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I remember reading that the FCC did not want downconversion of the an HD signal but I don't think there is anything legally stopping D* from taking a 720p HD local network signal and making it 480i SD so it can work with legacy receivers.

I would love to help them analyze the cost/benefit analysis of making all locals digital HD in the primary markets and getting rid of legacy receivers. The saturation point might change dramatically next year as they have more HD markets and those 100 HD national channels under their belt. I see them installing MPEG4 HD capable receivers for all new installs at some point. One thing that is see more important then receivers are the dishes. A lot easier to send a person a new receiver then it is to install a new dish. It will be interesting to see if 5 LNB dishes are necessary in all markets in 2009.

Brewer4 said:

I remember reading that the FCC did not want downconversion of the an HD signal but I don't think there is anything legally stopping D* from taking a 720p HD local network signal and making it 480i SD so it can work with legacy receivers.

I would love to help them analyze the cost/benefit analysis of making all locals digital HD in the primary markets and getting rid of legacy receivers. The saturation point might change dramatically next year as they have more HD markets and those 100 HD national channels under their belt. I see them installing MPEG4 HD capable receivers for all new installs at some point. One thing that is see more important then receivers are the dishes. A lot easier to send a person a new receiver then it is to install a new dish. It will be interesting to see if 5 LNB dishes are necessary in all markets in 2009.

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Your first mistake is your belief that 2009 means HD it only requires broadcaster to provide a DIGITAL BROADCAST. Nothing will change from today if ABC is available now it will be available in 2009.

boba said:

Your first mistake is your belief that 2009 means HD it only requires broadcaster to provide a DIGITAL BROADCAST. Nothing will change from today if ABC is available now it will be available in 2009.

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You see that is not my mistake. I am having such a hard time asking this question. Its only digital, I know. The issue is if local networks shut off the ANALOG feed and D* is using that to feed their SD local channels, then when that shuts off, they gotta use the DIGITAL ones. And a good portion of the digital ones will be HD at points in the day. So what is D* going to do with the digital signals being upfed? And are they going to downcovert the ones that are in HD to allow SD legacy receivers to view the channels?

Brewer4 said:

You see that is not my mistake. I am having such a hard time asking this question. Its only digital, I know. The issue is if local networks shut off the ANALOG feed and D* is using that to feed their SD local channels, then when that shuts off, they gotta use the DIGITAL ones. And a good portion of the digital ones will be HD at points in the day. So what is D* going to do with the digital signals being upfed? And are they going to downcovert the ones that are in HD to allow SD legacy receivers to view the channels?

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I think the obvious answer to your question is yes.

If Directv is all Digital,Why does anyone care? They must get a digital signal from somewhere!How can you turn analog into digital? I'm real interested in knowing how this can be done.I would say this is going to effect cable customers ,who only have analog cable,and that have tv's without a digital tuner.I would also say most networks have a digial signal as well as analog.By 2009 I would say if a station wants to remain on the air,they would have no choice!

Hemi 6.1 said:

If Directv is all Digital,Why does anyone care? They must get a digital signal from somewhere!How can you turn analog into digital? I'm real interested in knowing how this can be done.I would say this is going to effect cable customers ,who only have analog cable,and that have tv's without a digital tuner.I would also say most networks have a digial signal as well as analog.By 2009 I would say if a station wants to remain on the air,they would have no choice!

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How does one turn analog to digital. Good question. Its done all the time. Media Center PC's have tuner cards that take composite and S-Video feeds and digitize them. Slingboxes take the same type of analog feeds and turn them into digital with ability to transport over TCP/IP. Regular Tivos do this. They take analog video feeds, digitize and stamp them on an internal hard drive.

What D* is currently doing for local networks is grab the analog transmission either by a direct fiber link from the station (might be digitized by the local station) or an antenna and digitize the signal to their central operations. That digitized signal is then brought down to the user. One of the main advantages of satellite providers over the years is that their channels were all digital. Most never get analoged as they come straight from the source in digital and passed to the consumer as digital. It only becomes analog the moment it goes to your regular TV via RF, composite or S-Video.

I am pretty sure the answer to my rather complex question is that analog feed gets cut off in 2009 so the only logic choice is grab the digital feed and uplink it to their central operations. At that point, the signal will have to get formated to work with legacy receivers that are not able to see HD. The good news, even though a 720p signal gets downconverted, the signal will not have gone through an analog step so legacy receivers may even see a boost in picture quality in 2009 for local networks.

I only asked the question to see if anyone knows more about this. I guess I should have saved this question to ask a D* engineer directly. Sorry for confusion folks.

There won't be any changes on our end.
On DirecTV's end there won't be much changes either. They take the analog signal today (via Fiber or OTA) and encode it to MPEG2 digital for broadcast.

After analog is turned off then will then take the digial signal (via Fiber or OTA) and encode it to MPEG2 digital for broadcast.

In other words, not much changes.