I don't know if this is why the channel isn't in the program guide yet, but I noticed a couple things on channel 501 over the last day. On Monday at 7 AM, channel 501 was a simulcast of MASN HD. I thought that was kind of odd knowing that MASN2 HD always had ESPNEWS HD showing when there wasn't a live game. Leter that morning, I saw ESPNEWS showing, but the quality of the feed was nowhere near what was on channel 572 (the real ESPNEWS HD channel). I didn't think much about a sub-standard "filler" feed since I know that MASN does not compromise on their live game feeds.
Tonight, I noticed that channel 501 has a near perfect ESPNEWS HD feed, only about 3-5 seconds behind what's on channel 572. At this point it seems like we were shown a zoomed in version of channel 1. This also might be related to the garbage picture that people with FiOS1 HD were complaining about on Sunday.
As far as the channel having yet to appear in the program guide, I got an e-mail response from MASN today that "Verizon is in the process of getting the channel added to their guide".
I can't wait to see the O's game in HD tomorrow even though I'm a Nationals fan!
