NFL Games on the NFL Network - Who Woulda' Thought

A kind person who stumbled upon my blog pointed out that the Saturday and Thursday games will be shown on the NFL Network on Grande cable this year. I had noted last year in this entry that, strange as it might seem, our local version of the NFL Network would not be carrying the live NFL games. Apparently that has all changed this year as Grande is advertising on their web site that 8 games will appear on the NFL Network this year. Either Grande has ponied up the extra cash or the NFL Network has dropped the extra fees to show the live games.

The Cowboys are scheduled to appear on the NFL Network on November 29th (Packers) and again on December 22nd. No, November 29th is not Thanksgiving and yes, the Cowboys will play Thursday games back-to-back on November 22nd and November 29th. The Texans are scheduled to play the Broncos on December 13th.

Note that the NFL Network is a premium service (though in the digital package) and further note that it appears neither CableOne or Suddenlink offer the NFL Network in these parts of west Texas.

Odds & Ends

CableOne reportedly has in stock the new CableCARD-enabled set top boxes. I'm not sure I'd want to trade in a box that's working fine for one, though. There are still tons of reports indicating problems with CableCARDs although the one I have at home works great. I was also told CableOne now has MCards,too. The MCard version allows tuning two channels at the same type - like the dual tuner DVRs.

Is anyone using the Firewire port on their CableOne box to attach more hard drive capacity?** When HD recordings take 10 times the drive space you can never have too much hard drive, huh?

Dell is now offering their CableCARD-equipped XPS-410 but there seems to be some concern about how well these desktop media PCs will do out there in the wild. There are even rumors that Dell would prefer not to sell CableCARD-equipped PCs to consumers because they'll get lots of trouble calls about the CableCARD installation when defective CableCARDs or untrained installers have problems. I guess they'd like to sell the machines to a retailer who will do some hand-holding during installation and setup.

** Edit 08/23/07
Firewire devices must be 5C compliant.

The Cost of HD in the Studio

We had a very enjoyable block party last Tuesday night, participating in National Night Out. And one of my semi-retired neighbors still does some television production work so I took the opportunity to ask why we don't see locally produced content in HD. He said the cost of the necessary studio equipment is very expensive so most smaller stations are still broadcasting in-house content in standard definition. An interesting table of television equipment costs shows 16:9 HD studio cameras costing $200,000 each and a production video switcher at $350,000.

Local stations can (and obviously do) broadcast HD content from sources outside the studio - national programming and commercials for example - but they're just passing that content along as it comes through the feeds. So, I guess we can understand why we see stretched local newscasts and commercials. Surely the on-camera news people are tired of seeing themselves somewhat hefty. I bet they would prefer to just see the SD content in its natural 4:3 format until the station is capable of providing real 16:9 HD. Me, too.