Back in October ESPN started broadcasting college football in 4K, and now it’s time for the National Championship Game. For tonight’s matchup between LSU and Clemson the network will present a Samsung-sponsored feed from the Field Pass view — with “free flowing commentary of the game” and SkyCam angle in Ultra HD. There’s still no HDR in the broadcast yet, but viewers with appropriate setups from Comcast, DirecTV and Altice can tune in.

Hopefully the broadcast won’t suffer from any glitches, as Awful Announcing pointed out the the Cotton Bowl on New Year’s Day ran into numerous “technical difficulties” for DirecTV viewers.

Even if you don’t think upgrading to Super Hi-Vision is necessary, other innovations present in this year’s broadcast include Pylon Cam, virtual reality graphics, RefCams mounted to the official’s hats and an “AllCam” that covers the entire field for zooming in to any individual player at any time.

You can also crack open the ESPN App to watch RefCam, SkyCast (i.e. Madden-style) and All-22 views. Finally, the app will even have a TechCast feed with up to 12 angles on-screen simultaneously. The National Championship Game braodcast starts tonight at 8 PM ET.

Facebook isn’t the only company struggling over the prospect of end-to-end encryption in messaging apps, as a report from Yahoo Sports cites examples from “every level of sport” turning to encrypted messaging. While Whatsapp and iMessage provide encrypted communications, increasingly the app of choice is turning out to be Signal, which not only protects their message from MITM spying, but can also auto-delete them based on rules.

If you’re a college coach or athletic director and someone makes a FOIA request, that could reduce the amount of information they get about contacts with recruits and boosters. In the NFL, investigators pursuing the “deflategate” incident famously requested access to Tom Brady’s texts, but the quarterback destroyed his phone prior to meeting them — an act cited in the league’s decision to hand down a four game suspension.

He stated that breaking or wiping a cell phone when he got a new one was a standard practice, but execs and agents believe a simpler, stronger argument is that if you’ve set Signal’s rules to delete all messages regularly, then investigators can’t claim you were trying to hide a particular conversation.

The report specifically calls out the NBA, where commissioner Adam Silver has been pushing to reduce “tampering,” or contact between players, their representatives and teams about contracts or transactions outside of the approved periods. Marc Stein of the New York Times reported this week that the NBA sent a memo to teams requiring them to keep all contract-related communications for at least a year, while The Athletic explained that could include notes on training, endorsements, player fit with a team and more. The rule seems specifically aimed at cutting off any argument about using Signal as a simple standard practice, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see other leagues do something similar, whether or not they’ll be able to enforce it.

By now we’ve seen Ultra HD TV broadcasts of sports and other content, but for the first time ESPN is getting into the game. The network just confirmed that Saturday night’s college football matchup between Florida and LSU will be the first one it ever broadcasts live in native 4K resolution.

The only problem now is that the only way to watch this broadcast is via DirecTV with the right equipment. ESPN’s 4K productions in the future may be available via more distributors, but so far only the one satellite broadcaster has signed on.

The broadcast is the first of six planned college football 4K events this year under the “Samsung QLED 4K Game of the Week” banner, which will include a 4K feed of the National Championship BCS game on January 13th, 2020. Unlike Fox’s recent (upscaled from 1080p) NFL broadcasts, there won’t be any use of HDR, but it is high resolution.

Also unlike Fox, ESPN isn’t using its apps — or even Samsung’s apps — to stream the game in 4K, which seems like an unfortunate missed opportunity when the network has been preparing to handle 4K for many years now. Hopefully all goes well, and this doesn’t end up like its 3D push that shut down after a couple of years due to a lack of adoption.

“This agreement will allow Spectrum to continue delivering to its customers popular Disney content, makes possible future distribution by Spectrum of Disney streaming services, and will begin an important collaborative effort to address the significant issue of piracy mitigation,” said Tom Montemagno, executive vice-president of programming acquisition for Charter, in a statement.

As the number of cable subscribers continues to decline with the advent of streaming, the deal offers an incentive for households who want both. Charter plans to integrate ESPN+, Hulu and Disney+ into its set-top boxes, which Spectrum subscribers will be able to access if they subscribe to the individual services.

Disney’s upcoming streaming service, which bundles Hulu and ESPN+, will still be an attractive option for cord-cutters. But cable TV is still a vital contributor to Disney’s bottom line. By securing a carriage deal with Charter, Disney will be able to play a vital role in shaping the future of both streaming and cable TV.