# Why not have every channel in HD?



## purvis (Sep 3, 2007)

Why not have every channel in HD as the "standard" of delivery? (Well, except for the shopping and infocrap channels). And then not worry about "when" it wil be in HD?

It would blow a hole in Dish Networks pricing policy of adding "extra" for HD program though.

question on HD. I notice that most of the HD channels have a "SD" along with the "HD" feed of the channel. Is this required? Can there not be just one "HD" channel that can be seen in SD only on SD receivers?


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## HobbyTalk (Jul 14, 2007)

A couple of reasons. First is lack of bandwidth, HD takes more bandwidth. Second is someone would have to convert the SD channels to HD and the converters cost $$$$$, you want to pay for that through higher rates?

HD channels on a SD TV would have borders top and bottom and many don't like that. If it would be a 4:3 channel then it would have a border all around the picture which would really tick off people.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Also - You have a HUGE number of customers that are still using SD only. You aren't going anywhere about making everything HD only until you can get all customers switched.


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## jsk (Dec 27, 2006)

* E* would have to launch more satellites to support the additional HD channels. 
* All customers with a SD receiver would need to upgrade to an HD reciever unless there could be some software upgrade that would allow the SD receiver to use HD channels. Either E* would have to charge SD customers for this or raise everyone's bill to offset the costs.
* They may need to repoint dishes for most SD only households. Either E* would have to charge SD customers for this or raise everyone's bill to offset the costs.
* They would need to renegotiate deals for all of the cable networks to allow the HD versions to be available for everyone. This would most likely result in a higher programming costs for SD customers and wouldn't be competitive with other providers. 

Summary: SD customers who are happy with their current service would be charged for hardware costs, repointing costs, costs necessary to add more bandwidth, and higher programming costs. E* would most likely lose most of the SD customers to D* and cable. HD customers would most likely have to shoulder some of the above costs increasing their bills too even though E* would probably be paying slightly less for the programming per HD subscriber.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I haven't seen any updated counts lately...

But if Dish has around 14 million subscribers total... I suspect that as many as 10 million of them could still be SD-only customers.

No way they will mess with those customers in one shot to try and drop all the SD channels in favor of HD feeds.

Even if all those customers wanted to do it... it would take a LONG time just to get new receivers to all of those customers... and then there's the cost that people have already brought up... and the SAT bandwidth that would need to be increased (i.e. launch more satellites).... so don't go looking for that cutover any time soon.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

I have no interest at all in HD. I wouldn't care if they never added any more of it.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

And in some cases - it's not that we're not interested in upgrading to HD - it's the costs and the economy that's holding us back.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

*Why not have every channel in HD?* Yeah. If the channel would pay enough for the extra production costs, if Charlie would be willing to support the channel sufficiently with suitable retransmission fees, and if you and your 15 million closest friends would be willing to pay about $280 a month for TV, hey, why not indeed?


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

> Why not have every channel in HD?


You must be new to the HD game.

Have patience, my friend, have patience. All things shall come to he who waits.


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## 356B (Oct 11, 2008)

In my reality, most everything I care about is in HD....it would be nice to have PBS though... and them old 30's and 40's horror movies.......and them.....


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## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

purvis said:


> Why not have every channel in HD as the "standard" of delivery? (Well, except for the shopping and infocrap channels). And then not worry about "when" it wil be in HD?


Both Dish and DirecTV have that as a long-term plan.

But first, about 60 MILLION active MPEG2-only receivers (between the two companies) will need to be replaced with HD/MPEG4-capable receivers, and probably 20 MILLION homes will need to have new dishes, before that can happen.

I'd guess that's going to take about 5 years.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

356B said:


> In my reality, most everything I care about is in HD....it would be nice to have PBS though... and them old 30's and 40's horror movies.......and them.....


On my system I get national PBS and a half-dozen or so local PBS channels in HD. It's called cable. 

Now, if I only had MSNBC in HD.


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## jkane (Oct 12, 2007)

It was called Voom. Dish bought them and that's why they had more HD to begin with. Voom died because it had only HD and did it before the world was ready for them.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

jkane said:


> It was called Voom. Dish bought them and that's why they had more HD to begin with. Voom died because it had only HD and did it before the world was ready for them.


