HD Channels in Dish Family?

[empiretc]

For $5 more you can have all HD, with "Dish America"

he would lose Fox News

 

[MikeD-C05]

he would lose Fox News

He would also lose Msnbc News. But he would still have CNN to watch.

 

[empiretc]

True, but the OP was about FNC and because of that, really doubt CNN would be an option, lol.

 

[rufwork]

On an HD television, there are black bars on all four sides. Other stations broadcast the SD signal in a way that the left and right sides of the image are cut off.
...
Our local Fox station broadcasts in 720p, but Dish gives us the SD version with the left/right sides cut off. Usually not a problem except when you are watching a baseball or football game and you can only read half the score.

Check to make sure your zoom settings are what you expect. Shortly before I swapped to Dish America, I was zooming ESPN in SD so that it fit my HDTV exactly. Low res, but much more enjoyable when it filled the entire screen. I wish every SD feed was letterboxed that way when they have wide-format content. As you say, cutting the edges is much less enjoyable than zooming in.

 

[Elkview]

Why don't the CSR tell you if you already get 4 sats that you can't get foreign channels without loosing local HD?

 

[KKlare]

Use stretch instead of zoom. Let the station squeeze the horizontal, leaving the vertical alone. Then you can (on your HD set) stretch the horizontal back to a normal picture--not as sharp but with 4/3rds more pixels than having letterbox and zooming it. I had this for a little while with Eastern NM PBS station that only had SD but were the only on still carrying NBR. Fortunately in the last 10 days Dish now sends it out as HD but no SD. This is great and they gave us the two ABQ satellite PBS station even if some of the second is partially window-boxed--not Dish's fault. I'm replacing PBS OTA with PBS satellite to use only 1/3 the disk space on the keepers.
-Ken

 

[ZachS@DISH]

Why don't the CSR tell you if you already get 4 sats that you can't get foreign channels without loosing local HD?

What satellites do you currently have and which international channels are you trying to add?

 

[jerryez]

As long as the old 4:3 SD tvs work with the cable box and Dish and Direct's receivers, there will be old tvs around for as long as they still work. More people get tv through cable than OTA.

 

[3HaloODST]

As long as the old 4:3 SD tvs work with the cable box and Dish and Direct's receivers, there will be old tvs around for as long as they still work. More people get tv through cable than OTA.

For OTA they can get dirt-cheap converters for their old TVs as well.

 

[yardline]

So True.

 

[yardline]

Now, RFD is in HD, so I guess some programming on Dish Family is in HD.

 

[ZachS@DISH]

RFD is in a free preview until 5/22. This is why you are able to see the HD version.