# Does Dish offer PBS local in high def?



## unr1 (Jul 16, 2005)

I noticed it says HD for NBC, ABC, etc.....but not PBS.
Does that mean I need an off-air antenna to get HDTV on PBS?




Local channels currently available in this package:
Phoenix, AZ Locals Package - $5.99 per month
Station Local Channel Number Dish Channel Number
PHOENIX ABC-KNXV 15 8320
PHOENIX ABC-KNXV IN HD 15 6446
PHOENIX CBS-KPHO 5 8321
PHOENIX CBS-KPHO IN HD 5 6447
PHOENIX FOX-KSAZ 10 8323
PHOENIX FOX-KSAZ IN HD 10 6449
PHOENIX IND-KTVK 3 8327
PHOENIX IND-KMOH 6 8338
PHOENIX IND-KAZT 27 8331
PHOENIX NBC-KPNX 12 8322
PHOENIX NBC-KPNX IN HD 12 6448
PHOENIX PBS-KAET 8 8326
PHOENIX TELEF-KFPH 13 8330
PHOENIX TMNDO-KPHZ 11 8335
PHOENIX UNVSN-KTVW 33 8328
PHOENIX UPN-KUTP 45 8325
PHOENIX WB-KASW 61 8324


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## churoval (Aug 2, 2005)

unr1 said:


> I noticed it says HD for NBC, ABC, etc.....but not PBS.
> Does that mean I need an off-air antenna to get HDTV on PBS?


Yes, you will need an OTA antenna for PBS HD. In Phoenix, the PBS station has the national PBS HD feed on 8.1 and the local SD broadcast is on 8.2.


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## unr1 (Jul 16, 2005)

churoval said:


> Yes, you will need an OTA antenna for PBS HD. In Phoenix, the PBS station has the national PBS HD feed on 8.1 and the local SD broadcast is on 8.2.


darn, I would have liked to record some PBS shows.


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## Chop-Chop (Mar 8, 2006)

unr1 said:


> darn, I would have liked to record some PBS shows.


You can still record them as long as you get your PBSHD shows via OTA. If you don't pay for the HDLIL you will not see the guide though.


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## jacksg35c (Feb 21, 2003)

Chop-Chop said:


> You can still record them as long as you get your PBSHD shows via OTA. If you don't pay for the HDLIL you will not see the guide though.


this is my biggest problem with dish that they do not offer pbs-hd on the dish. i can't figure out why not. pbs-hd should not be trying to get a lot of money to carry the hd feed as pbs is a "non profit" channel. we do get the sd pbs. this is why i have not re-subcribed with dish as comcrap here in albuquerque has pbs-hd and dish does not carry pbs-hd but does carry the abc, nbc and fox feeds (cbs wants too much money supposedly to have either dish or comcrap carry cbs-hd). can anyone tell me why dish does not carry pbs-hd??? thanks


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## garys (Nov 4, 2005)

Chop-Chop said:


> You can still record them as long as you get your PBSHD shows via OTA. If you don't pay for the HDLIL you will not see the guide though.


The majority of local pbs stations do not show up in the guide (even with local subscribtion). If it shows up in yours, consider yourself lucky.


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## kb7oeb (Jun 16, 2004)

There is no longer guide data for 8.1 or 8.2 at least not on my 811.


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## churoval (Aug 2, 2005)

kb7oeb said:


> There is no longer guide data for 8.1 or 8.2 at least not on my 811.


My 622 still has guide data for both 8.1 and 8.2.


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## grooves12 (Oct 27, 2005)

jacksg35c said:


> this is my biggest problem with dish that they do not offer pbs-hd on the dish. i can't figure out why not. pbs-hd should not be trying to get a lot of money to carry the hd feed as pbs is a "non profit" channel. we do get the sd pbs. this is why i have not re-subcribed with dish as comcrap here in albuquerque has pbs-hd and dish does not carry pbs-hd but does carry the abc, nbc and fox feeds (cbs wants too much money supposedly to have either dish or comcrap carry cbs-hd). can anyone tell me why dish does not carry pbs-hd??? thanks


Well, they are bandwidth limited... and although many value the programming, it is VERY low on the list of channels watched by most. PBS-HD is likely to be the least watched and wanted of the available "local" HD channels. So, you will not see it carried by either of the Satellite companies for QUITE some time. It will take several more satellite launches and almost 100% carriage of the big-4 networks in the major DMA's before you have ANY hope of seeing PBS-HD on Dish.
My guess is IF there were room on the local spot beams for more HD locals, PBS would be third in line (or lower) behind, CW (merged UPN/WB), and the local RSN's in HD.

