So whatever happened to the HD revolution?

[texasdiver]

It's now been exactly 2 years since I dropped a cool grand on a new HD Tivo machine in anticipation of rapidly growing lineup of HD offerings from DirecTV.

Much to my disappointment, over the past two years I have seen exactly two new HD channels show up on DirecTV: TNT-HD and ESPN2. At the same time I watched my NFL Sunday Ticket in HD disappear behind an outrageous additional fee. Aside from the occasional college football game on ESPN2 I figure that on balance my HD viewing is worse today than it was 2 years ago.

Do I get to look forward to a whopping two more additional HD channels in the next 2 years? How much longer do I have to wait until the one channel I really want to see in HD, the SciFi channel, actually makes it to HD?

I don't really frequent this forum much unless there is something wrong with my machine. Luckly since the HDMI and then the Hard Drive burnt out on my first machine after 6 months, I haven't had any other problems and it's been ticking along flawlessly since then.

Anyway, just felt like venting on the 2 year anniversary of my HD Tivo purchase!

[newsposter]

how can they give us something that doesn't exist? :) Unfortunately we can't fault DTV if it doesn't exist. now stuff like the movie channels in HD, that's their fault!

[durl]

As far as the HD Revolution as a whole, we shouldn't ignore the growing number of HD programs available on the networks over the past 2 years.

Regarding satellite HD, we just have to give the networks time to get HD material together. I believe the clock is ticking and we need to see something soon, but I'm willing to give them a little more time to get some new HD networks up and running.

[bladewalker]

So whatever happened to the HD revolution?
It got over-compressed!

Eye popping HD has definitely declined over the past two years as infrastructure providers have discovered they can squish the heck out of HD and still bandy about their "HD" service. I remember all the crowing DirecTV was doing 2 years ago about all the HD that was imminent. I don't hear nearly as much now.

[pitboss01821]

I understand your Rant completely.

After much research into which provider was best for my 50" plasma, for the money, i had to cancel my DTV sub and go with cable.

DTV will forever be behind things when it comes to HD or it will compress the signal to an unwatchable analog "stretched" signal so it can squeeze all the channels on its satellites.

I'm a satellite fan who was completely disappointed in what they have to offer for HD and what they would do to the signal before it would get to my TV. I'm not paying big bucks to watch a compromised Tv signal.

i'll stick with cable and when the series 3 comes out, i'll be happy all over again.

[alv]

remember there are plans to greatly increase our HD in the next 9 months or so. IF you can't wait - switch.

[rminsk]

remember there are plans to greatly increase our HD in the next 9 months or so. IF you can't wait - switch.By adding more locals :rolleyes:

[texasdiver]

Yeah, that's what they said 2 years ago. Something about how new HD material was coming out soon. Especially with the competition from Voom. We all know how that turned out.

Cable is not an option. I live in a rural area with no cable service. So it's satellite or nothing. I get ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS locals from Waco in HD. Fox is only SD analog but I don't miss that except during football. and of course the local FOX affiliate has no plans to upgrade to digital much less HD and won't give waivers either, the *******s, So I'm stuck with DirecTV and have to pay for locals just to get crappy a crappy SD Fox feed or else hook rabbit ears directly to my Samsung DLP and use the analog tuner in the TV to get a fuzzy Fox signal. Yuck.

It's just disappointing that here we are 2 years later and without any real meaningful increase in HD coverage even though 2 years is supposed to be an eon considering how fast most of this technology progresses.

Meanwhile I find that I use Netflix more than anything to watch movies on my Samsung DLP which, while it isn't HD, is really quite watchable.

But it just makes me want to scream sometimes to think that I have something like $5 grand invested in home entertainment equipment yet perhaps no more than 15-20% of my viewing actually takes full advantage of the technology sitting in my living room.

I would pay a serious increase in monthly fees just to get SciFi, FSN, and some more movie channels in HD.

[missparker10]

I understand your Rant completely.

I'm a satellite fan who was completely disappointed in what they have to offer for HD and what they would do to the signal before it would get to my TV. I'm not paying big bucks to watch a compromised Tv signal.



I guess it's just me then because I'm quite happy with the way my HD channels look. I find them alot better than my SD channels. Yes, I wish there were more of them, hopefully the future brings more of them. But I find them lovely to look at. :D

[texasdiver]

I guess I just don't understand what the current barriers are to more content and channels.

Doesn't appear to be a bandwidth issue. DirecTV can certainly handle the bandwidth. They do on sundays during football season when they add all the HD sunday ticket channels.

Doesn't appear to be a content issue. Take the SciFi channel, for example. At least some of their original content is already in HD because it comes on 6 months later on Univerval HD. And the DVDs are far superior to the crap we get on their SD channel.

