National HD

[Soycrema]

Ok, so basically there's 0 chance of getting our local networks in HD through DISH, but is there any chance they might be willing to add a National feed of NBC, ABC, PBS and FOX like they do already with CBS-HD? Any rumors out there of this EVER happening?

[clapple]

Soycrema,
Dish is not the problem. The problem is our "wonderful" politicians sold out to the broadcasters, rather than protect the consumers. The law says we can't have out of market broadcasts, without the local stations permission. Even if the local stations have failed to meet the deadlines for providing digital transmissions, they still can prevent us from getting HDTV from another source.

I hear rumors it is possible to get both Boston and Seattle networks from Canadian Bell Expressvu, if you go through a Canadian address broker.

I wouldn't be surprised, if a lot of people did just that, as long as the broadcasters continue to not use the public's broadcast spectrum, that the politicians gave them, for free.

[HTguy]

CBS is more interested in promoting HD than the other networks, at least for now, which is probably why they made it available to DISH subs in qualified areas.

An ABC executive interviewed by HD Mag said they weren't interested in making their HD signal available via satellite because their affilliates were investing so much money in the new digital transmitters. Of course this attitude could change in the future if someone more intelligent gets to review the decision & realizes that many people will never get OTA reception because of where they happen to live.

FOX doesn't even do HD. Their prime-time & special events are digitally broadcast in 480P - what some would call "extended definition." They call it " FOX Widescreen."

NBC is gradually doing more HD. In addition to special sporting events like the olympics & The Tonight Show they are now doing their main Prime Time 1 hr dramas each weeknight. No word on their interest (if any) in DBS HD carraige but it probably won't happen until they start doing sitcoms & movies, etc. Right now it amounts to only 2 hrs of HD Mon-Fri.

PBS does several hours of Prime Time HD. Most of it is the same demo stuff over & over, though. While they occasionally add new plays, opera, concerts, travel shows, art & history programs, etc. it probably wouldn't be worthwhile to go on DBS until they have more new HD content on a nightly basis. I believe there are some issues that might inhibit national DBS HD carriage, tho. But they have had a C-band analog transmission in the clear practically forever so it's hard to understand why they couldn't allow DBS HD in qualified areas.

[RAD]

Originally posted by HTguy

NBC is gradually doing more HD. In addition to special sporting events like the olympics & The Tonight Show they are now doing their main Prime Time 1 hr dramas each weeknight. No word on their interest (if any) in DBS HD carraige but it probably won't happen until they start doing sitcoms & movies, etc. Right now it amounts to only 2 hrs of HD Mon-Fri.

West Wing is not in HD at this time.

[HTguy]

Originally posted by RAD


West Wing is not in HD at this time.

But Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, ER, L&O SVU, etc. are. It's basically 1 prime-time 1 hr drama almost every night.

I suspect they'll up it to ~2hrs a night next year.

[RAD]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by HTguy


But Crossing Jordan, Law & Order, ER, L&O SVU, etc. are. It's basically 1 prime-time 1 hr drama almost every night.

I suspect they'll up it to ~2hrs a night next year. [/QUOTE

Your original post said "...are now doing their main Prime Time 1 hr dramas each weeknight." West Wing is their main prime time drama on Wednesday nights and it's not in HD. I just wanted to make sure that he didn't expect to see WW in HD and find out that it wasn't.

[Lyle_JP]

West Wing is their main prime time drama on Wednesday nights and it's not in HD.

I guess that would depend entirely on your point of view. I consider Law & Order to be NBC's "main prime time" drama on Wednesdays. It's in it's 13th year and it's as good as it ever was. I stopped watching West Wing after they added "Jeremy" from Sports Night. It's positively unwatchable now, and with Sorkin's departure who knows how much worse it could get.

[raj2001]

Originally posted by Soycrema
Ok, so basically there's 0 chance of getting our local networks in HD through DISH, but is there any chance they might be willing to add a National feed of NBC, ABC, PBS and FOX like they do already with CBS-HD? Any rumors out there of this EVER happening?

There are no "national" feeds. There are feeds that are outside of your home DMA, mostly from NYC and LA. As for not receiving them, that's the FCC rules.

[homergreg]

There is probably a good reason why this can't be done on DBS, but here's an idea on how to get HD for locals anyway:

You set your channel to the single feed for the HD network, then during commercial, the box automatically switches the receiver to the local SD commercials. Then back to the HD channel when commerical time is over.

I know this would take some major Rube Goldberg programming to do this, but the Locals would get their commercials aired, we would get HD programming, and it wouldn't use up any more bandwidth than having one national HD feed for each network. ( I guess it would be two, one for east coast and one for west)

I'm sure it's a great deal more complicated than that, but maybe it's the basis for something that could work?

[Ken_F]

You set your channel to the single feed for the HD network, then during commercial, the box automatically switches the receiver to the local SD commercials. Then back to the HD channel when commerical time is over.

I know this would take some major Rube Goldberg programming to do this, but the Locals would get their commercials aired, we would get HD programming, and it wouldn't use up any more bandwidth than having one national HD feed for each network. ( I guess it would be two, one for east coast and one for west)

I'm sure it's a great deal more complicated than that, but maybe it's the basis for something that could work?I originally suggested this to Dish some three to four years ago. It sounds like a good idea, but it's not workable using the locals on satellite now, and may never be workable. Consider:

1) whether you like it or not, local networks have the right to display a local callsign logo "bug" on their programming;
2) the ATSC and NTSC channels can be off by a second or two;
3) the ATSC and NTSC channels don't always have the same commercial breaks at the same time, particularly for special events;
4) sometimes there are different commercials on the ATSC and NTSC feeds;
5) occasionally, the commercials on the HDTV channels are in actual HDTV, and when they are, local affiliates may want them to be passed that way;
6) some affiliates offer their own locally produced HDTV programming, be it news or special events;
7) the analog feeds are ultimately going away; and
8) other reasons not mentioned above.

