From Multichannel News:
High-definition programming may seem to be everywhere, but most of it is on HDTV channels that are simply simulcasts of standard-definition services.
Of the 40 to 140 HD channels available from larger pay TV providers, only a handful are HD-only linear channels. Being one of those few pure-play high-definition networks is something of a mixed blessing.
“For a new network, there is clearly an advantage in coming into the market as an all HD-network,” said Smithsonian Networks general manager Tom Hayden. “I'm not sure we would have gotten as much traction if we had come into the market as a standard-definition, ad-supported network.”
But HD-only channels face some challenges. Last month, Time Warner Cable said it was dropping HDNet and HDNet Movies across all of its systems. Similarly, Dish Network bounced Smithsonian Channel at the end of 2008 — though Hayden said “we are in active discussions with them and we anticipate being back on [Dish] by the end of the year.”
Last December, the HD-only ranks grew even thinner when Rainbow Media Holdings said it was shutting down the domestic operations of its Voom HD suite of 15 networks. Rainbow cited the loss of carriage on Dish as a major factor in its decision.
This is a little bit of a sore spot for me because I want everything I watch on my actually TV to be in high-definition (I don't care when I watch on Hulu on a smaller computer monitor) and while almost everything I watch is always broadcast there are still a lot of times even when I am watching the HD channel on the HDTV where the content itself is not being broadcast in HD.
This isn't a problem for me for ESPN shows like Around the Horn or Pardon The Interruption that are only shot in standard definition. I probably don't want to see Kornheiser in HD anyway, although having seen Wilbon on the ABC/ESPN basketball coverage he's definitely HD ready! But sometimes, even in 2009, I will tune in a San Francisco Giants game that is broadcast in standard definition. That's really annoying.
I could go on, and on, with my kvetching, but I'll spare you the walls of text. At least for now.
I’ll sit next to you. I can’t even watch non-HD shows, anymore. In fact, I only watch Mad Men on BluRay (since AMC’s HD version isn’t available yet on Verizon Fios) rather than the first-run SD version, and while I’ve heard great things about AMC’s Breaking Bad, I couldn’t watch it because of the poor SD picture quality.
No matter how good a show is, I won’t watch it anymore unless it’s HiDef.
I’m with you on being an HD content snob. Fortunately AMC is available in HD on Comcast. And HD versions of Mad Men are available on the On Demand service in-season and Breaking Bad is/was available in HD with On Demand as well.
What sucks is HBO stopped providing HD content for the On Demand service apparently because HBO/Time Warner didn’t like that they were making it so easy for people to record HD content. I think that’s pretty stupid because they are not deterring the people who want to record the shows and distribute them, they are only deterring paying customers from getting the best experience.
I still get the HBO content in HD and can DVR it in HD but due to the way Comcast’s DVR works (or perhaps more precisely how the program guide information is fed into the program guide) it is not optimal for recording shows that broadcast the same episode more than once a week. I don’t mind it for something like Entourage, but for season two of In Treatment (which I thought was often fantastic) there were just too many episodes and it was easier to watch them On Demand. I suffered through the standard-def experience, but I wasn’t happy about it!
I on the other hand don’t care about HD
Kermonk, you’re not alone. I still haven’t been able to convince my brother (who bought a nice 40″ Bravia within the last year) to upgrade to HD content. His response: “I don’t care!”
I think there are two factors: 1.) until you have it on some channels and not on others to notice what you’re missing, you don’t really notice and 2.) the bigger your TV, the more it matters.
HD content snobs unite.
I feel your pain on non-hd sports. It’s not so bad until you’ve seen it in HD, but then it becomes almost unwatchable.
