In the city of Brotherly Love, now more than 2.5 million sports devotees can track their local teams on cable television. On October 1, 1997, Comcast SportsNet bagan delivering regional sporting events in vivid, sharp color using JVC's DIGITAL-S videotape format.

The City of Philadelphia has a reputation for a number of things. Cheese steak sandwiches. Hot pretzels. But perhaps most visibly, Philadelphia is known as a rabid sports town.

On October 1, 1997, Comcast SportsNet began an ambitious schedule, delivering a full menu of regional sporting events on cable to an audience of over 2.5 million. To meet the challenge of providing a very full menu of edited sports highlights in the most timely manner, and with the highest quality picture, they chose JVC's DIGITAL-S as their house videotape format.

The new 24-hour cable sports network is partially owned by the Philadelphia Phillies and is available to viewers who already subscribe to standard cable. Comcast SprotsNet has an empahsis on regional teams, including the Phillies, the 76ers and the Flyers. But viewers get more than just games. The brand new network also deliver the news – morning, noon and night. It offers fan-interactive sports talk programs, comprehensive coverage of NFL football and football programming, too.

Through it all, JVC's DIGITAL-S videotape format is used to record and edit games, as well as for commercial production.

"As the sole cable television supplier of regional sports in the Philadelphia area, we wanted a really top notch digital videotape format to work with," said San Schroeder, senior vice president of programming and operations for Camcast SportsNet. "We chose DIGITAL-S because it allows us to provide the supurior picture quality we had envisioned. In addition, it offers conventional control panel functionality and a short learning curve. These operating aspects are crucial in a fast-breaking sports news environment where it has to be right the first time."

The network purchased ten BR-D80 DIGITAL-S edit recorders, two BR-D85 DIGITAL-S edit recorders with pre-read, two BR-D40 DIGITAL-S dockable field recorders and four RM-G820 edit controllers.

In the master control room housed in the new CoreStates Center in Philadelphia, two of the BR-D80s are used, in conjunction with Tektronix ProFile video server, for commercial spots and for recording sports in the region.

The network has four edit bays where the remaining six BR-D80s are used for daily editing of sports shows and for recording live games in the region. The BR-D85s used in two control rooms for daily high-end editing.

"The 4:2:2 digital signal processing and mild compression of DIGITAL-S were big factors in our choice of the format," said Dick Miller, chief engineer. "We looked at other similar formats, but from a quality and price standpoint, DIGITAL-S is the only one that makes sense to us."

The pre-read function on BR-D85s helps Comcast SportsNet accomplish more high-end editing in the master control room with fewer machines, according to Miller.

"We understand that DIGITAL-S is a reliable product, and we know from talking with other DIGITAL-S users, that it's a workhorse," Miller said. "We really wanted something low maintenance, and I think we've got that with DIGITAL-S."

Comcast SportNet joins several other cable sports ventures that have selected DIGITAL-S because of its high quality and value. Most notably, the FOX network and TCI/Prime Sports chose DIGITAL-S as the house format for their joint venture, FOX SportsNet, which produces and distributes thousands of sporting events per year that originate from TCI/Prime Sports' 15 regional sports networks.

DIGITAL-S represents a dramatic breakthrough in price and performance. JVC's 1/2-inch tape format offers 4:2:2 8-bit component digital resolution and very mild 3.3:1 compression, which makes DIGITAL-S technically supurior to any anolog system and any 4:1:1 digital system. The picture quality of DIGITAL-S rivals even the most expensive digital systems.

"In fact, JVC's DIGITAL-S format is so competitive in price and performance," Miller jokes, "that the only thing is doesn't deliver is a Philly cheese steak and an ice-cold beer." To Comcast SportsNet, DIGITAL-S is a natural winner.