PBS after "moving"

[mthawki]

Other than OTA, is there any way to get PBS after "moving?" The Chicago PBS stations are showing up in my guide, but only the Big 4 HD networks are available outside of the spotbeam.

Hopefully I'm not SOL, but I have a feeling I might be unless I can grab the local PBS OTA.

Thank you all in advance for your replies.

 

[garys]

You can see if you qualify for the National PBS feed, channel 249. The qualifer is under the local qualifer on the Dish Network website.

 

[mthawki]

I probably would qualify for it in my local DMA, but not in my new HD DMA.

 

[jayn_j]

This is something that should go in the unwritten guide to "moving"

There are currently three classes of stations for any DMA.

Local Big4 HD
Local Big4 SD
Local Must Carry and "others" SD

The last class is almost always on spot beam, even if the Big4 are CONUS. This is why it is better to "move" to the nearest local city that is in a spotbeam that covers your real location.

For example, I live in Rockford which apparently is scheduled to go HD on DISH sometime after hell freezes over. However, looking at local spotbeams, I could safely "move" to Chicago, Milwaukee or Madison. All of these have some HD (only 1 for Madison) and I can choose between the Chicago teams, or the Wisconsin teams (go Packers). It would not be wise to "move" to Denver for the reasons stated, even thhough I lived there for 30 years.

 

[mthawki]

I guess it might just be a trade-off then...gain the Big 4 in HD and lose the PBS SD that I had in my original local DMA package.

The local PBS here is apparently only broadcast on a repeater station which doesn't seem to fall under the digital transition guidelines. I'm playing phone/email tag with the MontanaPBS engineer to see what the digital transition plans here actually are.