When the final buzzer ended Monday night's (April 6) NCAA national championship game, and the season—it gave both CBS Sports and Harris Corp. a chance to catch their breath after a long regular-season and playoff schedule. For the fourth straight year, Harris equipment remained a key player in a greater number of CBS b-ball telecasts in HD. Harris also served as CBS's lone HD sponsor of the national telecasts.
This year CBS Sports provided HD coverage (1980i) of the entire March Madness playoff schedule of 63 games.
Harris said during this year's tournament, its NetVX video networking system was deployed for signal backhaul from all the NCAA venues around the country to the CBS Television Network based in New York. The Harris scheme also was used for the network's satellite distribution to its affiliates. Other Harris equipment used for the CBS Sports coverage included its integrated receiver/decoder (NetPlus 300 HD).
And for the first time, CBS Sports provided free broadband streaming coverage for all of the tourney's contests using what it called MMOD (March Madness On Demand) for both computers and some mobile handsets. While the network didn't promote its streaming as HD, per se, it did label it "HQ" for high quality.
