issues to be worked out.

It's an unfortunate but familiar circumstance for many high definition television owners, after spending a lot of money on a new HDTV, hooked up the cable/satellite/antenna and settled in to watch the big game, only to get a blurry, blocky mess. While American soccer futbot football soccer fans have commented that they "can finally see the ball" during the World Cup broadcast, Korean watchers are flooding the nations three major broadcasters with complaints that they can't see anything thats moving quickly.

The broadcasters have been testing a new multicasting system, MMS to broadcast more channels within the same frequency, lowering the bitrate from 19Mbps to 13Mbps. It looks like viewers noticed the difference, with threats to sue and other complaints posted on the internet. The Korean Broadcasting Commission is going to vote tomorrow on whether to continue the MMS test or not. Korea, we've got our fingers crossed. Whether or not someone will sue ESPN for their poor color commentary during games remains to be seen.

Many have complained after seeing the World Cup TV schedule that a significant number of the games are on ESPN2, which does broadcast in HD but most companies don't carry. Comcast has announced they will add ESPN2-HD in "several markets" tomorrow...but they didn't say which ones. So for all the soccer futbol fans out there, you might be in luck...or you might not. If anyone can get ahold of the list of cities or areas where ESPN2-HD will be available or if other carriers will add the channel as well, please let us know in the comments.

The 2006 World Cup kicks off tomorrow at 11:55 a.m. EST, I know, I know, everyone knows that. With less than 24 hours to go, I thought it would be a good time to remind everyone of the HD schedule or the where and the when. While it is great news that all the games will be produced in HD, we all won't be able to enjoy them because of our own programming challenges.

Here in the US the coverage is split between ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC, which are all owned by Disney. It has always been a mystery to us how they decide which network cover which event and the World Cup isn't any different. ESPN-HD is carried by many more companies than ESPN2-HD and ever since the launch of ESPN2-HD viewers everywhere have been crying; Why do they need two ESPN-HD channels when the first isn't full of HD? We am sure they have their reasons and we're pretty sure our best interests are not in mind. As a result soccer fans everywhere are going to be crying to their providers to carry ESPN2-HD, ahh now we see why they have 2.

As for the where and the when, head over to HDSportsguide.com for the full schedule here in the states and I know it isn't that popular in the states, but we are going to at least watch one game, if for no other reason than to comment on the production quality.

The first US game will be on ESPN2HD at 11:55 a.m. EST on June 12th 2006.