The New Season in HD - almost

The bigger networks have begun showing their new fall programs and most shows are in HD this year. Of their primetime programming, they offer:

CBS 18 of 22 hours in HD
NBC 18 of 22 hours in HD
ABC 16 of 22 hours in HD (expected in 2007 locally)
The CW 8 of 13 hours in HD (KWWT has no HD timeline yet)
Fox 8 1/2 of 15 hours in HD (expected October locally)
MyTV 12 of 12 hours in HD (no HD available locally - status unknown)

Other HD programming available with local cable "HD tier" packages, include Discovery-HD, ESPN-HD, HDNET, InHD1, InHD2, and TNT-HD. The HD tier packages seem to run about $10 per month locally and some include a couple other HD channels.

Dish Network Now Offering Local Channels

Local blogger Bleu Chocolate first alerted me, and today I received a notice in the mail that Dish Network is now offering local channels in the Odessa-Midland area.

Unfortunately I can't furnish more details. Just after picking up my mail I was met in the driveway by my starving son. I took him to Texas Burger because he had an evening class and I suspect he ate the postcard from Dish Network with his hamburger.

Two New Networks are Here

Have you noticed the two new networks? The new CW and MyTV networks showed up early this month.

You'll find CW on channel 14 (Suddenlink) or channel 5 (CableOne and Grande). There is no local over-the-air signal. UPN and WB were combined to create the CW network as I reported in February and is carried by KWWT, J. Gordon Lunn's station.

MyTV is carried by KOSA as NOSA and can be found on channel 16 on Grande, CableOne and Suddenlink. It's also broadcast digitally on channel 7.2 if you have an ATSC digital tuner and outside antenna. MyTV, a Fox-affiliated network, offers original programming from 7 to 9 p.m. and carries syndicated shows the rest of the time.

September 19, 2006

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!
A door slammed. The maid screamed.
Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
While millions of people were starving, the king lived
in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was
growing up.

- Snoopy

HDTV is alive... but suffers growing pains

High Definition TV is reportedly causing bandwidth issues for DirecTV. To assure as many HD games as possible for their NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers, DirecTV is temporarily dropping a couple of other HD channels each Sunday to free up room on their satellites for football games. They're also getting quite a bit of flack from subscribers because they compress their HD programming so much the picture quality suffers.

The big networks have bandwidth constraints, too. Until more resources are available, only select NFL and college football games are broadcast in HD each weekend.

And cable companies are also looking for more bandwidth and using technologies such as "switched" broadcasts to carry more HD programming. Switched broadcasting, which works a little like Video On Demand, is effective but makes off-the-shelf products like the new HD Tivo useless.

The new Series 3 HD Tivo is now being sold but Tivo lovers are cautious. Not only is the Series 3 incompatible with switched broadcasting, it depends on CableCard technology, the longevity of which has been in jeopardy since inception. Will we ever get away from cable company-owned set top boxes? The ubiquitous Motorola 6412 and Scientific-Atlanta 8300 DVRs have horrible user-interfaces - especially if you've ever used Tivo - but Comcast has licensed the Tivo interface for the Motorola 6412 so maybe there's a little hope our local CableOne, Grande and Suddenlink will offer that someday.

Despite the hurdles and complexity, HDTV is gaining ground and here to stay. WalMart will be promoting HDTV during ESPNs Monday Night Football and I think that says something about the HDTV market.