Poll: Do you still watch SD programming?

by Darren Murph posted May 17th 2008 at 12:00PM

With just south of a hundred HD channels on carriers like DirecTV, and even dozens on the average cable operator, one may wonder if there's even a reason for turning to an SD station anymore. Here at the Engadget HD lair, there's only a few programs still shot and delivered in standard-def that we catch ourselves watching, but we'll admit, it's been an awful long time since SD programming consumed more than 10-percent or so of our viewing. Not too tough a question for you this week: do you still find yourself flipping to SD networks with the growing amount of HD content out there? If so, how much? And be honest -- is it solely due to your wife's obsession with America's Next Top Model?

[Image courtesy of Rickey]

Filed under: Polls, Sports, Primetime, Daytime, New content

Tags: poll, polls, sd, standard-definition, view, viewers, viewership, viewing, watch

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

TRU3L3GEND @ May 17th 2008 12:16PM

Only non HD show I watch is Rob and Big but the show has now come to an end for good :(

Highest Ranked

Matt @ May 17th 2008 12:21PM

With Comedy Central and G4 still in SD... Colbert Report and Attack of the Show are in SD... so that's at least 1.5 hours of SD watching a day. Plus South Park or anything else on Comedy Central... :(

Neutral

Billy Fiul @ May 17th 2008 12:21PM

only when I have to...

Highly Ranked

ryan10ad @ May 17th 2008 12:24PM

Have you seen Sky's (UK) HD line up. If you don't count Sky Movies and Sports (Extra tiers) the actual line up is less than 10. And then you have to buy a SKY Hd box (about £300), which I don't mind. But then you have to pay a extra £10 a month on top of your subscription to just access HD, even the free stuff (BBC HD).

Neutral

benny boy @ May 18th 2008 12:03PM

Hopefully the launch of Freesat will give Sky enough competition to sort themselves out and to stop screwing us over.

Neutral

Stormy @ May 17th 2008 12:28PM

It would be 100% if my local ABC affiliate let DirecTV carry it in HD, but they don't. So I have to watch Lost in SD. Other than local news, everything else I watch is in HD.

Highly Ranked

beertroll @ May 17th 2008 5:46PM

Are you in antenna range of your local affiliate? I get a gorgeous signal off of my antenna.

Neutral

Douglas Brace @ May 17th 2008 12:28PM

About 10% - 15% of the TV I watch is in SD. Most of that is news or reality TV shows or TV shows that are broadcast in SD but have their own graphic bars on the left and right of the screen.

Highly Ranked

Guest @ May 17th 2008 1:03PM

If these 100 HD channels actually showed HD content, we wouldn't be watching anything in HD.

Neutral

David S @ May 17th 2008 1:05PM

A lot of my news content is in SD, and with half of my HD channels are encrypted QAM, I find myself watching SD unencrypted QAM over the HD encrypted variant.

Neutral

why not the LS2LS7? @ May 17th 2008 1:05PM

I watch as much as I can in HD. But Amazing Race isn't available in HD (Scrubs wasn't either). I also watch things that aren't super popular like hockey and automobile road racing. Speed Channel doesn't air much racing besides NASCAR in HD. It isn't even produced in HD. Much of this has made the transition to 16:9, and thus shows full-screen on Speed's HD channel, but it isn't really HD resolution.

The Daily Show is still only in SD too.

Neutral

Guest @ May 17th 2008 1:07PM

OOPS! What I meant to say was that if the 100 HD channels actually showed HD content we wouldn't be watching anything in SD. And I wish E! and Comedy Central had HD channels.

Neutral

mjpd1 @ May 17th 2008 1:19PM

I get Dish's HD-only package, so apart from locals, I don't even GET any SD channels anymore. I stopped watching them, so I decided to stop paying for them as well!

Neutral

beertroll @ May 17th 2008 5:46PM

SD is for suckers.

Neutral

Timothy @ May 17th 2008 1:51PM

Cablevisions HD lineup was poor at best to begin with but in the last 6 months the array of channels has certainly increased.

