The elephant in the room - ALL HD coming soon

[rossb]

Points for discussion:

TV is going to be all HD in the relatively near future. TV's have been slowly migrating over to the new standard, stations are working on this transition, and all new sets are capable of receiving some form of over-the-air HDTV. I know cable TV providers have been scrambling to upgrade their delivery pipes.

And like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, what will this do to satellite line-ups?

I mean, HD requires much more bandwidth, so some issues are:

a) do we get fewer channels in the packages which would be all HD, requiring no increase in birds?
b) multiple satellites a la DISH network to keep channel numbers up?
c) will there be down-converting of HD signals to SD for users of older receivers?
d) Heck, will SD even be available for us?
e) Are we all going to be forced into a massive equipment purchase?
f) What about the dishes themselves?

Anything else I haven't thought of?

Is there a thread somewhere (in which case, please move this message to the thread and leave directions...) discussing this?

I'd be interested in feedback from our industry gurus...

Regards...

 

[rossb]

Point taken about satellite being digital. Had forgotten it was only OTA mandated to go HDTV.

Actually, I'm a Bell ExpressVU customer - but I do see the way the market is going, and the increasing amount of HD content in the "cable channel" line ups makes me wonder how long after the OTA rollout will the content originators (and by extension, the signal providers like cable and satellite) will want to carry both SD and HD formats.

Hence the questions...

 

[Peter Parker]

Point taken about satellite being digital. Had forgotten it was only OTA mandated to go HDTV.

Actually, I'm a Bell ExpressVU customer - but I do see the way the market is going, and the increasing amount of HD content in the "cable channel" line ups makes me wonder how long after the OTA rollout will the content originators (and by extension, the signal providers like cable and satellite) will want to carry both SD and HD formats.

Hence the questions...

Even OTA is not going all HD---at least not in the US----it si simply going digital. The Canadian transition is later but as faras i know still presents no problem to you.

 

[Mr Tony]

And like the proverbial elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, what will this do to satellite line-ups?

nothing...the only thing changing is over the air...
satellite ain't changing...its already digital
cable isnt changing

if you get your TV channels via an antenna then you have to worry

I mean, HD requires much more bandwidth, so some issues are:

a) do we get fewer channels in the packages which would be all HD, requiring no increase in birds?
b) multiple satellites a la DISH network to keep channel numbers up?
c) will there be down-converting of HD signals to SD for users of older receivers?
d) Heck, will SD even be available for us?
e) Are we all going to be forced into a massive equipment purchase?
f) What about the dishes themselves?

a. no...HD is right now how it is
b. no..Dish has multiple satellites because they don't have enough transponders and they carry more local markets
c. no...channels are digital right now
d. yes it will be
e. no
f. nothing changes

again, what we have right now on satellite will stay the same. The upgrade is for over the air to go digital, not HD