HD War : Time Warner jumps into the fray

After last year bliss of high-definition by DirecTV announcing “Year of HD”, the satcaster committed 100 HD channels before 2007 during Investor Relations meet on 01-08-2007, but failed with the commitment and ended the year with 87 HD channels. Dish Network and Cable Companies in USA were stranded and lost their customers to DirecTV. The year 2008 started with some more addition to DirecTV HD line-up. Other operators found tough to compete with the giant in the Industry also www.Zacks.com , A leading investment research firm, Analyzed that other competitors would take minimum seven years to catch-up DirecTV on high-definition front.

Landel Hobbs, chief operating officer of Time Warner Cable, while addressing the HD competition said that the company is already offering 23 regional sports networks in HD and 53 HD channels and have signed carriage agreements with 20 more HD channels and would be delivered by the year end 2008. Time Warner Cable is to launch a Switched Digital Video technology to expand its high-definition capacity.

So, the HD war has begun and DirecTV will find some competition in the field as they were left monopoly in the HD channel delivery. But DirecTV also getting ready to face the challenge, DirecTV’s second of the three satellites DIRECTV-11 built by Boeing is scheduled to launch by March 2008. This will provide DirecTV enough bandwidth to expand its high-definition programming and expected to deliver about 150 national and 1,500 Local HD channels.

If DirecTV goes with the plan, Time Warner Cable, DISH and other operators have to pugnacious to stay in the HDTV war. The customers mind is inclined towards the best HD programming and standard definition programming has taken back seat. The year end 2008 will proclaim the media world who won the HD race.