Anybody know about USDTV?

[piperut]

I am in an area served by USDTV.

There website lists a few channels in SDTV.
Not really sure if this is a good option.

I think the PQ would be better then Dish or Direct TV.

I get NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS (actually 2 HD stations, and 9 SD PBS stations), Fox, and WB in HD off an OTA antenna.

USDTV lists ESPN, ESPN2, lifetime, Food Network, and a few others for my area. However, the channels list says these are in SD.

Not sure if this is worth looking into or not.

roland

 

[vurbano]

AVoid USDTV at all costs. They buy bandwidth from your local Pimp OTA affiliates thereby turning the affiliates HD signal into HDLite. Please, for the good of all HD, do not support this!

 

[Jamey K]

HD Lite is better than no SD.

 

[bryan27]

I think USDTV is a good service for metropolitian areas where cable can't be installed. In the markets USDTV is located the "cable" channels don't come over major network affiliates.

I see nothing wrong with the service, if stations aren't going to use the space. Look at it this way. We have a full power station airing America's Store 24/7 and a local religious station. These stations will probably never transmit HDTV. So what would be so wrong with these stations airing USDTV programming? Also is it so terribly bad for a PBS station to air USDTV. NCE stations around the country are in desparate need for money. Analog FM and TV stations rent out bandwidth for data services and paging systems all the time without the public complaining that the TV stations aren't using SAP or that the FM stations are no longer providing radio reading services.

As for stations pimping out their bandwidth. They don't get a free ride. Stations must pay 5% of the GROSS income from ancilliary services on their Digital stations to the Federal Government. In addition, stations multicasting must increase the number of hours of Instructional/Educational programming for children and the number of hours of Public Affairs programming. If the multicasts are scrambled (as is the case of USDTV) the additional hours of programming must be aired on their main unscrambled channel.

So as you see USDTV can be a "good thing". The government gets some badly needed cash, children get more educational programming, and adults get more public affairs programming.

USDTV is currently available in only Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas.

In Salt Lake City USDTV comes from:
KUEN-EDU (9 Bit)
KUPX-PAX (11.4bit)
KUWB-WB (6 bit)

In Albuquerque USDTV comes from:

KWBQ-WB (6 bit)
KASY-UPN (15 bit)

In Las Vegas USDTV comes from:

KBLR-TEL (15 bit)

I'm not sure what the bitstreem numbers mean, perhaps someone could explain that

 

[tdillon]

USDTV is currently available in only Salt Lake City, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas.

It is apparently being tested for the Los Angeles market. They are pumping 5 subchannels off of one transmitter here, with the host station using up one more.

 

[BFG]

USDTV is not an HD service, they provide digital boxes and you're paying for their suite of cable channels that come at the expense of your local broadcasters selling out their bandwidth

 

[vurbano]

USDTV is not an HD service, they provide digital boxes and you're paying for their suite of cable channels that come at the expense of your local broadcasters selling out their bandwidth

Finally some sanity in this thread. USDTV is a major threat to HD. It needs to fail and as fast as possible. Frankly I am of the opinion that the digital bandwidth was not offered for sale to the broadcasters to pimp it out for a buck.

 

[vurbano]

It is apparently being tested for the Los Angeles market. They are pumping 5 subchannels off of one transmitter here, with the host station using up one more.

And your local HD is suffering for it.

 

[dfergie]

Visit the Albuqurque local Hd forum at Avs and see how the locals like having their bandwidth hijacked...

 

[DarrellP]

DO NOT SUPPORT USDTV. Unfortunatley, the Portland market has already agreed to sell off a portion of their bandwidth to them. I think the FCC should step in and ban this wholesale "sell-off" of FREE bandwidth.

 

[bryan27]

The FCC isn't going to do anything about it. Broadcasting has been renting out bandwidth for decades.

HDTV is not mandated only Digital operation is the mandate. It was known long before the standards were set for digital television that there would be auxillary services provided by the stations. HDTV is nice, but if a station doesn't want to transmit in HDTV they don't have too.

Not all broadcast stations are rolling in the dough to spend funds on the latest digital transmission equipment, some could barely afford to get on the air with standard digital. One of our local stations can't afford HDTV. It can barely afford to stay on the air with analog and having to convert to standard digital has put the station in $8 Million in debt.

We all complain about stations not transmitting in HDTV, but would you rather have a station transmit in SD or ED renting out space to keep the station afloat, or would you rather have the station go out of business and transmit no signal at all. What about some of these small market stations that in lew of airing HDTV have opted to multicast a network not currently available on analong in the market?

It is in the government's best interest that stations rent out space for auxillary services. The stations aren't getting away for free by renting out space. Like I said earlier they must pay the Government 5% of their gross earnings from the auxillary services in addition stations must increase the number of hours they broadcast Educational/Instructional programming for children and increase the number of hours of public affairs programming.

I really don't understand all the complaining with USDTV. The stations airing USDTV aren't major network affiliates with loads of HDTV content anyway. I could see if USDTV was using ABC, CBS, NBC, or FOX affiliates, but they aren't.

 

[tvgirl]

USDTV is NOT Lite HD

Vurbano couldn't be more wrong. Do your own broadcast homework. What creates Lite HD is a bunch of people sucking off the same signal, like cable. Over the air signal, like USD TV, is a direct signal you recieve, direct from the broadcaster. It's like in the old days before cable, every home had it's on anntena to recieve the TV signal over the air. Be a smart consumer. Do your research.

 

[mdonnelly]

Vurbano couldn't be more wrong. Do your own broadcast homework. What creates Lite HD is a bunch of people sucking off the same signal, like cable. Over the air signal, like USD TV, is a direct signal you recieve, direct from the broadcaster. It's like in the old days before cable, every home had it's on anntena to recieve the TV signal over the air. Be a smart consumer. Do your research.

Do your own. The signal is direct from the broadcaster, but is created by taking bandwidth from that station's OTA channel. There's no free lunch here. Each station is allotted so much bandwidth, and no more.

USDTV is a parasite. In many ways, it's just like cable - too many channels sucking off the same bandwidth.

 

[piperut]

Right now in the Salt Lake Area USDTV is running Fox News and Lifetime in the clear.
The PQ looks better then Dish Network. It is SDTV. Not HDTV.

They only offer 12 channels for $20, and they are not very many channels that I would watch.

For now I am going to stay with the Dish 180 package and the local OTA HDTV and see what happens down the road.

Things keeps changing fairly quickly.

roland