Charter's next on the block to add the Big Ten Network and "related programming" in time for Saturday's football openers. No word whether or not this will include the HD version of the network, or if it will be in time for the start of the season, but it is definitely on the way. In a minor footnote, Charter mentioned that in addition to carrying the BTN across its systems in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Northern Illinois it's also reupping Jim Tressel's snazzy sweatervest collection, teaching Terrelle Pryor the correct name of "the University of Ohio State University" and teaching Ohio State how to defend against the spread offense. Good times all around.

Proud Buckeyes (& other fans in Big Ten country) served by Time Warner Cable can expect a new addition to their channel lineup ahead of Saturday's season opener against Youngstown State. On the way is the Big Ten Network's HD feed and video on-demand programming, so you don't have to worry about missing a snap as Ohio State looks forward to it's weak non-conference schedule (aside from USC) and the tantalizing future of yet another BCS Championship defeat at the hands of SEC speed. Cox customers take heart, word is they are also close to an agreement, not surprising now that TWC and Comcast have worked out their differences with BTN. [Disclosure: Engadget is part of the Time Warner family]

[Thanks, Mike & Paul]

Update: Unfortunately not everyone will have the HD & VOD packages in time for the August 30 game, but if you can stomach just one 480i game against punching bag Youngstown State, they're promised to be added "later" (Go Wolverines!). [Thanks Paul!]

After ESPNews, now it's time for ESPNU to make the jump to 720p, as promised last year, on August 28. So far Time Warner Cable, Verizon FiOS, RCN, Atlantic Broadband and Broadstripe are signed on to distribute the channel, with ESPN "working on" deals with other providers. The debut event is the Vanderbilt vs. Miami (OH) football game at 7:30 p.m., with ESPN's fourth U.S. high definition station expecting to air over 200 HD events in its first year -- Thursday and Saturday live college football games, plus basketball, lacrosse, baseball, softball, volleyball, wrestling and hockey. Coupled with a 15-year agreement to air SEC matchups on its family of networks, there should be plenty of SPEED on tap for ESPNU HD.

Though probably not as niche as Rural Free Delivery (RFD HD), World Fishing Network HD still has a pretty narrow audience. That being the case, there's still some logic to pushing the channel in rural parts of America or in regions with nearby fishing outlets. Call us crazy, but New York City is not the first place that comes to find when someone mentions deep sea fishin'. Nevertheless, Verizon has just announced that WFN HD has arrived in the Big Apple on FiOS TV, giving transplants an easy way to get back in touch with their small town roots. There's no word on when the station will hit other FiOS TV areas, but we'd bet it'll be making the rounds soon enough.

What, is this some sort of sick joke or something? The host nation of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, South Africa, will be unable to watch the action happening in its own backyard in high-definition. According to a recent report from Johannesburg, the SABC "has no plans to broadcast the 2010 FIFA World Cup in high-definition for South Africans." Instead, Switzerland-based Host Broadcasting Services (HBS) will film the games in HD for other countries. The trouble is that an overwhelming amount of South African citizens would need to procure a digital set-top-box in order to view the content in high-def, and considering that HD adoption in the nation is already low, it's simply not a high enough priority to bother with. Of course, political pressures could lead to change in all of this, and for the sake of the locals yearning for more high-def (and technological progress in general), we certainly hope so.

It's certainly strange that with several networks, online video, on demand, cellphone and any other way NBC has provided to view the Beijing Olympic Games, U.S. HDTVs had to wait 13 hours to show Usain Bolt make history in the 100m dash -- and another three hours to catch it on PST. For those frustrated by NBC's arrogant mishandling of its broadcast rights, there exists one slim ray of hope (other than living somewhere lucky enough to get Canadian television so you can actually see the events before reading about them in the paper or on NBC's own website), ESPN. That's right, with Brett Favre finally on an NFL roster, the sports giant has apparently found enough free time to consider taking a run at broadcast rights for the 2014 Winter Games and 2016 Summer Games. While we don't yet know where they'll be, if ESPN gets the Games, VP of content John Skipper pinky swore that it would "never" put an event on tape delay, calling it a disservice to sports fans. Our support for this plan goes without saying, and since it's already too late to give them this year's broadcast rights, our only remaining issue is finding out what it takes to get John Skipper on the '08 presidential ballot.

There's nothing here that wasn't apparent already, but SES ASTRA is just now getting around to boasting about a dozen HD channels that it's hosting to broadcast the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Ready for an exhaustive list? The channels broadcasting the Olympics in HD include for the UK, BBC HD, for France, France 2 HD and CANAL+ HD, for Germany, ANIXE HD, for Poland, TVP HD, for the Slovak Republic, STV3, for the Netherlands, 1 HD, for Belgium een HD, for Spain, TELEDEPORTE HD, for Sweden, Viasat HD and SVT HD and for Austria, ORF HD. So yeah, if you somehow missed this for the first week of the Games, at least you're clued in now.

