Local HD on DISH??

[Soycrema]

Any chance this might ever happen? Having DISH add PBS, NBC and ABC HD feeds just like they do with CBS?

[Mike123abc]

Only way I could see this happening is if they acquired R/L DBS's Rainbow 1 satellite and had it service 61.5. With that spot beam satellite they could do HDTV ABC/CBS/NBC/Fox/PBS for the top 20 or so markets.

But, it would probably be a big $$ investment and I do not realistically see them paying big $$ for HDTV for LIL. Plus then there would be fights with the NAB over why only some stations are in HDTV and others on Dish were in low def. That is not fair! I do not see them having the capacity any time soon to do all the LIL in HDTV. NYC alone would be 24 stations.

[Glenn]

Bumping this to ask the same question, due to E*'s latest announcement about their new satellite and all the new HD programming that will become available. Will any of this new stuff result in being able to receive local HD programming?

(I have a guy coming out this week to do a site inspection for an outdoor antenna. I'd sure like to know PDQ whether I'm still going to need one! :) )

[Jacob S]

Before any new HD locals would go up I would think that they would wait for a further compression advancement in the technology allowing more HDTV channels to fit on a transponder.

Also HD would have to gain major popularity before this would happen. Before all of this would happen it may be 2010 or later.

How about channels in a digital format for the digital conversion in 2006? How is Dish going to do that? Would that take up more space on the satellite or would they just need to come out with a new receiver that would not convert it to analog? Also would this make the receivers smaller because they would not have to convert digital to analog?

[AJ2086]

To my understanding the receivers dont convert analog to digital they convert the DBS signal so it can be viewed on your TV. All of the analog to digital is done at like there supercomputer main framr place.

[Jacob S]

Yes but when the new tv's come out in which will be all digital vs. analog, then you would still be getting the analog from the tv out, right?