Also, it is NOT CBS that wants too much money... it is CBS's local affiliate. As several local CBS's across the nation are carried in HD. Write the channel and tell them how you feel about it.


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## churoval (Aug 2, 2005)

grooves12 said:


> Well, they are bandwidth limited... and although many value the programming, it is VERY low on the list of channels watched by most. PBS-HD is likely to be the least watched and wanted of the available "local" HD channels.


My question is how many local PBS stations actually broadcast their own HD feed? I'm guessing that most of them that have an HD subchannel on their OTA digital channel are using the same national feed and are still broadcasting their own "local" signal in SD. If that actually is the case, it would only require a single channel allocation by Dish to carry at least the national HD feed.


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## jacksg35c (Feb 21, 2003)

this was my thought exactly. why not a single national pbs-hd feed? i question if pbs-hd would be the least watched hd channel in a dish hd channel lineup!! with all the folks contributing to pbs it would appear a lot would actually watch pbs-hd. to broadcast just one more quality hd channel does not seem like too much to ask considering all the crap dish broadcasts (shopping channels etc.). the fact that comcrap here broadcasts pbs-hd seems to indicate the audience is watching it.


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## Bill R (Dec 20, 2002)

churoval said:


> My question is how many local PBS stations actually broadcast their own HD feed?


My guess would be very few. We have four PBS channels in my area that have an HD feed and all of them just show what PBS HD sends to them. Some of them do carry the HD shows at different times than what is on the HD feed. One of them always carries the HD feed live and they don't show any of the SD feed on any of their digital feeds (they do on their analog SD feed).

I asked a manager at one of the local PBS stations about DISH and/or DirecTV carrying the national PBS HD feed (instead of each local one) and he said "we will fight that". I guess he wants to make sure that local viewers see his (and only his) PBS fund raising programs.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

Bill R said:


> My guess would be very few. We have four PBS channels in my area that have an HD feed and all of them just show what PBS HD sends to them. Some of them do carry the HD shows at different times than what is on the HD feed. One of them always carries the HD feed live and they don't show any of the SD feed on any of their digital feeds (they do on their analog SD feed).
> 
> I asked a manager at one of the local PBS stations about DISH and/or DirecTV carrying the national PBS HD feed (instead of each local one) and he said "we will fight that". I guess he wants to make sure that local viewers see his (and only his) PBS fund raising programs.


5 PBS here (NY) and each shows a different HD program. Not time delayed either, but different programming.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Bill R said:


> I asked a manager at one of the local PBS stations about DISH and/or DirecTV carrying the national PBS HD feed (instead of each local one) and he said "we will fight that". I guess he wants to make sure that local viewers see his (and only his) PBS fund raising programs.


That seems strange to me too.

In my area, I get my PBSHD OTA just fine... but not everyone around here can do that. On top of that, OTA they multicast... so from 8-11pm each night PBSHD is on... the rest of the day it is off the air. If my local PBSHD stayed on 24/7 then I would no doubt watch it more often.

BUT... the kicker... Time Warner cable here has PBSHD 24 hrs a day. Yes, some repetition, but some stuff that never makes it to PBSHD OTA during the 3 hour window.

So for me... since I hate Time Warner with a passion... I want Dish to pick up PBSHD from here so I can see the same thing the cable folks are seeing. That is the only advantage right now that Time Warner has over Dish in my area with regards to HD.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

HDMe said:


> That seems strange to me too.
> 
> In my area, I get my PBSHD OTA just fine... but not everyone around here can do that. On top of that, OTA they multicast... so from 8-11pm each night PBSHD is on... the rest of the day it is off the air. If my local PBSHD stayed on 24/7 then I would no doubt watch it more often.
> 
> ...


