MASN READY TO LAUNCH FULL TIME HD CHANNEL

The Mid Atlantic Sports Network will be launching a full time high definition channel in time for this season’s coverage of the Nationals and Orioles. There will be 210 regular season games broadcast in HD this season by MASN giving area baseball fans one game every night in the highest broadcast form.

That means both the Nationals and Orioles will have 105 games broadcast this season in HD.

Some of the highlights of the 2009 schedule will be the marquee teams featured in HD the Yankees (21 games), Phillies (19 games), Red Sox (21 games) and Mets (12 games).

The network is making other changes to further enhance their broadcasts including new cameras that will bring fans closer to the action. The network will utilize an X-Mo camera, a new high-speed HD camera, that shoots more than 300 frames per second for crystal clear replays of the biggest moments on the field. The same camera was used during NBC’s Super Bowl telecast last month, which captured Santonio Holmes’ winning TD catch. In addition, MASN will debut a new broadcast look and graphics package for game broadcasts and for O’s Xtra and Nats Xtra in 2009.

Having a dedicated channel will help improve the quality the broadcasts because when Comcast put the games on MOJO the channel was not adjusted for sports. According Richard Holl a broadcast engineer: “For sports to be seen at their best in high definition they should be aired on a channel that has been calibrated for sports telecasts. That is what has been done for CSN-HD, they have set that channel up for sports coverage. Once a cable company sets the channel to adapt to the speed of movement that you get in sports then other traditional HD broadcasts like movies, or sit-coms, etc will be fine. I think that having a dedicated channel will really serve the viewers of MASN well as long as the cable company sets it up properly from the start and there no reason that they shouldn’t.”

As for the rest of the tradional games on MASN in 2009 the breakdown will be the Orioles with 95 games on MASN and 66 games on MASN2. Viewers in the Baltimore area will be able to watch 20 MASN-produced Orioles games simulcast on the network’s over-the-air partner, WJZ-TV Channel 13.

The Nationals will have 95 live games on MASN and an additional 67 on MASN2. Washington DC-area viewers will also be able to watch 20 selected Sunday afternoon games on DC50 which is the new over the air partner for the Nationals and MASN. They will replace MY20 and will air both the Nats Xtra pre and postgame shows which will be something new for the fans in the Washington area.

As far as spring training goes there will be six games on MASN starting on March 6th when the Orioles host the Nationals in Fort Lauderdale. The other live televised spring training games will feature the Red Sox, Marlins and Braves.

Kudos for MASN to have live coverage of the Adam Dunn presser on Thursday. Good job done by Byron Kerr and Phil Wood.

More to come on the channel next week.