Do you think broadcasters will all eventually adopt HDTV or SDTV? (1 Viewer)

[Bill Slack]

Re: PBS

God, I hope not. Maybe for some programming but their HD content is faboulous and a lot of it REALLY shines in HD.

Smart Travels in SD is something I have no interest in. In HD it's spectacular to watch. Half the point of the show is the imagery. I always watched it when my affiliate actually gave it to me. I'd watch Nova in HD (and have...) too.

Content may be king, but PQ is queen, in my book...

Hopefully the whole issue of time shifting will be taken care of by Tivo and it's ilk for anyone that cares in the future. That makes a whole lot more sense (for the consumer, anyway!)

 

[Roberto Carlo]

Smart Travels in SD is something I have no interest in. In HD it's spectacular to watch. Half the point of the show is the imagery. I always watched it when my affiliate actually gave it to me. I'd watch Nova in HD (and have...) too.

I agree. I got my HDTV box today and found myself entranced by Discovery HD Theater's show about Yellowstone park. It didn't matter that I was looking at a field and that the narrator was droning on, the picture was so eye-popping -- a moose in HDTV is an awesome sight -- I couldn't tear myself away from the couch. Then came a "Walking With Dinosaurs" type show about ancient North America, in 5.1 DD no less, and my fat ass stayed planted.

 

[MickeS]

Well, when color TV came out I bet there were a lot of people who didn't care what was on either, they just wanted to see pictures in color. The TV stations have to plan ahead a little longer than 2 weeks though.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

MickeS,

I'm old enough to remember the advent of color tv, having been born in 1950.

The first color sets arrived in 53-54. For literally 6 or 7 years there was at most 3 or 4 hours of color programming a week. RCA was the biggest mfg of color sets and also owned NBC. They put Bonanza on the air in color for the sole purpose of selling color sets. It worked, color sets started selling very well indeed, and once J6P saw color tv in his home he never went back to BW.

It still took until the mid 60s before the majority of programs in prime time were in color.

4 years into the Digital broadcast transition there is already more HD out there than there was color 10 years after it's inception.

The head of the FCC has pressured the networks to put on more HD programming in order to speed the transition to digital tv broadcast. The intention is to use HD to sell digital broadcasting and digital capable receivers and sets.

If this strategy is successful, enough J6Ps will be sold HD to insure the survival of HD programming, at least in prime time.

 

[MickeS]

I think the intention is actually to free up the analog spectrum so the FCC can sell those frequencies. Why else would they be so intent on pushing digital TV (they don't really push HD AFAIK).

IMO, the increased PQ in HD is not on the same level as color was to B&W. That's why I believe that they'll need more than just "pretty pictures" to convince people to buy HD, and I guess the FCC thinks so too, since they have set their 2006/80% coverage (I think it was 80%, don't remember for sure) deadline.

/Mike

 

[Ray Chuang]

Personally, I think the primary transmission medium for 1080i 16:9 HDTV will NOT be over cable systems.
The reason is simple: it would cost an exorbitant amount of money for companies like AT&T Broadband and Cox to upgrade their cable systems to accommodate large numbers of HDTV channels due to the need to substantially upgrade bandwidth between the cable provider's transmitting station to the home.
It's far more likely that the primary transmission method will be by small DBS systems such as DirecTV or Dish Network and larger C/Ku-band systems found in many rural areas, since they are far less bandwidth constrained. I would not be surprised that plans for DBS satellites designed specifically for HDTV broadcasts are already past the planning stage and they could be launched by 2006-2008 time frame.