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November 24, 2003

HDTV Shenanigans

CBS shows one game each Sunday (the one that Greg Gumbel and Phil Simms call) in HDTV. Four times so far this season, we've been lucky enough to have that game carried locally. Every time I've gone to watch this game, there's been a delay between the time our local affiliate begins broadcasting the game and when they "flip the switch" to the HDTV feed of the game. It's like someone's asleep at the wheel; I've called the affiliate twice now to ask them to flip the switch.

I called about the KC-OAK game yesterday after about 10 minutes of the non-HD version of the game. I was routed to someone's voicemail when I asked to be connected to "master control". When I called back in to ask the person answering to relay the message to whomever it pertained to, I was told that I could leave a message for the Monday morning staff, since they do not have a lot of staff present on the weekend.

Luckily, someone got through or someone woke up, because about 10 minutes after I called the HD feed was on. However, the point of all this rambling is that, at worst, this is an abuse of WHP's DTV spectrum license. At best, it's inconsiderate. I know I'm not the only guy in the area who's decided to invest in HDTV equipment and subscribe to HDTV programming. When will DTV become mainstream enough for the stations to treat it as an important product?

I'm thinking an email to CBS might be in order here. I'm interested in hearing others' opinions about this, even if you aren't watching HDTV yet.

Posted by Alex Harden on November 24, 2003 8:22 AM |

Comments

This is a little different than what you are complaining about, but along the same lines. A big reason why I still have DirecTV and prefer DirecTV is that I love the Digital picture.

I keep putting off switching to Cable because they do not offer all the stations in Digital. It is painful switching over to Cable to watch the few shows I watch that I do not get with my subscription of DirecTV.

I think Cable needs to wake-up and get all their broadcasts out with a Digital picture and soon.

Posted by: Scotbuff | November 24, 2003 9:31 AM

These are the woes of the early adopter. Sorta like when I bought my first DVD player in June 1997 when there were only about 24 movies out...

Posted by: Don | November 24, 2003 10:52 AM

Heh, I remember going to Blockbuster and there was this tiny shelf of DVD's and once you have viewed the Digital picture going back to VHS is very hard. I remember those days as well.

Posted by: Scotbuff | November 24, 2003 1:11 PM

We got our first DVD player in 1999, still slightly ahead of the mainstream adoption; our player cost $400 at the time. It's impossible to resist the clarity of DVD over pre-recorded VHS. Our VCR's are still around for our legacy library and for recording TV, but we've successfully avoided purchasing pre-recorded tapes for over a year and a half. The only ones we bought were kids' videos for our son, and now that most of those are released as DVDs we aren't coerced into buying tapes.

Posted by: aharden | November 24, 2003 1:41 PM

Thankfully with my son just turning 2 I was not forced to buy the videos for his age group on video cassettes. Recently I have been really adding to his collection. I no longer have a Video Cassette Player so I am glad they bring everything out on DVD now.

Posted by: Scotbuff | November 27, 2003 5:40 PM

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