For there to be any possibility of this to work, I think Dish Network would have to:

1) use the DTV feed rather than the analog feed as the locals source, downconverting it to 480i;
2) buffer all these local feeds so that the commercial breaks for networks in each market in each timezone roughly align;
3) have a HDTV network feed for each timezone, where appropriate;

This would only work if 1) the FCC didn't impose some quality requirement on DTV locals carriage, thereby negating the issue of locally produced HDTV; 2) affiliates were willing to accept the absence of their own channel "bug" on programming; and 3) other technical hurdles could be overcome. Even then, it probably wouldn't be workable for every single local market.

[Big Bob]

Originally posted by clapple


I hear rumors it is possible to get both Boston and Seattle networks from Canadian Bell Expressvu, if you go through a Canadian address broker.



HD or NTSC broadcasts from Seattle? 

[Big Bob]

Okay,
got off my but and searched a bit for myself.
If http://www.heinzler.on.ca/channels.html#networks2 is to be believed, Seattle and Boston are on Expressvu. Looks like the NTSC feed though. Not trumpeted as HD.

[Big Bob]

and as the search goes on...
(don't you hate it when someone is really tired and just keeps posting when they haven't finished their research)
http://www.bce.ca/en/news/releases/bev/2003/03/05/70127.html
Says that Seattle and Boston would be HD :)
Also on http://www.pressi.com/ca/release/61797.html
Note that this is dated 03/06/2003. Cool stuff

I'm going to be now...

[Big Bob]

uh, that is bed now.

[homergreg]

Ken_F


Sounds complicated for sure. I think that the channel bug could somehow be uploaded onto the receiver and kept in a buffer that could be turned on and off with some kind of flag in the signal. But that would probably mean that the local bug would be controlled by the national signal. For example, NBC turns on the flag, then everybody's box superimposes their individual local logo on the picture.

I agree your idea of using the DTV feed from the local would solve many issues arising with time sync. I guess that it will happen regardless if analog signals are ever really turned off.

I guess the whole idea would require cooperation from the locals, and that probably won't happen unless E* can get them on their side, and there is no way that can happen, or can it?

If the FCC can somehow keep their nose out of any kind of "must carry" for HDTV, then if just one network aligns with satellite, the others would just about be forced to work with E* to compete. And I guess therin lies the key, get one network to work with you, and the others will follow. Something like this would have to be done before the cable lobby gets any rules passed that would make cooperating with one network impossible.

[Big Bob]

I to have thought of only passing commercials and some sort of mechanism for overlaying an image from local stations.

Another solution is to use pvr functions to cache commercials.

But these ideas only work for network provided shows. I have never figured out a solution for locally produced shows (public affairs, news and talk) and syndicated shows. Also, many stations show network shows at different times, for various reasons.

Stations are investing quite a bit to convert their newscast to HD. I doubt they will agree to any scheme that does not distribute their news.

And there is the sticky question of what to do with independent stations with no feeds at all. I am sure if the network affiliates are being distributed in HD, they will insist that they are distributed in HD as well.

The networks provide 3 hours of primetime nightly, 1/2 - 3 hours of late night, a few hours of daytime and who knows how much overnight. The solution would have to address the non-network-provided shows as well.

[davhol]

I think the issue we are all forgetting is that of bandwidth. Right now, there aren't enough satellites in the sky and there aren't enough transponders on the satellites up there to do HD locals. Look at what BOTH providers are doing (E*, D*) just to get what locals they ARE carrying: they are loading up spotbeams and compressing the signals, just to have carriage. If and until there is a major technology change, more satellites, more cooperation between satelitte service providers, the "dream" of local HD carriage by satellite will remain just that: a dream. Unfortunately, to make this dream a reality, it'll take lots of money and lots of politics.

[Mike123abc]

To do true LIL HDTV, assuming you have 1500 stations or so to send via the satellite. Assuming you have 3 HDTV channels per transponder (using 8PSK like Dish used) that would require 500 transponders worth of capacity. Now lets say they get ambitious and try to do this.

With 4 uplink centers they could get 4x reuse out of frequencies. This would require 125 transponders. DBS gets 32 transponders frequencies per transponder. This would take four satellite slots.

With 6 uplink centers, they could get 6x reuse and require 83 transponders. They could probably get this in 3 satellite locations. 6x reuse is pushing it since you cannot put spots with the same frequencies right next to each other.

If you assume 6 uplink centers, 3 satellite positions, you probably need at least 6 satellites. This is because with 2 satellites at each slot, they would do 16 frequencies into 6 spots each or 96 transponders, this would be the bleading edge of sat power and complexity. 9 satellites would probably be better since you then could do about 66 spots per satellite, more in line with todays technology (main limits are the number of spot dishes the satellite would have to have D-4/7s have 42 spots on them today, and the solar power cells to provide the power for all these spots).

Assuming 250mil for 9 super satellites (you get a good deal since you are building 9 essentially the same satellites), you could probably provide LIL HDTV for all stations in the US for 2.250 billion + the $$ to build 4 more uplink centers in Dish's case or 3 more in DirecTV's case.

What do you get for your 2.5billion? Will you get any more customers? Probably some more but will you get enough more to ever pay back the $$? Probably not.

It is quite technically feasible today to provide LIL HDTV to all, but it is not cost effective.