It seems that most of the people posting to this thread don't seem to understand that PBS is an affliate network. Right now Dish is not going to be allowed to carry direct to the national customer. Each afffliate station has to pay PBS for the rights to show their programming. In fact there are different packages of programming offered at different prices. Not all stations can afford to carry all of the packages due to the cost. Anyway to end up this email It is very unlikely that Dish would be able to offer the PBS HD channel to a national audience. It would undercut the local stations that support them. In this world of the gov cutting the funding more all the time to PBS, the stations are going to have to keep as much of the viewer base in their area to attempt to keep the cash flowing in to keep them on the air.


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## ibglowin (Sep 10, 2002)

DirecTv doesn't have PBS HD either. Only your local cable company carries PBS HD at the moment. It would seem Dish would be able to find bandwidth for the local PBS in HD in MPEG4 on the new VIP receivers but guess its not a high priority or "compelling content". Luckily I have it OTA just fine. Problem is of course no guide data for the HD channel but we do get guide data for the SD PBS but they broadcast totally different stuff on each one so it becomes a pain to look things up of the web to see whats coming on.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

whatchel1 said:


> It seems that most of the people posting to this thread don't seem to understand that PBS is an affliate network. Right now Dish is not going to be allowed to carry direct to the national customer. Each afffliate station has to pay PBS for the rights to show their programming. In fact there are different packages of programming offered at different prices. Not all stations can afford to carry all of the packages due to the cost. Anyway to end up this email It is very unlikely that Dish would be able to offer the PBS HD channel to a national audience. It would undercut the local stations that support them. In this world of the gov cutting the funding more all the time to PBS, the stations are going to have to keep as much of the viewer base in their area to attempt to keep the cash flowing in to keep them on the air.


Where do you read from my post that I do not get PBS being part of a network?

I understand there are negotiations involved... and Dish has already negotiated with local PBS stations to have them up in SD... so I see no reason to believe they will not similarly negotiate to have PBS HD locals up as well. I doubt there will be a network feed, especially with what has been going on with the "distant network" court thing... but I am sure Dish is trying to get PBSHD locals.

Dish even reserved a couple of channel numbers in each LIL HD grouping... which indicates they are planning for adding at least 2 more locals in each market... right now those would logically be a PBSHD and the new CWHD perhaps in the fall... so I see no reason at all not to believe that we will one day have our PBSHD for local markets once they can negotiate.

As I stated in my post... my PBSHD would actually gain viewership by doing this.. because right now I can only watch PBSHD OTA from 8-11pm but with Dish they could have the 24 hr feed like cable has so I would watch more.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

Bill R said:


> My guess would be very few. We have four PBS channels in my area that have an HD feed and all of them just show what PBS HD sends to them. Some of them do carry the HD shows at different times than what is on the HD feed. One of them always carries the HD feed live and they don't show any of the SD feed on any of their digital feeds (they do on their analog SD feed).
> 
> I asked a manager at one of the local PBS stations about DISH and/or DirecTV carrying the national PBS HD feed (instead of each local one) and he said "we will fight that". I guess he wants to make sure that local viewers see his (and only his) PBS fund raising programs.


Hmmm that brings up an interesting point for me personally. I receive PBS HD from my local PBS affiliate, WNED Buffalo via Time Warner, but if I bypass the cable box and hook the cable line directly to the TV, I can get all of the Rochester locals in HD unencrypted using the TVs QAM tuner. WXXI HD out of Rochester always has different programming the WNED HD. I always viewed this as a major plus for cable, but now I'm wondering if the two affiliates are unique or just time shifted.

I know WNED has a show called Our Town or something like that, that spotlights different Western NY communities, and it's shot in HD. Whenever I tune to 82.3 it seems like there's always some cooking show on WXXI HD. It looks great though.


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## boylehome (Jul 16, 2004)

PBS = Public Broadcasting System. E* should be required to provide the PBS HD channel in the category for the other public access channels which they are required to provide.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

HDMe said:


> Where do you read from my post that I do not get PBS being part of a network?
> 
> I understand there are negotiations involved... and Dish has already negotiated with local PBS stations to have them up in SD... so I see no reason to believe they will not similarly negotiate to have PBS HD locals up as well. I doubt there will be a network feed, especially with what has been going on with the "distant network" court thing... but I am sure Dish is trying to get PBSHD locals.
> 
> ...


