Today's High-Def Headlines

CBS Sports to Offer Free High-Def NCAA Basketball Content - Mediaweek
CBS Sports is partnering with cable operators to offer high definition, video-on-demand content of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship tournament, including customized highlights of 63 tournament games. Comcast and Bresnan are the first two cable operators to sign on. The highlights and other content will be available free to cable MSO partners and their VOD customers. And customers will be able to search for specific game highlights.

Sharp, Sony Agree On LCD Joint Venture - TWICE
Sony Corp. and Sharp Electronics confirmed reports that they will begin a new joint LCD venture that will have Sony own a one-third stake in Sharp’s newest LCD plant. The new factory is slated to open in 2010 and will produce panels for each companies TV lines is a 10th generation LCD manufacturing facility.

Sony Unveils 2 BD Players, 21 Bravia LCD TVs - TWICE
With the Blu-ray Disc HD disc format now unchallenged by format rivals, Sony introduced two new Blu-ray Disc players, both of which will be compatible with forthcoming BD Live Web-enabled interactive content, and offered a second viewing of the spring 2008 Bravia LCD TV lineup — 21 SKUs in eight model series — during its dealer show in Las Vegas on Monday. The new TVs will join the previously announced XEL-1 11-inch OLED HDTV set, which started shipping to dealers in January at a $2,500 suggested retail.

LCD, 1080p Drive Super Bowl Sales - TWICE
LCD TVs dominated television sales in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, according to U.S. retail point-of-sale data released by The NPD Group on Thursday. U.S. retail sales of LCD TVs accounted for nearly $250 million the week of the Super Bowl (week ending Feb. 2, 2008) and captured almost 80 percent of all TV unit sales and revenue, the market analysts said.

Pioneer to Stop Making 42-Inch Plasma Panels: Report - Reuters
Pioneer Corp will stop making 42-inch plasma panels and instead buy panels in that size and smaller from Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial or Hitachi Ltd to turn around its loss-making flat TV business, the Asahi newspaper said. Japanese consumer and auto electronics maker Pioneer will end output of such panels at a plant in Kagoshima prefecture in southern Japan as early as March 2009.

Microsoft Pulls Plug on HD DVD Players - AP
Microsoft Corp. said it will stop making HD DVD players for its Xbox 360 video game system after Toshiba Corp. ceded the high-definition video format battle to Sony Corp.'s Blu-ray. Microsoft said Saturday it would continue to provide standard warranty support for its HD DVD players. Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida last week estimated about 300,000 people own the Microsoft video player, sold as a separate $130 add-on for the Xbox 360.

Studios Try to Save the DVD - NY Times
The victory of Sony's new Blu-ray high-definition disc over a rival format, Toshiba's HD DVD, masks a problem facing Hollywood studios: the overall decline of the DVD market. Domestic DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year to $15.9 billion, according to Adams Media Research, the first annual drop in the medium's history. Adams projects another decline in 2008, to $15.4 billion, and a similar dip for 2009. So instead of celebrating the Blu-ray format--which remains a nascent business--the studios are scrambling to introduce an array of initiatives aimed at propping up the broader market.

MASN To Broadcast Orioles, Washington Nationals; Add HD - MCN
The Mid-Atlantic Sports Network will televise all Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles baseball games for the second year and will add high-definition cablecasts to the schedule this season. In all, the regional sports network will televise 80 games in HD, split evenly between the two teams and focusing on key contests such the inter-league play pittying the Nationals and Orioles against each other. Cable and satellite partners will carry the HD contests on their HD programming tiers.

Good Looks Ahead: What's Next for HDTV? - PC World
But the next step for HDTV isn't about technology per se. It's about the experience of watching, which brings previously peripheral considerations--such as design, ease of use, and integrated audio--to the fore. As a result, you'll not only like what you see on your set, but you'll also have a better time experiencing that content in your home. Five years ago, just about any flat-panel television could induce oohs and aahs, and high-definition was a rarity. Today, although flat-panel HDTVs are in only 25 percent of American households, they're common enough that the gee-whiz factor is gone. So where do HDTVs go from here?