My only issue is the lag that occurs on some of the more heavy traffic channels such as Fox or TNT. Switch over to the SD channel and there is no lag present.

Neutral

David Hildreth @ May 17th 2008 1:53PM

Scrubs is about it.

Neutral

MI @ May 17th 2008 1:53PM

I watch SD stuff while I'm working on my computer. I have a SageTV server that records all my Judge Mathis, and Cops and Most Daring etc. I watch them while I'm working just to keep me from being bored to tears. On my 61" HD monitor connected to FIOS, I don;'t watch anything but HD.

Neutral

Miggity @ May 18th 2008 2:06AM

DISH Network's HD Only package! Greatest move I ever made. No longer paying for 200 SD channels I never watched anyway!

Neutral

Jon @ May 17th 2008 2:24PM

I am a lot smarter now because if its not HD i dont watch it so i watch a lot of Discovery HD , HGTV HD , TLC HD Etc.. and there is great programing i would have never known about .. Flip this house anyone ?

Neutral

GLPARRIS @ May 17th 2008 2:52PM

I watch only the HD channels, few that there are because I can.
My carrier offers only 13 national channels plus all the network HD locals, but outside of watching the very bad analogue Sci-Fi Channel which is NOT available in HD on the TWC system, I ignore the rest.
Everytime a new HD channel is added, like once a year, I give the HD channel a chance, but always ignored its analogue version deliberately.

Highly Ranked

Mitch @ May 17th 2008 3:19PM

Attack of the show on G4 and fox news are SD. I also DVR batman, superman, and spiderman the animated series on toondisney because I'm a geek. Also deal or no deal on nbc is STILL in SD.

Otherwise... watching SD makes me sick. I even watched the chronicles of narnia on DVD the other day instead of blu-ray. It was awful. Anyone who says upconverted SD is almost as good as blu-ray is BLIND as a bat. I'm completely addicted to HD. These "false HD" stations like TBS need to get smacked in the face. What a crock!

Neutral

longhairbilly @ May 17th 2008 4:10PM

Off the top of my head the only SD shows I watch regularly are South Park and X-Play.

Neutral

Ben @ May 17th 2008 4:27PM

Top Gear is my only show that I watch in SD (since the Brits haven't decided that they will invest in HD cameras for the show), and I record Oprah in SD for my wife, since her 18-20 episodes that she keeps on the TiVo would fill it up in HD (which is just upconverted SD anyways!!!). The wife doesn't know anyways and mostly they get erased and never watched.

Neutral

vancityPN @ May 18th 2008 12:36AM

im with shaw in canada and we only have 22 HD channels and 4 of them are time shifted .. were forced to watch alot of SD content ..

Neutral

servo_fan @ May 17th 2008 4:36PM

Since Dish doesn't have FX HD, it's still SD for Rescue Me and The Riches. Also BBC America SD for Robin Hood and Top Gear. Other than that, I'm almost all HD.

Neutral

Britboyj27 @ May 17th 2008 6:57PM

G4 - Come on, you're a technology and gaming channel but don't have HD cameras? Give me a break. I want Layla Kayleigh in HD. Now.

Comedy Central, and Top Gear are about it.

Neutral

don @ May 17th 2008 5:02PM

Cox has little real HD just a bunch of misleading ballonega and a million self-agrandising arrogant ads. :-(

Neutral

Patrick @ May 17th 2008 6:11PM

only comedy central and E! for me in sd. otherwise, even shows that only air in sd (like scrubs) i still watch on the HD station. i wish i could only pay for the 20 or so HD stations i get instead of the 100 or so sd stations i get.

Highly Ranked

WilsonGoneWild @ May 17th 2008 6:21PM

I have that EXACT afro.

Neutral

retro77 @ May 17th 2008 6:37PM

I dont have any HD. Still got my old SD cable box.

Neutral

kcmurphy88 @ May 17th 2008 7:27PM

Mad Men was in SD last Season, as was Damages. And how do you count DVDs?