Nothing makes me want to scream more than to watch something like Battlestar on my 50" DLP in SD with black bars on all 4 sides. Same thing when I watch vintage movies on AMC and the other vintage movie channels.

So what are the big barriers to getting more HD channels up and running?

[alv]

Directtv has 2 satellites launching this year that will help bandwidth.

content providers need a financial incentive which doesn't seem to be profitable yet. Look at Seinfeld which is now available in HD in syndication. Not one station has converted even though many transmit in HD

[teasip]

I don't know what happened to it but I know I just dumped the HD package, again. By the time I need TNT-HD for NASCAR I'll be on FiOS TV most likely.

[newsposter]

are they gonna more the HD channels off the 119 ever? I can't see it from my location but am pretty sure i could see the 103/99 since they would be higher

[TimGoodwin]

Directtv has 2 satellites launching this year that will help bandwidth.

content providers need a financial incentive which doesn't seem to be profitable yet. Look at Seinfeld which is now available in HD in syndication. Not one station has converted even though many transmit in HD

Ah, that's next year for the two new satellites.

[speedcouch]

While I'm extremely disappointed that DirecTV hasn't picked up Starz and Cinemax HD yet, I do find that we watch more and more HD stuff OTA lately. Between NASCAR and football, plus a lot of good new network shows, I certainly think I'm getting my money's worth out of my HDTV than when we got it 4+ years ago. Sure I'd rather see Sci-Fi and a couple of other channels in HD too, but I feel there's a lot more HD content every day. I think it just depends on what you watch.

Cheryl

[PierreS]

I totally sympathize with TexasDriver and my area supposedly is ahead of the times on HD. I live in an outlying Seattle suburb and receive OTA NBC, ABC, CBS, WB, FOX, Paramount, PBS, and a couple of "God" channels and a shopping channel (in HD). The vast majority of the day, the signal's nothing more than upconverted NTSC content. Ironically though, I do watch more primetime network shows when they're transmitting in HD. Jay Leno and David Letterman are stunning in HD. Lost is very enjoyable too in HD. But for the most part, I'm surprised there isn't more content available.

As for cable, my local provider doesn't bother to show NBC's feed anymore in HD because the local provider (KING) is trying to charge more than the other networks for an HD feed. That's the story I'm getting from my cable provider. I tried contacting the local NBC affiliate and they didn't even bother to counter my provider's claim. So the only way I can enjoy it now is to pay extra for an HD "tier" package which consists of NBC, a crappy movie channel, PAX (which looks simply dreadful in HD), ESPN (which I could care less about), TNT (which frequently upconverts from NTSC), and the Discovery Channel HD.

Rabbit ears work half way decently, but only from one side of my house. So I'm basically stuck with this half baked cable offering.

I don't hold the cable company entirely at fault obviously. And I agree that it's bewildering how few cable channels have converted over the HD. There are plenty of folks now upgrading to HD. It's a crying shame cable channels haven't picked up the pace.

As for HD Tivo, we're using it less and less and we switch to HD viewing. The industry is definitely in a state of transition and I'm sure it's only bound to get worse.

[ShiningBengal]

It's now been exactly 2 years since I dropped a cool grand on a new HD Tivo machine in anticipation of rapidly growing lineup of HD offerings from DirecTV.

Much to my disappointment, over the past two years I have seen exactly two new HD channels show up on DirecTV: TNT-HD and ESPN2. At the same time I watched my NFL Sunday Ticket in HD disappear behind an outrageous additional fee. Aside from the occasional college football game on ESPN2 I figure that on balance my HD viewing is worse today than it was 2 years ago.

Do I get to look forward to a whopping two more additional HD channels in the next 2 years? How much longer do I have to wait until the one channel I really want to see in HD, the SciFi channel, actually makes it to HD?

I don't really frequent this forum much unless there is something wrong with my machine. Luckly since the HDMI and then the Hard Drive burnt out on my first machine after 6 months, I haven't had any other problems and it's been ticking along flawlessly since then.

Anyway, just felt like venting on the 2 year anniversary of my HD Tivo purchase!

The Discovery Channel is available in HD right now, but DirecTV won't provide it. That is a quality channel. Instead, they give us Law and Order reruns on TNT-HD stretched to an unwatchable 9x16, and other reruns ad nauseum.

Lets face it: As long as people will watch crap in HD, that's what we will get. I never believed the hype about 1500 HD channels. I watch about a dozen channels on DirecTV, most of them not in HD. Why? Because they are still worth watching in SD. It would be nice if they were in HD, of course, but I refuse to watch ANYTHING merely because it's in HD. In Minneapolis, we are about to get our local news in HD. Oh great: Twits with big hair and capped teeth chit-chattering about nothing and calling it "news" in HD!!!! I can hardly wait.

