Finally, soccer in HD! Fox announced yesterday (I guess we’re not cool enough to get the memo directly…) that it’s going to re-launch Fox Soccer Channel on March 1, 2010. The new channel will be called Fox Soccer Plus, and it will bring you every single Premier League game it has the rights to (more on that in a moment) in HD. Serie A, too, so there’s something there for you Continental types. I cannot stress this enough: every Premier League game in HD!

We’ve been waiting for this for quite a while. I seem to recall a Fox Soccer Channel executive appearing on the former World Soccer Daily (now World Football Daily) sometime last year saying that FSC would move to HD in time for the knockout stage of the Champions League. They’re just in the nick of time, for the second leg of that stage begins on March 9.

Fox Soccer Plus, in addition to showing all the Premier League games it has always shown, will also show the games that Setanta Sports USA had shown. If we’re being technical, Fox had the rights to both sets of games, but sub-licensed a few to Setanta. If you can’t show the games live (and these games are only worth anything if they’re shown live) might as well make a few dollars by selling the rights to someone else!

It’s a huge day for me as well: I bought my first HDTV way back in 2006 simply to watch the World Cup in HD. Now I get to see Manchester City buy the league in HD? Sounds good to me!

To be fair, ESPN has been airing a select number of Premier League (and La Liga) games in HD since the season started.

So, off the top of my head, that means Americans can see the Premier League, La Liga, and Serie A in HD. Now all we need is for GolTV to switch over to be guaranteed to see every La Liga and Bundesliga game (shown here, at least) in a proper resolution.

I’m very excited.

UPDATE~! Well, I’m still excited, but now my excitement has been tempered. All that info up there? Mostly wrong! As The Gaffer (whose site, EPL Talk, is actually pretty cool, by the way) corrects me, Fox Soccer Channel isn’t going anywhere, but that Fox will be launching another channel called Fox Soccer Plus. It’ll be a premium channel, but whether or not your cable/satellite provider actually charges extra, or puts the channel behind a pre-existing tier (maybe like a “premium sports package”type of thing), is entirely up to your provider. Fox has a handy search dealie where you can see if your provider will be picking up Fox Soccer Plus. Regardless of your Fox Soccer Plus status, plain ol’ Fox Soccer Channel will be in HD come March 1, too. One thousand apologies. I completely misread that.

Don’t expect every country in Europe to follow France in implementing a “three strikes” anti-piracy laws. A report called Digital Britain, which assess the UK’s preparedness to enter the digital era, will be published next week, and inside are methods that the UK could use to combat Internet piracy. One such method: slowing down the Internet connection of file-sharers so as to prevent them from effectively downloading illegal content. (Though, if my UK acquaintances are telling the truth, broadband in the UK is garbage to begin with. It’d be like telling a slug to slow down.)

Slowing people down is one option, rather than just cutting people off from the Internet altogether, which is something the EU doesn’t support. The Government there, now less a few Blairites, sees Internet access as being as important as something like running water.

Also in the report: a demand that ISPs cooperate when copyright infringement is found. You know, sending letters to customers saying, “Yeah, we found out that you were downloading Premier League games, and now the FA and Sky Sports are breathing down our necks. Knock it off.”

Of course, that’ll open up ISPs to all sorts of nastiness. “If they can catch people downloading episodes of “Lost,” why can’t they spot people who are looking at terrorism sites, teasing Gordon Brown, etc.?”

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