PBS in HD?
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Surprised WGBH/WGBX in Boston isn't HD on the bird like it is OTA and on comcast and cox. Down here in RI we get both RI PBS (WSBE) ch 36 and CPTV (WEDN) ch 53 in HD on D*. For awhile ch 36 was having trouble with the HD feed and I'd have to unhide SD locals to watch the SD feed. I actually watch CPTV ch 53 more so I don't even really know how much of RI PBS's programming is actually in HD considering most of their library was transferred off 3/4" Umatic tape to digital years ago.
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Interestingly enough, even here in the big L.A. market we could have easily lost PBS in HD had DIRECTV not by chance added PBS station KOCE-DT 50 several years back, since the former PBS flagship station here, KCET-DT 28, left the PBS fold and went independent over a year or so ago.
The other two PBS stations in this market carried by DIRECTV, KVCR-DT 24 and KLCS-DT 58 (owned by LAUSD), are only in SD.
The other two PBS stations in this market carried by DIRECTV, KVCR-DT 24 and KLCS-DT 58 (owned by LAUSD), are only in SD.
It is pretty strange. You would think PBS would want the largest local audience for their wonderful programing and would almost give away the HD signal anywhere they could to solicit pledges. The Sacramento DMA HD signal was turned on a few years back and not only do we watch a lot of the excellent HD programing but we even started sending them money based on a pledge drive we saw in HD on DirecTV. I called the PBS station and DirecTV many times to try and push the process. Even wrote the National PBS Office.DrZ said:
I have a good friend that is in the Santa Barbara/Santa Maria/San Luis Obispo DMA. Some pretty wealthy sattelite subs and PBS donaters in that area. I think his PBS feed is in SD from Bakersfield because that PBS station is too small to broadcast in HD. No one at DirecTV will listen to him.
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You think they spun a roulette wheel that came up "50," or was it more along the lines of a dice game?HoTat2 said:
KLCS opted to have one of their subchannels carried, rather than appearing in HD -- as I understand it, as a result of DirecTV's agreement with national PBS, local PBS stations have that as an either/or choice when they negotiate with DirecTV.
When looking at a list of the 40 biggest local markets in the country, DTV has HD feeds of all 4 networks and PBS in all of them with the exception of one single holdout - PBS in the Boston market. There's definitely something uniquely weird going on with that station.
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The SD versions of PBS are a waste of time, on Directv. Our small market PBS station, in Watertown, NY, has a great HD signal, over the air and two subchannels. So what do we get on Directv? The two subchannels. Sure, probably conserving bandwidth, but being on Spotbeams, that shouldn't be an issue. Our locals only have a few channels, unlike the larger markets, so they could at least give us a PBS HD channel.
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