Just in Time For Baseball, TBS Adds HD

Several major U.S. cable companies, including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Cablevision, announced over the weekend that they will indeed add TBS to the list of cable channels offered in high-definition in some markets. The move comes just days before the start of the Major League Baseball postseason, which TBS will cover for the first time this year. But some markets, most notably Chicago, remain out in the cold.

Under the terms of baseball’s new national television contract, TBS will carry all four first-round playoff series, as well as the National League Championship Series. Fans in certain cities whose teams qualified for the playoffs this year, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia, had expressed concern about being able to watch the games in high definition, because TBS has not traditionally been an HD channel.

Cablevision and Time Warner, which both cover the New York market, have added TBS in HD for the many Yankee fans in the area, as has Comcast in both Boston and Philadelphia- but, according to Consumerist, not yet Chicago, where the Cubs have qualified for the postseason. Cox Communications will carry the TBS HD signal for the Indians fans in Cleveland, and Time Warner will do the same for Angels supporters in Southern California.

DirecTV has also added TBS to its hi-def offerings, CableNet 360 reported.

TBS had not had much of a national sports presence prior to the HD era, aside from broadcasts of Atlanta Braves games and the WCW pro wrestling league, both of which, like TBS, were owned by Turner Broadcasting (and later by Time Warner.) Another Turner network, TNT, has broadcast the NBA for years, mostly in HD.

The announced rollouts, in most cities, including other channels being added to the HD lineup in addition to TBS. Comcast, for instance, will add CNN to its HD offerings, as well as the National Geographic and A&E networks.

UPDATE: An earlier version of this article stated that Cox Communications would be broadcasting TBS in HD in the Phoenix market. While Cox will be doing so in most of the country, a Cox spokeswoman for that market told E-Gear that Cox does not have plans to offer the channel in HD in Phoenix. Meanwhile, Comcast has begun carrying the channel in Chicago.