I’ll join in on the snobbery here. Mad Men and Breaking Bad both look amazing in HD (and solid on DVD) but are horrible in SD on AMC, especially when the SD feed is on a big HDTV. Good thing we’ve got AMC-HD at home! Comcast is good for something…
And stretch-o-vision is the bane of all HD tomfoolery. I saw The Wizard of Oz on TNT a few months back, and it was in HD, but still in it’s original 4×3 (1.33:1) ratio in HD. Never seen that happen before or since on TNT. And it was amazing, crisp, colorful… HD! I know it’s because the average layperson doesn’t care, as long as what they see fills their screen, but all the fisheye and stretching effects, either done by a network (TNT, History, etc.) or the TV itself are abominable. Just give us the programming in its original aspect ratio and let us do with it what we want. A little education can go a long way on this one. The only TV-side effect I don’t mind in a pinch is the linear zoom for 16:9 letterboxed SD. It made BSG watchable on our HDTV before we got Sigh-Figh in HD, for one. It doesn’t come close to HD quality, but a decent image processor in a tv can make that a viable if the HD feed is down (or there’s a weather warning on WFLD-DT, grrr…)
But what really pisses me off just as much is cropping. Basically all scripted shows on broadcast (and the top-flight ones on cable) are shot in HD. But when I’m stuck in a non-HD situation like I am at college, only NBC & FOX on broadcast and USA, FX, AMC & TNT on basic cable letterbox those shows in SD. Ultimately, I want to see the entire image, as the director and DP intended, not the stupid 4×3 center crop I get on ABC & CBS. The cinematic quality of the best-shot shows becomes far more apparent and enjoyable in the intended widescreen than when it’s clearly constrained in the 4×3 zone.
By the way, the SD quality itself is generally passable on a smaller screen like my 15″ (which is 4×3), but a bigger one like the 42″ HDTV my dad enjoys at home has me consciously searching only real HD feeds for content when I’m surfing or recording. Not surprising given the resolution disparity, but still something I can live with on smaller screens.
I wish it would be possible to educate the general public on all this BS we get from HD providers, but then I remember that shows like Idol are dominating the ratings, and I shed a tear or 2 for that dream. Maybe it’s just something we can start to do at the grassroots level, TVBTN readers (and others) as teachers, fixing one person at a time. With a little effort, we could change the world!!
You may commence calling me delusional!
Count me in as an HD Snob too…I remember getting my first HDTV and getting Comcast HD service and was thinking what’s all the fuss over. I literally didn’t see the difference. The TV was one of RCA’s first HD projection TVs…and it’s the worst TV I’ve ever owned. So when I bought my 50″ Plasma TV I was expected the same results but went ahead and ordered Comcast HD service again….What a difference! Now I find myself searching only the HD feeds for something to watch.
What gets me is that I have 3 different view experiences. The 1st one is of course HD…I absolutely love it. I wish that broadcast and other HD networks would switch to 1080P, but I know that’s not going to happen in the immediate future. The 2nd is watching SD digital channels. The quality can’t compete with HD, nor do I expect it too, but at least it is still watchable. The 3rd experience I have is with Comcast’s analog channels. Even though I am a digital customer not all of Comcast’s Digital Cable is actually digital. (Any station that you can get from hooking the coaxial cable up to you tv is analog even on digital cable boxes.) The quality of these channels are absolutely horrible. They have a lot of snow in them and some are completely unwatchable (like my local CW)
I also use Clear QAM digital tuners to PVR on my laptop, and I really wish that comcast would unencrypted the HD channels that I would be able to get with basic analog SD cable like FX, TNT, USA….ect
Why does AMC even have an HD channel? With the exception of their original programming (which amounts to very little), half of everything they show is in Stretch-O-Vision, anyway. I don’t recall the last time I saw a film in OAR on there, but I think it was probably back in the ’90s — before the channel got ruined. If it weren’t for “Breaking Bad,” I’d probably call up my cable company and ask them to kindly make it go Voom.
Now you know why AMC’s motto is “Story Matters” and not “Aspect Ratio Matters.”
I’m like Robert in that I rarely watch SD channels for anything. But I have actually fallen back to SD for the “House Hunters” show on HGTV that my wife enjoys. We’ve discussed the incidence of HD compression (and the pixellation & audio drop outs it causes) by Comcast (and others) before on the site, but only on HGTV has the problem become so consistent for me that I’ve given up on their HD channel for now.
Jason writes, “I saw The Wizard of Oz on TNT a few months back, and it was in HD, but still in it’s original 4×3 (1.33:1) ratio in HD. Never seen that happen before or since on TNT.”
Not that I watch TNT, but ABC is broadcasting “The Goode Family” like this. It’s in HD, but it’s a 4×3 show. Can’t remember the last time anything like that has been done on broadcast TV.
I’m pretty sure “The Goode Family” isn’t in HD, which would be why it’s broadcast in 4×3.
