Those Scranton locals aren't being "tested". They are the "minor" local channels. The big 4 network channels will be uplinked eventually in HD on a different transponder.
Dish Network MUST offer all the local channels receivable by one satellite dish antenna eventually whether they originalte as analog or digital signals. So they are cramming all the minor locals in MPEG4 on the spot beams. For some reason Scranton got the minor locals before the HD locals were uplinked.
So you don't think Dish is going to offer PBS and CW in HD anytime soon? I thought they were doing that for some markets, and so is D*.