[MNTivoGuy]

Didn't they tell you? The HD Revolution will not be televised.

[MNTivoGuy]

The Discovery Channel is available in HD right now, but DirecTV won't provide it.

D* has carried Discovery HD Theater since the HD package launched

[jeffl]

D* has done more harm to hd than any other provider. The compression has really got bad over the last three years. The variety is poor. They add TNT which shows everything in sd stretch. Uhd has 90% B movies, and Hdnet-I have little idea what is on that channel half the time. I find dvd as about as good as D* hdo/showtime hd. The dvd has better 5.1. Time to kick Rupy to the curb.

[hoopsrgreat]

I am real close to canceling D* right now. Closer than I have ever been. My kings games are on comcast sports net in SD on D*, yet they are in HD through cable. Much of the Giants and A's games are in HD on cable, yet SD from D*.

I currently get ALL of my HD from OTA, so I have really only 1 reason to keep D*...... the Sunday Ticket.

My Internet provider has DSL, which is significantly slower than cable. If you get cable internet the costs are ridiculous if you dont get cable tv. Bundled together it is only 19.00 fro 6 months right now.


Clock is ticking................decisions.

I agree, I have aout 8k in home thater crap in my living room, and I get nothing from D* to use it.

[ducpham]

Hi,

My 1-year commitment with the HD package was just over and my SAT-T60 died recently. I called to see if I can get a good deal for an HD DVR upgrade. To my surprise, the DTV customer service staff gave me a firm offer of $499 for leasing the HR10-250. I told her that if they want to keep a good 5-year customer like me, they have to give me a better offer. She then transfered me to the retention department. The staff in the retention department said the best offer he can give me is $75 off. I told him that the max I could pay is $300 or I will cancel the service. He said $425 is as low as he could go. So I canceled my DTV which I pay about $60/month.

We don't watch TV that often so without DTV, it is not the end of the world. But it seems strange that DTV doesn't yield to my offer. If you do the math, the gap between their offer and my offer is only $125 which is only worth 2 months of my fee. Now, instead of getting revenue of 60x24 + 30 = $1740 or more for at least 2 years they are getting nothing from me now. What a dump mistake the guy in the retention department made.

There's got to be a better deal somewhere else. Or I could wait until the next HD DVR and more HD programs become available.

[ShiningBengal]

D* has carried Discovery HD Theater since the HD package launched

Yes, of course you are right. It's just that I no longer subscribe to the HD Package, because there is so little new on it. Most of it has been recycled for years.

National Geographic, on the other hand, has tons of quality programming, with new programs added every week.

[slydog75]

I've been pretty happy with my DirecTV HD picture.. I do notice pixelation sometimes, but not always and other than that it looks pretty good. I watch stuff on Discovery HD all the time that I wouldn't otherwise be watching because it just looks so freaking great!

[MarcusInMD]

Put DirecTV HD up on a 110" front projector and your opinion of the HD they send out will quickly change to a negative one.

DirecTV is also missing the boat on Outdoor Channel HD which has been up and in the clear since last June. Food Network HD will soon be up and running in HD as will several others. I believe National Geographic HD is also up too. Several other channels will be going over to HD this year. I doubt seriously that DirecTV will get them any time soon. This is just a guess but from someone who has been a customer for just over a year I certainly am not a fan of their service and how they roll channels (HD) out.

[mitchrc]

I'm happy with DirecTV's service. What I can't put up with is being at a friend's house where almost half of the SD channels are still analog, with noise and ghosting, even on their "digital" service.

The bulk of my TV viewing is Big 4 network prime, HBO, and news and lifestyle channels that aren't in HD yet anyway. Couple that with needing an HD TiVo and DirecTV remains the only way to go.

[SlyDog10]

Agreed, the fact DTV can't provide local HD sports channels (available via cable) is really a shame. I can't belive the local cable guys are stressing this in their ads. Here in Chicago, all the home Bulls games (shown on Comcrap) are in HD, and I think that's true of a lot of other cities also. I've been a customer since '99 (including NFLST and NBALP) and now I'm not long for DTV. I wish I could get FIOS here, if so I'd consider moving to that. NFLST is nice, but for what it's going to cost, I could GO to 5 of the 8 Packer games for what I'm spending (and then it's true definition).

[slydog75]

SlyDog10? Where did you come from?! anyway...

Put DirecTV HD up on a 110" front projector and your opinion of the HD they send out will quickly change to a negative one.