Being HD only is what kept VOOM alive as long as it was. VOOM's problem wasn't having 15 HD only stations, it was only having 3 months of programming for each station. 2-3 years of seeing the same shows every 3-4 months no matter how good it looked, just can't last forever. VOOM would be here today, in all its Glory if they just could have added more shows or more episodes.


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## jilardi2 (Mar 6, 2008)

SayWhat? said:


> I have no interest at all in HD. I wouldn't care if they never added any more of it.


saywhat?


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## bnborg (Jun 3, 2005)

356B said:


> In my reality, most everything I care about is in HD....it would be nice to have PBS though... and them old 30's and 40's horror movies.......and them.....


I can get PBS in HD over the air, but only at night, and then only some of the time.


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

bnborg said:


> I can get PBS in HD over the air, but only at night, and then only some of the time.


Only at night  What is this AM Radio? OTA TV is not affected by the atmosphere in that way (i.e. sky-wave after sunset). With the possible exception of the low band VHF frequencies there is little or no skip on the High VHF & UHF bands that would be caused after sunset.

How far away is this OTA HD PBS signal, and what is it's RF channel (NOT it's "virtual" channel)?


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## Michael P (Oct 27, 2004)

Wait a minute, if by "only at night" do you mean the station only carried HD programs at night? That's true for nearly every PBS station.


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## bnborg (Jun 3, 2005)

No, I can't pick up anything OTA in the day. I know that the heavyside layer isn't supposed to matter to anything above RF. Don't ask me why. I am just reporting my results.

The PBS I get at night is reported as RF 34 by AntennaWeb.

I should mention that right now, my antenna setup is marginal at best. I have an un-amplified set-top UHF antenna, picking up stations 50 miles away. It is only one step above the basic loop. It looks like a horizontal bow tie, about 24 inches from tip to tip. I think it's a Terk.

I also don't know why I can get RF channel 9 (sporadically) on a UHF antenna.

AntennaWeb says I need a "red" or "blue" antenna to pick up the stations I am seeing.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Michael P said:


> Only at night  What is this AM Radio? OTA TV is not affected by the atmosphere in that way (i.e. sky-wave after sunset).


Balderdash.

There are several stations in my area I can only get at certain times of the day or night. Usually early morning is best, about 4-6 AM. To be fair, they are distant stations at about 70 miles or so.


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## GrumpyBear (Feb 1, 2006)

SayWhat? said:


> Balderdash.
> 
> There are several stations in my area I can only get at certain times of the day or night. Usually early morning is best, about 4-6 AM. To be fair, they are distant stations at about 70 miles or so.


Atmospherics, shouldn't interfer that much, but if your setup is Marginal for reception, then yes they can. Biggest issue is with Digital reception, its an all or nothing thing. You either get a picture or you don't, the days of fuzzy signals, rolling screens, and typical things you used to see with analog are gone.

I am having fond Marine Corps memories, of worring about D,E and F layers, and picking out freq's to transmit from our old HF95 Van, depending on layer strength and distance.


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## bnborg (Jun 3, 2005)

SayWhat? said:


> Balderdash.
> 
> There are several stations in my area I can only get at certain times of the day or night. Usually early morning is best, about 4-6 AM. To be fair, they are distant stations at about 70 miles or so.


Yes, that behavior is what I am seeing. I seem to be able to count on getting PBS after midnight or so, til 5 or 6 AM.

Sometimes I see pixelation on OTA, similar to my HD locals on 61.5.


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## 50+ (May 1, 2008)

agreed! unreal


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## RTCDude (Feb 3, 2005)

Nick said:


> You must be new to the HD game.
> 
> Have patience, my friend, have patience. All things shall come to he who waits.


So will old age.


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## jkane (Oct 12, 2007)

In fringe areas, this is likely to happen. Although there is not as much skip (there can be some), there is a much bigger factor that is called interference. The sun is a big noise generator. When it goes away, a weak signal has a better chance of getting through.


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

purvis said:


> Why not have every channel in HD as the "standard" of delivery? (Well, except for the shopping and infocrap channels). And then not worry about "when" it wil be in HD?
> 
> It would blow a hole in Dish Networks pricing policy of adding "extra" for HD program though.
> 
> question on HD. I notice that most of the HD channels have a "SD" along with the "HD" feed of the channel. Is this required? Can there not be just one "HD" channel that can be seen in SD only on SD receivers?


