Sure, not every station's pulled out the Star Wars / Iron Man-style holograms for the 2008 election, but they're all trying to put shiny new HD studios to full use and get as many eyeballs as possible until things are decided. NBC & ABC immediately jumped out front at 7 p.m. with data pouring in on the widescreen edges of their HD feeds, with CNN waiting until states were decided to begin updating their lists. ABC's chosen to lean on its touchscreen display and forgo side graphics altogether, while despite Fox's claim as "America's Election HQ", with totally bare shoulders and boring sets, we're pointing our flatscreens elsewhere. PBS, despite airing the clearest, most high quality video available of three old guys at a table, has no slick touchscreens or HD graphics packages to speak of. Think about that as you check out the rest of the screens after the break, and during the next donation drive. Big Bird deserves better.

The times, they are a-changin', and with February 2009 getting closer by the minute, we should probably expect even more situations like this. Put simply, western Washington's local PBS channel had a long-standing history of pleasing HD junkies with a whole swath of unique HD programming on Comcast slot 108 (OTA channel 9.5). Due to the transition to all-digital (or so it says), the HD channel has been shifted to Comcast slot 109 and OTA slot 9.1; that there isn't the problem, though. The issue is that with the move, many of its best high-def programs have been nixed, and the leftovers are being presented "in low-quality DTV," as stated by our tipster. The reaction has been overwhelmingly negative, with pages upon pages of angry comments piling up in a matter of hours. Thankfully, management has posted a note that it is taking notice, but only time will tell if the channel will ever return in its full glory.

[Thanks, Aaron]

Looks like Movie Gallery finally got something for the assortment of PBS bandwidth and spare parts remaining from the now-defunct MovieBeam service. The new owner is Indian conglomerate The Valuable Group, headed by Sanjay Gaikwad who apparently thinks serving up a remarkably limited assortment of heavily compressed HD and SD movies on demand is an idea that deserves to fail all over the world, instead of just in the U.S. Since $100 million burned up by Disney and others wasn't enough to make things work, he plans to invest a similar amount over the next two years to relaunch the service in North America, the U.K. and "other overseas markets". Variety notes The Valuable Group already delivers movies digitally to India and South Asian theaters via satellite so maybe they know something we don't about this business model, and with plans to roll out service in three markets with "new, cutting edge features" by year end we'll get to find out soon.

PBS has chosen media distribution company thePlatform to help boost its online video offerings. It's a fairly pretentious name, but in the two years that thePlatform has been a division of Comcast, it's racked up some big name clients, including BBC, CBS College Sports and Hulu. The PBS deal is intended to bring something we all like -- more content on the web. The arrangement opens up a kind of free-for-all between nationally- and locally- originated content and websites. Of course, content from the PBS mothership can be sent out to local affiliate websites. But local stations will also have access to thePlatform publishing tools to allow them to push their content to other affiliates. This is good news, as some of our favorite PBS stuff is produced by local affiliates.

PBS Kids Sprout has announced it's obtained the U.S. broadcast rights for Dive Olly Dive, a CGI-animated kids show produced in high definition. The network's focused on growing its preschool audience via digital cable/satellite, VOD and online offerings over the last few years, although it's not clear where or if we'll ever get to see the underwater escapades pf research subs-in-training Olly and Beth. Hopefully this turns into a situation like the recently launched Disney Channel HD, with a stockpile of ready to go HD content, already delivering a surprising number of HD 'toons each morning -- you're not still letting the kids watch SD, are you? Dive Olly Dive joins the Let's Go Show weekend morning programming block June 7.

Sony's NAB 2008 announcements continue to roll out, hope you didn't think Survivor and OLED were the only items getting a touch of its HD DNA, because Fox Widescreen standby Cops is going real HD for its 21st season courtesy of Sony's XDCAM technology. Just like Survivor, the rugged disc-based system makes it easy for producers to make the HD upgrade. While PBS' sets may not be as rough as the mean streets, we can still appreciate the news that Sesame Street has switched to HD with a whole new studio based on Sony's equipment that will also see use in several other projects on the way. Finally, ESPN has stayed ahead of the curve on high definition, and is putting the company's tech to work in its L.A. Live studio. Big Bird, extreme sports and repeat criminal offenders? Our HDTVs say bring it on.

Read - Sesame Street
Read - XDCAM technology, Survivor & Cops
Read - ESPN L.A. Live studio

If you think it's tough sticking to an exclusive diet of HD content, try being a fan of opera (the genre, not the browser, silly). Not many towns can even consider supporting an opera company, and scheduling and pricing cuts out another swath of interested folks in markets that do have an opera company. The Metropolitan Opera company has enjoyed success showing HD productions of its performances in theaters worldwide, and is now branching out to even more markets with PBS. The performances will appear underneath the "Great Performances" banner, so check your local listings if you're interested. We promise we won't tell your sports-fanatic crew you broke out the wine and cheese and peeped some opera!