Neutral

Kyle @ May 17th 2008 7:39PM

I still watch G4's AOTS and South Park in SD.

Neutral

VP @ May 17th 2008 8:07PM

Most of my SD watching is dedicated to comedy central. Daily show, Colbert, Lil Bush etc. If comedy central can go HD, i would gladly switch over to dish's HD only package.

Neutral

memo @ May 17th 2008 10:03PM

i watch univision novelas in SD. *sigh* i wish they would broadcast the novelas in HD already.

Neutral

Adam @ May 17th 2008 10:54PM

seeing as there are no channels to watch real football in HD, over 50% of my time is dedicated to SD watching. When is FSC gonna go HD? I want my European football in HD now!

Neutral

baberim @ May 18th 2008 12:57PM

I wouldnt watch SD if FIOS would give me more HD already.

Neutral

Christine @ May 19th 2008 12:37PM

the only reason I EVER watch SD content is when the HD version of a channel keeps f&*ing up on my Canadian cable TV. It'll often freeze the picture and audio for about 5 seconds, then pick up again 5 seconds later. this will happen every 5 minutes or so, and drives me nuts, so I switch to the SD channel just so I can actually watch the show I'm trying to watch in its entirety.

Neutral

mroach @ May 18th 2008 10:53PM

The last of my SD viewing is CNBC and Comedy Central for the Colbert Report. I hope Comcast picks up CNBC HD and the Comedy Central will go HD

Neutral

Student Driver @ May 18th 2008 10:54PM

I used to watch CBS news (local and national) and went to NBC because the Tucson local and national feeds are 1080i. The news is bad enough, but it's truly awful in SD (quite washed-out).

Neutral

Phil @ May 19th 2008 2:45PM

The channels that my girlfriend likes to watch are all in SD (MTV, VH1, BET, Lifetime, and the Travel Channel), so when she comes over, I'm stuck watching SD. If it's not on an HD channel, I don't watch it.

Neutral

kevon27 @ May 21st 2008 4:13PM

Too much upscaled (badly upscaled) sd content. Even the so called true HD content is garbage. You get highly compresses, blurry hd stuff, it's horrible. Only once in a why I will be impressed with something hd on Directv. I'm trying to watch more bluray stuff, but content is still lacking in that department. We need some new blood in the tv business to give directv the cable companies a run for there money - Fios? Market is still too small and not enough channels.

Neutral

SuperChuck @ May 19th 2008 1:47PM

Content is king.

Most of the content I want to watch is only available in SD. HD is great and all, but I'm not going to watch something just because it's in HD.

A couple years ago, there were only a few HD channels being offered and most of them seemed stuck on the idea of showing off the capabilities of HD.

That was cute for the first couple weeks, then I got over it and tuned back into my SD channels which had worthwhile content.

I didn't want to watch "Birds over sunset", I wanted MythBusters, I just wanted it in HD.

Neutral

Vic @ May 19th 2008 2:47PM

The only content I'm forced to watch in SD is USA (Monk & Psych) and CNN (my fiance loves American Morning), both of which have HD channels available, just not on Time Warner Cable in Charlotte. It is nice, however, when NBC and Universal show repeats of Monk & Psych in HD.

Neutral

kagai @ May 20th 2008 1:48AM

I don't have an HDTV...I just dream about it...

Neutral

Jason @ May 20th 2008 9:09AM

Sadly, HD still isn't available through Comcast where I'm at.

Neutral

Anthony @ May 21st 2008 8:11PM

I have to watch SD...

I only have an HD OTA tuner and I never watch that much OTA content, just the occasional show here and there, local sports and PBS stuff but that's it.

We have a Direct TV HR21 DVR but its on the 52' Sony rear projection. Everybody else but me has SD only.

We will soon upgrade the newest Toshiba 26" LCD to a Direct TV HR21 as well, but I am waiting for D* TV's HDPC dual tuner which I hope is available by the end of the year.

Speed does shows races in HD, ALMS from Utah was in HD...

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