FOX Sports earlier today announced its television schedule for the upcoming Major League Baseball season, noting that all of the games it produces this year will be shown in true high definition.

As reported by Broadcasting & Cable:

Fox Sports announced Thursday that it will produce and broadcast its entire Major League Baseball package in HD, including this year’s All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium July 15.

The consistent HD coverage begins April 5 with Fox’s first Saturday Baseball Game of the Week of the upcoming season.

What's actually most notable about this FOX Sports press release is what's been left unsaid -- now that FOX Sports is providing all of its MLB coverage in the 720p HD format, this appears to be the end of the road for the company's ill-conceived, pseudo-HD "FOX Widescreen" format experiment.

Back in 2002, both FOX Sports and its parent FOX network were steadfastly resisting HD broadcasting, which News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch told a US congressional hearing was "a waste of bandwidth." Instead, FOX attempted to establish an "upconverted," widescreen presentation of basic NTSC images as a "good enough" substitute for genuine HD programming.

The early adopter market was brutal in its quality assessment of FOX Widescreen, and once it became clear that the momentum toward full HD broadcasting was unstoppable, FOX bit the bullet and began producing true HD programming.

FOX Widescreen has lingered on the scene well past its due date, as the network had continued to deploy it for those occasions where it was doing a live sporting event without HD mobile cameras and crews. For the past couple of years, the primary use of FOX Widescreen had been regular season baseball broadcasts. Now that FOX is stepping up and providing all of its MLB coverage in true HD, FOX Widescreen appears to be a thing of the past.

It will not be missed.

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