This is the 2nd PBS station that I have worked for. In the 1st the PBS HD was supplied by us to the cable company in the area. For E* to have PBS HD LIL it would have to be feed to them by the local PBS station. At this location we send the PBS HD as a pass thru from satellite to over the air. E* could supply it here by taking the off air signal and rebroadcast it. The LIL for this area is doing just that for the analog stations in the area. If they were to simply replace the analog receivers with digital it would be possible to do this. Now the thing is E* is going to have to do this in the future for all LIL but that will take time and money. It comes back to the fact they are doing Local into Local. Sorry your local PBS only broadcast the HD at night. Do they multicast several SD's during the day? That is what many stations do in their area. That is the choice that they have made to better serve their community.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

whatchel1 said:


> Sorry your local PBS only broadcast the HD at night. Do they multicast several SD's during the day? That is what many stations do in their area. That is the choice that they have made to better serve their community.


Yeah... They have 4 SD channels that are on during the day... and at night 2 or 3 of them go dark from 8-11pm while the HD subchannel is active.

I understand why they are doing it, and the subchannels are the Kids, Education, and News + an SD PBS channel to cover a lot of variety most of the day. I don't have a complaint with them, and our PBS is really responsive to info requests and technical questions so they are good at that too... I just hate missing PBSHD the rest of the day because I don't have cable... so I am hoping Dish will be able to reach local PBS agreements in the future.

I always understand the whole network vs affiliate deal... and would prefer to watch my local PBSHD than a national feed anyway... so that's the deal I'm hoping they eventually work out.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

HDMe said:


> Yeah... They have 4 SD channels that are on during the day... and at night 2 or 3 of them go dark from 8-11pm while the HD subchannel is active.
> 
> I understand why they are doing it, and the subchannels are the Kids, Education, and News + an SD PBS channel to cover a lot of variety most of the day. I don't have a complaint with them, and our PBS is really responsive to info requests and technical questions so they are good at that too... I just hate missing PBSHD the rest of the day because I don't have cable... so I am hoping Dish will be able to reach local PBS agreements in the future.
> 
> I always understand the whole network vs affiliate deal... and would prefer to watch my local PBSHD than a national feed anyway... so that's the deal I'm hoping they eventually work out.


I looked up your local PBS station. It is UNC TV it is a university station with a mission statement that doesn't look like it will ever run the HD other than prime time. It has an outreach tv program that is going to keep them multicasting during the day. BTW there is rarely new programming during the day on PBS HD. It is repeats and the new stuff is run during prime time.


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## kb7oeb (Jun 16, 2004)

Even though cable might have pbs-hd its still coming from the local station. Our station does a 3 hour delay of the sat feed and adds a 8.1 KAET bug at the start of each show and it shows up that way on cable.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

whatchel1 said:


> I looked up your local PBS station. It is UNC TV it is a university station with a mission statement that doesn't look like it will ever run the HD other than prime time. It has an outreach tv program that is going to keep them multicasting during the day. BTW there is rarely new programming during the day on PBS HD. It is repeats and the new stuff is run during prime time.


Yeah... which is why I am hoping Dish will be able to pick it up one day.

When I look at the schedule, I've seen the same thing as you... mostly repeats during the daytime... but it is sometimes more convenient for me to watch in the day (or would be if I could)... so the flexibility would be nice to catch a repeat at a better time.


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## motts (Apr 11, 2006)

tnsprin said:


> 5 PBS here (NY) and each shows a different HD program. Not time delayed either, but different programming.


I know channel 13 is in HD, but what others broadcast in HD? And, is it during certain programs during prime time? I point my antenna at 278 degrees.


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## tnsprin (Mar 16, 2003)

motts said:


> I know channel 13 is in HD, but what others broadcast in HD? And, is it during certain programs during prime time? I point my antenna at 278 degrees.


I am on the island and have no trouble picking up NY, NJ, and CT. WLIW is actually the closest for me and is actually the only one in NY. WNET, WNJB, WNJN, WNJT in NJ. Sometimes rotate around my antenna for CT. There are a couple more PBS stations I can receive there.

Try one of the sites such as http://www.antennaweb.org to find out which channels are available and which direction from your location.


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## scottchez (Feb 4, 2003)

I would be happy if dish would just have the Guide Data for PBS HD like Direct TV does.

All they have to do is map the HD Call Letters for each City to the national HD PBS feed, no bandwidth is needed for this.


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