Like peanut butter and chocolate, nature shows and HD are two great tastes that taste great together. And judging by the frequent appearance of "Planet Earth" on the VideoScan charts, the couple makes good business sense, too. As much as we love "Planet Earth," though, adding more titles to the genre is a good thing. Take heart, PBS is doing its part by bringing "Nature" to Blu-ray. With 26 seasons under its belt, it's safe to assume there's plenty of good footage; hopefully they've gathered up the best HD bits for the releases. Come May 20th, indie distributor Questar will be bringing out four titles: "Desert Lions" (originally aired 2008 in HD), "In the Valley of the Wolves" (originally aired 2007, shot in HD), "Under Antarctic Ice" and "Shark Mountain" (both originally aired 2003, fingers crossed on picture quality). Yeah, we can't guarantee those last two won't be a little "soft" looking, but we can guarantee that for your $25 retail, you can watch without any pledge drive interruptions!

That didn't take long. Luckily, the old adage about "pens" and "swords" held true, and Big Bird's mighty talons did not come into play -- DISH network has agreed to discuss carriage of PBS HD programming. Both sides sound like they're open to negotiation, and congresswoman Diana DeGette has even offered use of her Washington office as a meeting location. We suspect DISH will try to accommodate PBS with its proposed 15/30/60/100-percent rollout of HD locals over a four year period. Okay, so PBS is a little thin on HD material; we always like to see HD producers and broadcasters working together to bring out more programming.

It seems the Sesame Street gang is pissed at DISH Network. Once the analog shutoff occurs next year, FCC Chairman Martin wants to hold DirecTV and DISH to a "non-discrimination" rule -- they cannot carry some HD locals, but not others. However, if a carrier can demonstrate that it has limited capacity that prevents it from going live with all the channels at once, the FCC can grant a waiver. As the FCC is getting ready to vote on these waivers, PBS and the Association for Public Television Stations (APTS) have taken the opportunity to point out that DISH has "...refused to negotiate in good faith for carriage of local public television signals in HD." The real salt in the wound is that PBS can point to its carriage deal with DirecTV as a counter-example, but we'll see how this is balanced out against PBS's announced HD rollout plans.

[Image courtesy Cynical-C]

Not that we don't already enjoy the occasional HDTV program filmed in Hawaii, but now the local PBS affiliate is getting in the game. Apparently part of Sony & PBS's partnership, PBS Hawaii is launching it first locally produced HD show Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox February 19. We hope Engadget HD readers in Hawaii can get the show via OTA or cable (actually, it's snowing at the EHD offices, so we really wouldn't feel that bad if they have to do without a little HDTV right now), but it won't be in our listings because we hate PBS.

We come down pretty hard on stations that try to push stretch-o-vision off on us (upscaled SD is a lesser offense), but we might cut not-for-profit PBS a little slack. A little. Suffice it to say that between costs for production and satellite bandwidth, PBS is feeling the crunch. Only about 20-percent of PBS programming is headed to HD this year, and even then you may not be able to actually view it. PBS is strapped for satellite bandwidth, so three of the five time zone feeds (Mountain, Central and Alaska/Hawaii) will be getting the axe to make room for the HD streams. This means affected affiliates which do not have the ability to time-shift HD will be out of luck. The result for customers of said affiliates is, you guessed it, stretch-o-vision. Our advice -- if your local affiliate doesn't have the HD programming you want, donate some money or look into alternative ways of getting your PBS-fix.

It's no secret that the Amazon looks mighty different today compared to 25 years back, when Jean-Michel Cousteau and his pops first explored the region. Nevertheless, Jean-Michel is heading back in, and this time, he's bringing a crew, a few more family members and a couple of HD cameras for good measure. Slated to debut in two parts -- the first on April 2nd at 8:00PM, the second on April 9th at 9:00PM -- Return to the Amazon will premiere on PBS in glorious high-definition and will include narration by the acclaimed actor, Delroy Lindo. We don't know about you, but considering that we'd never get up the courage (or lose our sobriety long enough) to swim with an anaconda, we reckon it's worth tuning in just to see someone else do just that.

Considering that you just kicked back last night and caught MOJO HD's new Money Night lineup, it makes sense to start passing down those cash-making ways as soon as humanly possible, eh? As you calmly nod your head up and down, you'll likely be enthralled to know that starting this Sunday on your local American Public Television broadcaster (listed here), your offspring can fix their eyes on a new program that may actually benefit them in the long-term. Produced entirely in HD by the same minds that brought you Bill Nye the Science Guy, Biz Kid$, is a 26-episode series "designed to entertain, engage and ultimately elevate young peoples knowledge about money and finance." Those tykes will be paying your nursing home bills one day -- letting 'em catch this may not be such a bad idea.

Fans of the live music radio show Mountain Stage are about to be brought even closer to the action, as it's making its HD debut this Tuesday. Starting on January 8th, viewers in West Virginia can catch the HD iteration of the program locally on WVPBS-TV, while viewers across the country will likely have access via their local PBS station. For a complete January schedule, be sure to give the read link a visit.