John Dent, the mastering engineer who worked on albums by U2, Love and Rockets, The Stranglers, Bob Marley and others, and is credited by Andy Partridge with figuring out XTC’s Skylarking suffered for years from “reversed polarity,” died of cancer last week at 63.

American fans clamoring to lay their eyes on the new XTC  documentary “This Is Pop” — which premiered on UK television in October — finally will get their chance in January when the 75-minute film has its U.S. premiere on the Showtime cable-television network. The program will be available on demand, too.

The audiophile reissue of XTC’s fourth album, 1980’s Black Sea, is due out Nov. 10, and will include new 5.1 Surround, stereo and and high-resolution stereo mixes of the record by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson, plus demos, instrumentals and music videos. More details here.

The highly anticipated XTC  documentary “This Is Pop” — the subject of a petition earlier this year to convince the BBC to air it after the network allegedly passed on the program — will, in fact, be seen on TV in the UK this fall: Sky Arts is set to broadcast the film in October. Watch the full trailer here.

For the last few years, Andy Partridge has been overseeing audiophile reissues of XTC titles, releasing a series of albums — Nonsuch, Drums and Wires, Oranges and Lemons and Skylarking — with new stereo and 5.1 Surround mixes by Porcupine Tree frontman Steven Wilson. It appears Black Sea is next.

An XTC fan in the U.K. has launched a petition to convince the BBC to air a new documentary about the band called “This Is Pop” following reports the British television broadcaster has passed on showing Special Treats Productions’ film. By Saturday, the petition had collected more than 1,600 digital signatures.