Yeah, baseball is basically unwatchable in non HD. I don’t understand why Comcast doesn’t have TBS HD in my area yet. BTW, isn’t there some sort of plan for all channels to be broadcast in HD?
Riff, I know NBC used to do the same thing with Scrubs until it moved to ABC this past season. 4×3 in a 16×9 HD feed. That’s the way to do it with that sort of content. If broadcasters treated their audience even a TINY bit more intelligently on this stuff, a lot of the problems they currently have with aspect ratios would go away. And yes, baseball is nigh-unwatchable in SD, no matter the screen size. Sports-watching is one of the biggest benefits to HD.
I find that some shows I watch just because they are in HD. I watch Harper’s Island in HD on demand just because it looks so pretty on my 73″ HD TV. Yes, dead bodies hanging from trees can look pretty.
I love HD. So much that I have locked out all the standard feeds if I have the HD channel. Also, sports in HD is the best. Almost like you’re there.
“We’ve discussed the incidence of HD compression (and the pixellation & audio drop outs it causes) by Comcast (and others) before on the site…”
For us, the CW HD channel (on Comcast) is the worst. We only watch(ed) a couple shows on the CW (Supernatural, Reaper, and my guilty-pleasure Gossip Girl) but the audio drop-outs have almost made me switch back to the SD feed. Every episode we watch has multiple glitches (although sometimes the audio feed works if we do a 15 sec rewind), but the nice picture keeps me on the HD feed.
I do prefer Comcast in many ways, but like Robert mentioned, their DVR set-up is annoying. Dish’s DVR was much better. Not only did it NOT record every reairing of shows like Monk, Psych, etc within a week of the new episode, it also would automatically record the next airing of a show that was skipped due to priorities of other shows recording at the same time (so I would always set the cable network shows as the lowest priority since they always repeat 2 hours later and multiple times during the week). On Comcast I tend to schedule a lot of single recordings for the shows I regularly watch just to avoid having to go in a delete the multiple repeats (for non-cable shows, The Simpsons and Family Guy were always recording because Comcast doesn’t classify the nightly repeats as “Repeats” so they, by default of Comcast’s DVR set-up, record).
Jason says:
“And yes, baseball is nigh-unwatchable in SD, no matter the screen size.”
This is rich. Perhaps the sport will finally catch on some day with adequate consumer technology to prop it up. (Said he of the 9-inch B&W set.)
I love Hi-Def but it isn’t a deal breaker for me. I would rather more channels just use the letterbox format, that is what really annoys me. Most TV and Movies are filmed in 16×9 or 16×10. Cutting them to fit a 4×3 TV not only annoys me but ruins the film. this is especially annoying on the HBO/On-demand channels as they always change the aspect of the film to 4×3.
I too noticed the CW feed dropping audio here and there, I barely watch the channel but when I do, its in analog because of this. Another issue is the HD channel I do get, more than half the time they are till airing stuff in standard definition. whats the point of the HD veriosn of the channel if it looks exactly the same as the normal one.
Be careful what you wish for, because you might just end up with a ton of over-compressed HD channels.
The easiest way to make room for more HD is to up the compression ratio on some or all of the other channels.
This is why there is a huge variation in picture quality from channel to channel and between the same channel on different providers (SD and HD). Less popular channels tend to suffer the most.
I feel especially sorry for ATT&T U-verse customers, because from what I’ve seen (additively in 1 home) ATT&T has to mutilate the signal to fit it in their tiny pipeline.
I would rather see SD channels upgraded DVD quality 16:9, than more HD channels of lower quality.
Jon K, you’d be pretty wrong.
Jason writes, “Riff, I know NBC used to do the same thing with Scrubs until it moved to ABC this past season. 4×3 in a 16×9 HD feed.”
Did they? The last time I watched “Scrubs” on NBC (which admittedly was a looong time ago), it wasn’t in HD. And it looked awful on a 65″ screen. Somebody told me they did one 16×9 HD episode on NBC as a test (“My Transition” I think?), and then of course it went 16×9 HD full-time on ABC. Granted, in ABC’s 720p format. Which is, you know, not as nice as 1080.
With all the other switches this past season (“Scrubs,” “Survivor,” “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill,” etc.), this kind of begs the question of why “The Amazing Race” is still a standard def show.