For the fourth-annual edition of the League Technology Summit, SVG has upgraded the program with more panels, more sessions, and more exhibitors. Bigger than ever, the fourth edition of the LTS is once again dedicated to helping attendees learn the latest trends, technologies, and techniques in sports broadcasting, production, and distribution. Registration is now open for the two-day event, held December 14-15 at the New York Hilton Hotel. Click through to register today!

Join the SVG on the evening of December 15 to honor excellence in broadcasting at the third-annual Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame induction ceremony. This year’s ceremony will honor legends who were and are committed to advancing the quality of televised sports production through innovation and leadership. Click through for information on tickets and sponsorship opportunities.

Comcast, the country’s largest cable operator, already boasts a pretty fair stable of cable networks, with ownership of or stakes in E! Entertainment Television, Style, The Golf Channel, Versus, AZN Television, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One, G4, and regional sports networks Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, CSN Mid-Atlantic, CSN Chicago, CSNWest, and SportsNet New York.

Unlike MLB’s spring training or the NFL’s summer camps, the NBA’s preseason practice sessions are not usually open to the public. Thanks to NBA Digital, however, fans this season are getting an inside look at five teams’ practices, including interviews with top players and coaches, produced in high definition and available live on NBA.com.

ESPN continued to break its own benchmark for largest cable-television audience of the year with Monday Night Football, as week three of the National Football League franchise set the mark for the third consecutive week.

Tokyo is hoping to win the 2016 Olympics bid with its sustainably oriented plan, use of solar power, renovation of existing facilities, and compact layout of the Olympic Village. From Inhabitat, part of the Guardian Environment Network. The main stadium located in the heart of the city near the water and will be completely powered by solar power, just like the solar stadium in Taiwan used in the 2009 World Games. The Tokyo 2016 Bid Team is playing up their environmental efforts showcasing what Tokyo has to offer in terms of sustainability and how the city will ensure that the environment is a top priority…

Cisco yesterday acquired Tandberg, a company that historically has played a key role in video compression encoding and decoding for sports backhauls and multiplexing technology for cable and satellite operators. The key to the $3 billion dollar deal, detailed here in a New York Times article, is Tandberg’s videoconferencing technology. And Martin De Beer, Cisco SVP of the Emerging Technologies Group, lays out the vision for the future here at the Cisco site.

The Sports Video Group is pleased to announce that Ross Video has renewed its premier sponsorship. Ross Video designs, markets, manufactures, and supports a wide range of innovative products for use in broadcast, distribution, live event and production applications.

ARCTEK Satellite Productions LLC provided transmission services this summer for several high profile events, including repeat work with ABC and ESPN. ARCTEK provided both C-band and Ku-band uplinks for the 141st running of the Belmont Stakes in Elmont, NY, which included the high-definition primary broadcast feed. The service marked the third consecutive year the company has provided transmission for ABC.

Utah Scientific will use HD World at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York Oct. 14-15 to highlight its UTAH-400 routers and its UTAH-100 Professional Products series line of small routers, distribution amplifiers, and associated products targeted toward the growing market for professional-quality solutions in smaller broadcast and nonbroadcast facilities.

Avid announced that the new editing products it announced at IBC2009—Media Composer (4.0), Symphony (4.0), and NewsCutter (8.0)—are now shipping.

Telecast Fiber Systems did not return home from IBC2009 empty-handed, as its TeleCube modular media interface received a STAR (Superior Technology Award Recipient) Award from the editorial staff of TV Technology Europe, its Ratter third-generation miniature HD/SDI transmitter/receiver module was named a Pick Hit by Broadcast Engineering magazine, and both the TeleCube and Rattler 3G received an Editor’s Pick of IBC2009 award from TVBEurope magazine.

IDX System Technology announced the availability of REDEFINED, its IDX ELITE battery-system solution that is now protocol-compatible for powering the RED ONE camera.

Grass Valley’s K2 Solo portable multiformat standard-definition and HD-capable server took home an IBC Pick Hit Award from Broadcast Engineering magazine at IBC2009.

General Cable’s Gepco unit will feature its XB201DBM X-Band microphone cable at AES 2009 Oct. 9-12 in New York. The XB201DBM is a high-bandwidth microphone cable with a double-braid shield for added noise rejection, and Gepco says it is ideal for recording-studio facilities or live-sound venues.

Advanced video-communications-solutions provider Glowpoint debuted an interoperability service that allows businesses to seamlessly connect Cisco TelePresence rooms with standards-based telepresence and traditional videoconferencing systems, and the company says its “interoperability as a service” (IaaS) is now available globally.

Broadcast Pix has named company co-founder Russell Whittaker Senior Vice President, and has promoted Arco Groenenberg to Vice President of Sales. Whittaker had been serving as Vice President of Sales for the company, while Groenenberg had been Director of Sales, Americas and Asia. Broadcast Pix is also announcing the opening of its new sales office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Sveriges Riksdag, the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm, will use a Vizrt digital-media-asset-management system to automate its workflow process as part of an overhaul of its Web portal, which is designed to provide live and on-demand video of speeches, debates, and other newsworthy events to the Swedish public and media.

Former National Hockey League player, coach and general manager Mike Milbury will return to NESN for a third season as a studio analyst on its pregame, intermission and postgame coverage of the Boston Bruins after reaching a multiyear extension with the regional sports network.