Probably 79% of Dish's customers don't have/want HD sets. It'll be 10 to 15 years before HD will be the norm. I'm guessing.


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## bnborg (Jun 3, 2005)

jkane said:


> In fringe areas, this is likely to happen. Although there is not as much skip (there can be some), there is a much bigger factor that is called interference. The sun is a big noise generator. When it goes away, a weak signal has a better chance of getting through.


Not to mention all those florescent lights, motors, etc., which are on less after midnight.


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## jkane (Oct 12, 2007)

bnborg said:


> Not to mention all those florescent lights, motors, etc., which are on less after midnight.


Small potatoes compared to the sun!  Those have to be near by. The sun in 93 million miles away and can out "noise" all of them. Plus, it's noise covers the entire planet, not just your block.


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## mike1977 (Aug 26, 2005)

SayWhat? said:


> I have no interest at all in HD. I wouldn't care if they never added any more of it.


Once you go HD, it's hard watching something in SD because it looks awful.


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## altidude (Jan 13, 2010)

mike1977 said:


> Once you go HD, it's hard watching something in SD because it looks awful.


My wife was anti-HD to start. Now she has the guide set to show HD channels only. If it's not in HD, she doesn't want to see it. She's been like that with all the tech I've brought into the house though. She wanted nothing to do with Tivo and now she can't live without a DVR. I'm adding the DVR option to my 211 tomorrow and she's already claimed that DVR as "hers". Go figure.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

mike1977 said:


> Once you go HD, it's hard watching something in SD because it looks awful.


HD downconverts look pretty good...(source material was HD, now being displayed as SD)...


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## prm1177 (Aug 21, 2007)

Depends on the original program content. You can either up-convert all SD channels, eat up expensive bandwidth, and deliver a image that is inferior to true HD to everyone, or else send the SD image and have the receivers up-convert at the destination. A pretty obvious choice in my estimation.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

GrumpyBear said:


> VOOM would be here today, in all its Glory if they just could have added more shows or more episodes.


Voom the programming, yes. Voom the satellite service had a bigger problem -a lack of total content. They had their channels which served as filler and they had whatever national HD was available but despite being available in SD people still wanted to watch other content ... which meant maintaining a separate subscription service for the SD content Voom was missing. They also relied too heavily on OTA digital locals ... which were barely on the air at the time. Yes, people will pay $60-$100 per month and still watch free OTA TV. Just keep the signals clear. DISH and DirecTV do that through rebroadcast of locals via satellite. Cable does that too.

Voom satellite was a good service but without locals and key SD channels they were just an expensive add on destined to fail as soon as DISH and DirecTV got their HD acts together. Selling their satellite to DISH was the best thing that ever happened to the company.

Voom the programming didn't grow ... and now there are so many channels out there that those channels are not needed any more.

As for every channel in HD, DISH is working that way for Eastern Arc customers. Put HD channels in HD and drop the SD version when a HD channel is added. SD customers can use an old 119-110 dish to get SD content. Eastern Arc is the closest service you will find to HD only. No SD unless the HD version is not available.

DISH tried selling packages with no SD channels in them but they grew too big and it became more cost effective to return to selling SD+HD packages. Too many problems with channel providers who wanted more for one or two HD channels than their entire suite of HD and SD channels. $10 more is an easier sell than some completely different package with LESS content (no SD ... repeating Voom's mistake).


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## Paul Secic (Dec 16, 2003)

altidude said:


> My wife was anti-HD to start. Now she has the guide set to show HD channels only. If it's not in HD, she doesn't want to see it. She's been like that with all the tech I've brought into the house though. She wanted nothing to do with Tivo and now she can't live without a DVR. I'm adding the DVR option to my 211 tomorrow and she's already claimed that DVR as "hers". Go figure.


Yup SD looks sad once you've had HD.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Didn't I have to cajole you into this ?


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## DJ Lon (Nov 3, 2005)

SayWhat? said:


> There are several stations in my area I can only get at certain times of the day or night. Usually early morning is best, about 4-6 AM. To be fair, they are distant stations at about 70 miles or so.


Same here in Phoenix. We have an old TV at work in our break room with a converter & a cheap pair of rabbit ears and sometimes in the mornings we can pick up the PBS station (KUAT) from Tucson.


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