[Image courtesy of Beijing 2008]

One masochist notwithstanding, we're pretty sure you haven't sat down for days straight to watch the Summer Games from Beijing, but we're wondering if the superabundance of high-def Olympics programming has changed your perspective on the entire spectacle. Here at Engadget HQ, we've found ourselves captivated by more Olympics footage in the first week than we can ever remember in Games' past, and there's no question that having the events in high-definition caused us to keep flipping back. Is the same phenomenon happening at your house? Are you inexplicably anxious to come home and check out some of the world's greatest athletes in beautiful high-def? Tell us how the HD onslaught has affected your Olympics viewing (if at all).

[Image courtesy of Yahoo! Sports]

After what felt like an endless battle, Comcast and the Big Ten Network were finally able to hammer out broadcast details earlier this year. Right on schedule, the channel is expected to go live in the Big Ten region tomorrow, August 15th, on its expanded basic level of service. Of course, the HD feed will be included as well, and fanatics in the footprint can get set as the action begins with Indiana taking on Western Kentucky on August 30th. Are you ready for some football?

Hopes are high for Fresno State, and with the expectation of greatness inevitably comes an HDTV deal. Okay, so maybe that's not a given per se, but the upcoming Bulldogs basketball / football seasons will indeed be aired to locals in high-definition. New for this year, MyNetworkTV affiliate KAIL-TV will serve as the flagship station for the institution and will broadcast every single game in its entirety. Better still, the tilts can be seen in HD on MD Digital 7.1 in and around Fresno, California. Congrats, Fresno State fans -- just don't gloat too much over there, cool?

[Image courtesy of Bulldog Village]

Just because there are 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage being beamed out in one form or another this year doesn't mean you actually need to watch all 3,600 of them. For one particular pain lover, however, he consumed 24 straight, and thankfully, he had the decency to write about it. Starting at midnight ET on August 12th, he flipped on NBC just in time to catch Alexander Artemev save the bronze for the US in men's gymnastics. 24 hours later, he watched the women's team disappointingly snag a silver in the same sport. Nearly every minute in between is chronicled in the read link below -- seriously, this is a read you can't afford to miss.

Bresnan Communications, the 13th largest cable operator in the US, has fittingly added Outdoor Channel HD to its lineup in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Given the areas in which it serves, it makes sense to offer up an outdoor-oriented station in high-def, which Randy Brown, senior vice president of affiliate sales and marketing, completely agrees with. Let us guess -- fishing will be the most watched sport.

For a whole slew of individuals across America (particularly those with lackluster Time Warner Cable lineups), the addition of two new temporary high-def stations has been quite the treat. Just prior to the start of the Beijing Olympics, many cable carriers opted to add in an HD Soccer and HD Basketball channel, but if you thought they were just doing so to be nice, you thought wrong. After scads of CableONE subscribers in Idaho were flat shut out of live online streaming, a bit of digging revealed the problem: NBC Universal bundled online streaming into a "premium package" with the previously mentioned stations, which CableONE declined to offer. For the CableONE users, the story does end in on a high note -- they are getting three permanent HD channels instead. For everyone else loving the convenience of online streams, at least you can sleep easy knowing that minor increases in your future bill will likely be used to pay for it. Then again, what is free these days?

With Michael Phelps spending a great deal of time in front of the cameras between 8:00PM and midnight ET each night, it's hardly a shock to hear that USers are tuning into the Olympics like its 1976. According to preliminary numbers, NBC Universal is reporting that an average of 29.1 million viewers are flipping on the Olympics, which is the "most highly rated broadcast of the Summer Games held outside the United States since 1976." When seeing figures like this, the obvious question emerges: why? Contrary to the beliefs of Big Media, the internet is actually somewhat to thank. Many believed that internet broadcasting would whittle down TV ratings, when in fact, it seems that quite the opposite has happened. Interestingly, it appears that all the high-def footage really isn't getting the credit it deserves. Be honest -- would you have stayed up until 1:00AM watching men's gymnastics had it not been in HD?

Read - Olympics ratings
Read - The internet influence

Auto racing and HD is a great match, no doubt. Even if you're like us and prefer being at road course events in person, there's one vantage point that only HDTV can give you -- those in-car camera shots that make the kid inside us all scream "vroom." But if you see something like the pic above, that scream might be more... colorful. The in-car Gigawave HD camera mounted in the #6 Phoenix Carsport Corvette Z06 at the 24 Hours of Spa race in Belgium last weekend was seriously put to the test and came out looking like a champ. The Z06 burst into flames in pit lane, and the camera kept working through the whole incident and caught all the excitement. Luckily the driver wasn't hurt. Amazingly, the car was put back out on the track and the camera was still fully functional after the incident. Click on through for video of the incident.