Now that Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox have clinched a Wild Card playoff berth, NESN is filling out its postseason roster.

NESN is set for an HD doubleheader Oct. 3, as the regional sports network will provide simultaneous HD coverage of Major League Baseball and National Hockey League regular-season games with the Cleveland Indians visiting the Boston Red Sox and the Carolina Hurricanes visiting the Boston Bruins, respectively.

National Basketball Association fans in the United Kingdom and Ireland will get the chance to love this game following an agreement between the league and ESPN, which will add nearly 100 live NBA games to the sports network’s channels in those regions, along with studio show NBA Fastbreak, original series NBA Action, and classic NBA games.

Comcast SportsNet Chicago will air behind-the-scenes special documentary Comcast SportsNet: Behind the Lens Sunday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. CT to commemorate the regional sports network’s fifth anniversary.

The 2016 Olympics are going to Rio de Janeiro, putting the games in South America for the first time.

Golf Channel upgraded its Control Room Two with a 32-fader Solid State Logic C100 HD-S broadcast console, which joined the existing C100 HD in the cable network’s Control Room One.

Thousands of people stood in bewildered silence in downtown Chicago on Friday after the International Olympic Committee surprised everyone by dumping the city from the race for 2016 Summer Olympics in the first round of voting.

TV-set-maker Vizio wasn’t content with producing HDTV sets, so it decided to venture into programming, as well. The company teamed up on a new show for Fox Sports, Vizio’s Profiles, which will debut Oct. 2, Erik Sass of MediaDailyNews reports.

mun2 will air live English-language coverage of the Mexico-Trinidad and Tobago World Cup qualifier Oct. 14 at 7:55 p.m. (ET), following the Telemundo spinoff’s huge ratings success Aug. 12 for its presentation of Mexico’s 2-1 win over the United States from Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reports.

Adrian Dater of The Denver Post, disclosing that he does some free-lance hockey writing for Versus.com, added further details to his earlier story about the carriage dispute between Comcast-owned cable network versus and satellite-TV provider DirecTV.

Chicago should thank New York, because without the latter’s unsuccessful bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, the former would not be in position to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, writes David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune.

MLB.tv subscribers who think they’ve been seeing more ads aren’t imagining things: Yahoo!, which has an agreement with Major League Baseball to sell ads for its online service, is using ad-serving technology from Auditude, which allows it to sell multiple ads within commercial breaks, reports Michael Learmonth of AdAge.com.

Despite Kimbo Slice’s loss to Roy “Big Country” Nelson on Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter, he may not be done, and he definitely has a future in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Lance Pugmire and Houston Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times report.

Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, spoke with Diego Vasquez of Media Life about whether the National Hockey League has recovered from the lockout, if it’s still the No. 4 sport in the United States, and who will win the Stanley Cup.

Eli Manning, quarterback of the National Football League’s New York Giants, will also quarterback Samsung’s “That’s How I See It” campaign touting its HDTV sets, Elizabeth Olson of The New York Times reports.

Canon USA confirmed that it will not attend PMA 2010 in Anaheim, CA, Feb. 21-23, citing changing technology and business conditions, reports Greg Tarr of TWICE.

Blue Microphones introduced the Eyeball 2.0, a 2-megapixel Webcam with a built-in microphone, which can be used with both PCs and Macs, Lisa Johnston of TWICE reported.

ESPN is licking its chops at the ratings prospects for its next Monday Night Football match-up, featuring the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers visiting the Minnesota Vikings and former Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who will oppose Green Bay for the first time, Gary Mihoces of USA Today reports.

Since International Olympic Committee members are no longer allowed to visit prospective host cities due to earlier cases of overzealous gifts, one-on-one meetings, such as those first lady Michelle Obama has been holding in Copenhagen, Denmark, are of vital importance, writes Vicki Michaelis of USA Today.

Chicago is sending President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s senior adviser, to Copenhagen, Denmark, to lobby the International Olympic Committee in its attempt to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Rio de Janeiro is sending President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, soccer legend Pele, and Olympic swimmer Cesar Cielo. Tokyo is sending new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyamaa and two members of the royal family. And Madrid will be represented by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia.

UEFA Europa League? The United Kingdom’s Five has got an app for that. Soccer fans will be able to watch all of Five’s live coverage of the league, as well as highlights packages, on their iPhones for a one-time fee of $6.40, Variety’s Steve Clarke reports.

WFN: World Fishing Network now has a fishing license from Comcast, and the 24-hour fishing-lifestyle channel can attempt to bait individual systems, reports Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News.

In Demand Networks extended the free preview of its NHL Center Ice National Hockey League out-of-market games package through Oct. 24, with the first pucks of the NHL season set to drop Oct. 1, Mike Reynolds of Multichannel News reported.

The good news for fans of the U.S. National Soccer Team: The squad will take on Honduras in a World Cup qualifier Saturday, Oct. 10, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Mike Blowers, broadcaster for Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners, predicted during the pregame show before Sunday’s game that third baseman Matt Tuiasosopo would hit his first Major League home run during the game, reaching the second deck, in his second at-bat, on a 3-1 count, off a fastball.

Did you hear? Brett Favre, longtime quarterback for the National Football League’s Green Bay Packers, is playing against the Packers on ESPN’s Monday Night Football for the rival Minnesota Vikings. Did you hear?

Kevin Lynch started Website Chicagoans for Rio 2016 as a part humorous, part critical look at Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.