Skip to Content

Summer Budget Travel Tips from Gadling
AOL Tech

local channels posts

NAB scolds cable companies for downconverting HD locals

NABWe've certainly seen the head honchos give the cable companies a piece of their mind before, but this time the carriers are receiving a fairly stiff scolding care of the National Association of Broadcasters. David Rehr made sure to make every moment of his speech segment count, as he ripped cable providers for "downconverting" the signals of local channels in order to boost the bandwidth available to "their own high-definition signals." Mr. Rehr even went so far as to call the process "broadcast discrimination," and we can only presume that certain providers -- such as Time Warner, who has ties to HBO and Comcast, which is strongly linked to Versus / Golf Channel -- are the targets of recent battles. Unsurprisingly, anonymous cable services have reportedly denied the claims of delusion, but how do the actual end-users see it? Let us know folks: is your cable company giving preferential treatment to channels it has vested interest in?

[Via HiDefster]

HD locals over satellite: check the contract

Woman
carrying dishConsider this a friendly consumer alert in case you've missed the locals over satellite strategy that is slowly progressing; too slowly as one Toledo consumer found out. After spending hard earned dollars on a high-def set, Carolyn Peabody was persuaded to couple that set with a new satellite TV service. Peabody specifically asked if she would get the same HD programming that she currently had with cable and was told she would. Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Although Dish and DIRECTV are making strides to have local HD coverage, they have only recently started the roll out. There simply isn't enough bandwidth available on their satellites to blanket the country with local HD in every market. In order to do this, both companies are adopting a change over from the MPEG-2 compression standard to the MPEG-4 standard which will require new hardware and more time. Looking for locals in HD? Your cable company is a better bet at this point and free over-the-air HD locals are an option if you're close enough to catch a signal.




    AOL News

    Other Weblogs Inc. Network blogs you might be interested in: