[diofan56]

Hi all!

Last weekend I went TV shipping and was going to buy a 50-inch plasma.  The HD channels look wonderful.  I had the salesman turn to a non-HD channel.  Man, that looked horrible!  The picture on my old 27-inch tube TV is far superior to the picture on an HD TV with a non-HD channel.  Needless to say I did not buy a new TV.

Would any of you happen to know if there is a date when every channel will be broadcasting in HD 24-hours a day?

Dave

[Wayner]

It's kind of like the old days when "stereo" was the  new thing. If it wasn't recorded in stereo, it ain't going to play in stereo.

Same with high def. If it wasn't taped in high def, you ain't going to see high def. Be patient, after the February deadline and all transmitting stations go all digital, the high def program content will increase. I would suspect that all prime time programs will be in high def, but I doubt many daytime programs will be, at least for the short term.

As production companies shed their old technology equipment for new, we will see almost all high def, though it could take a year or two.

Wayner

[Doublej]

Hi all!

Last weekend I went TV shipping and was going to buy a 50-inch plasma.  The HD channels look wonderful.  I had the salesman turn to a non-HD channel.  Man, that looked horrible!  The picture on my old 27-inch tube TV is far superior to the picture on an HD TV with a non-HD channel.  Needless to say I did not buy a new TV.

Would any of you happen to know if there is a date when every channel will be broadcasting in HD 24-hours a day?

Dave

In the US February 17, 2008 is the planned cutover date but many of the networks are already broadcasting in HD now.


http://www.antennasdirect.com/HDTV_station_lists.html

[ted_b]

Feb 17, 2009 (not 2008 DoubleJ...that's been and gone    ) is not the all HD date, it's just the all-digital date (many stations will still be SDTV; digital doesn't mean hidef).  It's being dicsussed as to whether to move it out, but suffice it to say that even if you own an analog tv on the 18th (my 55th b-day  ) all you need is a digital-to-analog set top box...which many of us own/have already via cable, etc.

[mjosef]

All HD broadcast?
Ummm...target date: 2036. August 17 @ 1500hours.

[BradJudy]

Would any of you happen to know if there is a date when every channel will be broadcasting in HD 24-hours a day?

All content will never be HD unless they stop doing reruns.  Since folks are still watching reruns from decades ago, there will always be some non-HD content. 

That said, pretty much all of the new content on the major networks is in HD now (I can't speak for your local news station) and a large portion of the "cable" channels are available in HD too.  Enough that Dish Network started offering an HD-only version of their service. 

In general, most HDTV's seem to display standard def content worse than most decent standard def TVs.  But, take the in-store demo with a grain of salt because you're usually much closer to the TV than you would be at home, so the lower resolution also looks worse. 

I had a pretty decent 27" CRT TV and replaced it with a larger good LCD TV and I'm quite happy, even with standard def content.  HD content and DVDs/Bluray are great.  I was glad I made the move before the olympics this year because that was fun to watch in HD.