Dish converting to digital locals feeds

[rhdj]

Supposedly for a station to broadcast a digital signal is very expensive. Will some smaller station be going out of business with the transition to digital?

Low power station will not be required to meet the Feb 2009 deadline. That is why when purchasing a converter box, make sure it has an analog pass thru. The uhf low power staion will still be analog next year. I am not sure if they just have a different deadline. Here In Corpus Christi we will have about Half the stations still analog after the deadline.

 

[EricBskiVT]

Low power station will not be required to meet the Feb 2009 deadline. That is why when purchasing a converter box, make sure it has an analog pass thru. The uhf low power staion will still be analog next year. I am not sure if they just have a different deadline. Here In Corpus Christi we will have about Half the stations still analog after the deadline.

If your area has no low power stations or none that you care about, then analog passthru is not an issue.

 

[odbrv]

Atlanta should already be digital and San Francisco should be today. Will ALLAmerican Direct get these digital feeds to improve their PQ for their Distant Networks package?

 

[dishrich]

Direct and cable were already getting the digital feed of channel 3. That's according to the manager of WCIA in the Ask the Manager forum of channel 3.

But do understand that the "digital" feed from WCIA-DT varies between cable & DBS. If you notice on the DirecTV spreadsheet, their POP is in Springfield & since day 1, they pull the WCIA feed from the WCFN-DT transmitter here in Springfield, since it is VERY difficult to pull WCIA analog off-air over here in Springfield. (WCFN-DT carries WCIA on subchannel .2 & WCIA-DT does the same for WCFN on their side of the DMA, which is how some cable systems on the east side of the DMA get MNTV) When WCIA went HD a couple year's ago, they also made the WCIA subchannel on WCFN-DT HD as well. So, D* was forced to crop the WCIA-DT feed for the SD feed for our local CBS. (they do NOT have our locals up in HD yet) So, D* subs in our market didn't have to see the CBS bug whenever the prog was in HD.

Also FYI, some of the smaller cable systems on the western end of our DMA, had to start pulling WCIA from the WCFN-DT feed as well & ran into the same issues as D* does. Obviously some of these smaller systems can't (or won't) get a direct fiber feed & couldn't pull WCIA directly OTA from Champaign, either.

Comcast here, OTOH, gets BOTH WCIA-SD & HD via a direct fiber feed from their Champaign headend & relays it over to our Springfield headend.

 

[kstuart]

Atlanta should already be digital and San Francisco should be today.

Note: "Week of" 5/26/08.

So, if I am reading this correctly, it may not be digital until Monday...

 

[PhilAce]

Atlanta should already be digital and San Francisco should be today. Will ALLAmerican Direct get these digital feeds to improve their PQ for their Distant Networks package?

I thought they already used some of the digital signals. As I remember they were very compressed.

 

[danm2z]

What will be the effect of those channels that broadcast a different program in analog than HD. My local PBS station (WETA) has an entirely different HD feed from their standard analog. Will we loose out on the analog programming now? Will this now increase the possibility of getting more HD locals than the "Big 4"?

 

[Jim5506]

Local PBS simulcasts analog programming on the *.1 channel and HD on *.3 channel

 

[Tyralak]

Looks like mine (SF Bay Area) went digital on Monday.

 

[DBS Commando]

Looks like mine (SF Bay Area) went digital on Monday.

Have you noticed any differences between the analog and digital feeds since the switch?

 

[Tyralak]

Have you noticed any differences between the analog and digital feeds since the switch?

Not really. Just a couple of notices on the channels before the switch. But, our locals always looked good. And unlike many other markets, the Fox feed wasn't HDLite. It looks EXACTLY like it does OTA.

 

[DougE]

Not really. Just a couple of notices on the channels before the switch. But, our locals always looked good. And unlike many other markets, the Fox feed wasn't HDLite. It looks EXACTLY like it does OTA.

Tyralak, have you noticed how much improved the PQ is on KRON 4 since the change over on the 28th? Before, it was unwatchable. I am speaking of SD reception, no HD as yet.

 

[denisincalif]

Glad to see L.A. finally converting to all Digital at the end of June. While Dish has been providing some SD L.A. locals from the digital signal (KNBC, KABC, etc.) with the noticeably improved PQ for quite some time, I've been driven crazy by the analog ghosts and crappy analog of KCBS and KCAL in particular. Now, I suppose we'll have to wait until 2009 to get the remaining channels (non-CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox) in HD.

KCBS and KCAL are owned by the same company. Could the lack of a digital feed for Dish be a contractual issue?

 

[LASooner]

Glad to see L.A. finally converting to all Digital at the end of June. While Dish has been providing some SD L.A. locals from the digital signal (KNBC, KABC, etc.) with the noticeably improved PQ for quite some time, I've been driven crazy by the analog ghosts and crappy analog of KCBS and KCAL in particular. Now, I suppose we'll have to wait until 2009 to get the remaining channels (non-CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox) in HD.

KTLA sucks too. I really wish they'd add KTLA-HD

 

[Tyralak]

Tyralak, have you noticed how much improved the PQ is on KRON 4 since the change over on the 28th? Before, it was unwatchable. I am speaking of SD reception, no HD as yet.

I'll have to check. I only watch the HD feed.

 

[Techfizzle]

You mean that the local channles were comming off a tv antenna ?! i thought the stations beamed the channle to dish

 

[mike123abc]

You mean that the local channles were comming off a tv antenna ?! i thought the stations beamed the channle to dish

It depends on the station. Some are picked up with an antenna other Dish has a fiber feed from the station. The stations are then sent via fiber to an uplink location to be sent to the satellite.

 

[Techfizzle]

I dont know what my area uses, but my brother has a sub to dish and the locals are awful! They look like your watching a video on youtube take with a cellphone camera fullscreen! sometimes its not even watchable

 

[Peter Parker]

You mean that the local channles were comming off a tv antenna ?! i thought the stations beamed the channle to dish

I don't think that any stations usea satellite to get to the sat providers. They might use a fiber link. It deends.

 

[kb7oeb]

You mean that the local channles were comming off a tv antenna ?! i thought the stations beamed the channle to dish

They beam it over their TV transmitter

They will continue to pick them up with a TV antenna, they just are switching to the digital channels.