ESPN College Extra

Maybe they ran out of encoders?  As you say, the HD versions are not in the channel listings, though clearly someone thought they were going to be available, judging from TexasGuy's post.

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@texasguy37 wrote:

The message below was posed earlier this month over on the ACE's forum:

 

Dear Valued AT&T U-verse® Sports Enthusiast,

 

ESPN will no longer be offering ESPN GamePlan for college football or ESPN FULL COURT for college basketball. However, the programming that was included in those packages will be available on ESPN College Extras, a new channel launching later this summer.

 

ESPN College Extras will be on channels 614-621 and 1614-1621 (HD) and will be included in U400, U450, U450 Latino and the Sports Package.

 

We hope you enjoy the upcoming college football and basketball seasons, and thank you for being a valued U-verse member.

 

Sincerely,

Your U-verse Team

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We have now have had two weekends of college football, and 1614-1621 (HD) has still not appeared on our televisions. Are there any AT&T employees who read this forum give us any input what the problem is that prevents the HD version from appearing? 

Perhaps the article that Texasguy posted was incorrect in that aspect, and there was never any plans for the HD version. My thinking is that this is a  technical problem.

#FreeDotem. If you live in the St. Louis area, and listen to The Morning After on WGNU 920, you know what that means.

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Any word on the situation @Fox Mulder??

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@Fox Mulder wrote:

Baseball....we will not be able to carry the HD versions of those for technical reasons.

 

Sorry abou that!!

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Strange. To me, usually "not able to carry due to technical reasons" means there isn't enough "capacity down the pipe" or "on the satellites" so to speak. For example, DirecTV doesn't/didn't have enough satellite space to carry Fox Soccer Plus in HD 24/7, so it would only get the HD treatment during live events.

I didn't think AT&T worked in the traditional sense like that...but oh well. Hopefully the tech issues will sooner or later be a thing of the past.

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@Fox Mulder wrote:

Baseball....we will not be able to carry the HD versions of those for technical reasons.

 

Sorry abou that!!

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Who will be the first to ask for a refund for something that they are not being charged extra for?

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It could be they don't have a way to pull the HD transmissions off their satellite at the NVHO.

It could be that the NVHO encoders they need for this are backordered at the vender, OR, are being delayed because they'd have to replace them for the new unified architecture.

It could be that they don't have enough capacity throughout the distribution network to handle the extra 6 x 6 Mbps (though that seems highly unlikely, I'd bet the fiber itself, as well as all the switches in the NVHO and VHO have plenty of capacity for this).

Maybe they don't have the multicast addresses available given the current assignment scheme?

There are probably other possible technical reasons, those are just the first four I came up with.

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@JefferMC wrote:

It could be they don't have a way to pull the HD transmissions off their satellite at the NVHO.

It could be that the NVHO encoders they need for this are backordered at the vender, OR, are being delayed because they'd have to replace them for the new unified architecture.

It could be that they don't have enough capacity throughout the distribution network to handle the extra 6 x 6 Mbps (though that seems highly unlikely, I'd bet the fiber itself, as well as all the switches in the NVHO and VHO have plenty of capacity for this).

Maybe they don't have the multicast addresses available given the current assignment scheme?

 

There are probably other possible technical reasons, those are just the first four I came up with.

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Oh, I don't doubt him.

While the "football version" of this is mediocre at best, it'll be a lot more appealing to the masses when basketball starts up...and as we know, HD sells.

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@baseballisback wrote:

 

Oh, I don't doubt him.

 

While the "football version" of this is mediocre at best, it'll be a lot more appealing to the masses when basketball starts up...and as we know, HD sells.

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There's already been one game that was on College Extra that I would have watched, if I had the Sports package.  Since I don't have it, or HD, this isn't high on my priority list.

@Fox Mulder Do you know if there are plans to TRY and fix the issue, whatever it is, to be able to air the ESPN College Extra channels in HD this Fall??  Thanks for all your help over the years!