Quote:
Originally Posted by elgemcdlf
I think I kinda see what is happening here. From what I have found the stations are broadcasting in HD and SD. Both are digital and both are free along with being mixed together. I think local stations just jumped straight from going digital to HD/SD which may be why they are using the HD reference. But as Bill stated what they are saying is what he stated. Analog OTA is leaving by federal mandate and being replaced with digital OTA. If you have a digital tuner in your current television you need nothing and will not be affected. If you have an analog tv you will need a converter box or a new tv. If your tv does not have a tuner built in (monitor) you will still need some form of tuner. |
Right. Eventually, I think everything will be HD, but for a while at least they'll have different options, like having both SD and HD... where I live, it seems they aren't quite sure what to do yet. I only get 4 OTA digital stations, NBC, ABC, CBS, and one of those 2nd tier networks (can't remember what it is... wish it was
PBS or the CW, but it isn't). At first, the local CBS channel did what you say, ie a HD version and a SD version, but the local NBC channel put up a weather channel in the "extra space", and the local ABC channel only had the HD version. The extra space thing is important, because they can get more space by compressing the main HD signal. When the local ABC channel was just HD, it was the best quality of the three, however now they've decided to put in a weather channel too, and I've noticed quality problems with their signal since they've done that. I've read posts from people in other areas where they say that the stations squeeze all sorts of little channels into their bandwidth, to the extent that the main HD channel is very poor quality. I hope my locals don't do that. So far the quality is pretty good.... not as good as the satellite network HD feeds, but pretty good.
The interesting thing in my area though, is that the local channels don't seem to have ANY HD equipment for the local programming. Ie prime time stuff (and soap operas) that they get from the network are HD, but all the local stuff, news, and local programs, are in SD, as I guess that they aren't rushing into buying new cameras, etc.
But the most surprising thing, is that they apparently don't have any equipment that can put chyron information on an HD screen. Ie when watching a HD football game, the local channel needed to put some text on the screen, either station ID info or info about a snow storm that was hitting the area, etc. Every time they did this, they had to switch from HD to SD, and put the text on the SD screen. Really gave you a good view of the difference between HD and SD, but I thought it was interesting that all these local stations, who have an investment in all sorts of SD equipment are now in a quandry because this equipment isn't compatable with HD, and they probably don't have the money to just replace everything at once. So it's going to be a while before most of the small market TV stations go completely HD. In the meantime, there will probably be a LOT of CHEAP SD broadcast equipment up for sale by the stations that ARE making the investment. I wish I knew more about this stuff so I could look out for it on ebay, because there are probably a lot of very nice
satellite receivers that these stations will be getting rid of, that would still be very useful for hobbiests.