I actually have mine on a 94" FP screen and I'm still happy with it. Is it as good as the OTA HD feed? You can tell a difference, but it's not extreme. I must add though, that there HAVE been times when it got really bad to the point that I wasn't sure it was even HD, but so far (I've only been HD for a month now) it seems to be the exception and not the rule.

[steuert]

Although I've been toying with the idea of HD since it became fairly widely available, IMO it has yet to reach the point where it's worth the cost. Too few programs, too much added expense for equipment and programming. And somehow the idea of looking at Leno's mug in HD or being able to see the droplets of sweat on an athlete's forehead is not particularly attractive to me.

I suspect a lot of the improvement in PQ with HD is due to cleaner broadcasts, and in fact IMO the PQ of the best SD broadcasts via DTV on my ED plasma is as close to HD as I'll probably ever need.

IMO the changes from the early fuzzy OTA color broadcasts to cable and then to satellite (not to mention digital TiVos) all represented quantum improvements in the quality of TV viewing. But IMO the cost/benefit ratio of adding HD (especially replacing two DTiVos with the HD versions) is just not worth it, and evidently a substantial part of the viewing public agrees.

[jcricket]

IMHO, If you watch a lot of network shows, and get get a good signal via an OTA antenna, HD is totally worth it. And, since I can't stand being on the network's schedule, I like being able to record those network shows and watch them later. Hence, I like (or at least accept) my HR10-250 as a key part of my entertainment system.

However, I recently cancelled my subscription to the D* HD Package. I realized I only ever tuned into those channels because I was bored and felt like I needed to justify my 42" Plasma :-) I also went down to Total Choice from Total Choice+ and cancelled HBO. Saves me $300/year and I barely miss it. I'm also lucky enough to be a "Lifetime DVR" subscriber, which after 4 years has totally paid for itself. So my bill is just $44.99 for TC and $4.99 for my additional receiver (an R10).

All that said, I don't see my "needs" increasing all that much in the next couple of years. I'll stick with my HR10-250 and R10 setup until the next generation of DVRs (HR20, Series 3, whatever Comcast releases) shakes itself out. Chances are I'll go with whomever will replace both of my DVRs with free, HD-capable, dual-tuner DVRs and a similarly priced programming package. Is that D*, E* or Comcast? Dunno.

[newsposter]

IMHO, If you watch a lot of network shows, and get get a good signal via an OTA antenna, HD is totally worth it.

However, I recently cancelled my subscription to the D* HD Package. I realized I only ever tuned into those channels because I was bored and felt like I needed to justify my 42" Plasma



Well put. But if someone does not have OTA, i can totally understand why HDtivo would be a waste. However i'm lucky enough to have it and at least 90% of my HD viewing is OTA and I'm still weeks behind on stuff.

I think the problem is a lot of people do it backwards, they buy a tv then see what signal they can get. I was lucky enough to get my HDtivo cheap and really only wanted 2 more tuners for conflicts. But i put up and antenna and got in channels so then, and ONLY then, did i go out and buy an HDTV. Maybe i did it the 'right' way so that's why i'm happy as can be.

[TyroneShoes]

DTV might have over-hyped (ya think?) what we would be seeing in HD by now, but there never was any HD revolution. HD is evolutionary (read: slow), not revolutionary. It took 10 years for prime time to be in HD, it will take a few more for syndication and local programming to be mostly HD, and there will be SD receivers and SD services for many years after the analog cutoff. And unfortunately, the further you are from a major metropolitan center, the longer it will take.

[newsposter]

heck they dont even have all digital in a lot of cable systems....much less HD :)

[mitchrc]

DTV might have over-hyped (ya think?) what we would be seeing in HD by now, but there never was any HD revolution. HD is evolutionary (read: slow), not revolutionary. It took 10 years for prime time to be in HD, it will take a few more for syndication and local programming to be mostly HD, and there will be SD receivers and SD services for many years after the analog cutoff. And unfortunately, the further you are from a major metropolitan center, the longer it will take.

Agreed. I've been following this since the early 80s when I got into TV. Most of the industry is actually surprised at the rapid acceleration that has happened in the last two years. We've been caught off guard and are now scrambling. You'll be seeing a lot of interesting things happen this year. This is the tipping point from a production point of view. When I see something on network prime that isn't HD, I'm actually surprised. Another thing to keep an eye on are commercials,which I know is hard for us TiVo users. ;-) I saw a couple of really great HD spots on Fox last night. Advertisers are starting to demand it. The HD viewers, while still a minority, are an affluent, largely TiVoless group, who are active TV viewers. The networks and the advertisers want us and that's a good thing.