DALLAS — A new but limited television network broadcasting entirely in high definition will debut with a baseball game Thursday night, according to company founders.
The network, HDNet, was founded by Dallas Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban and Philip Garvin, president of Colorado Studios in Denver.
The company said its signal would be available to subscribers of DirecTV. It said it would not levy additional charges to subscribers of the satellite-TV system.
HDNet plans to broadcast a Minnesota Twins-Texas Rangers baseball game Thursday night and air 15 more Major League Baseball games in September.
The network will expand from a limited schedule to a 16 hours per day and seven days per week in October, the owners said Wednesday.
The owners said they have agreements with baseball, the National Hockey League and the U.S. Olympic Committee to broadcast events in high-definition television. The company said it would produce its baseball and hockey broadcasts with Fox Sports Net regional outlets, sharing audio and graphics the Fox production units.
HDNet said it would also broadcast concerts, documentaries, music videos and movies.
Cuban, chairman of the new company, co-founded broadcast.com, which airs radio signals and sports programming over the Internet. He sold the company to Yahoo! for about $6 billion.
