I am not talking about channels like MeTV who show old shows that were filmed in the 60’s and never upscaled or had their negatives rescanned.
I’m specifically talking about current network channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc)
What I meant was having a cable company providing 2 feeds of the same channel: one in true HD resolution with a full 16:9 picture (no pillar box), the other feed is pillarboxed.
Comast (here in MD) has low numbered channels that for lack of a better term are SD. But if you hit your info button on the remote there is an option that says “watch in HD” which if you select, takes you to a different channel.
The non-HD feed is in 4:3 and is clearly in 480 line resolution.
This is the feed I am “complaining” about since it clearly must be catering to a small portion of the viewing community. All these feeds add up and have forced Comcast to not provide HD options of certain channels to subscribers despite their existence on other systems.
Old shows that were filmed in the '60s don’t need to be upscaled; film already has more visual information than can be faithfully rendered even by high-definition video.
Why should a cable company (at this point in time) waste bandwidth by carrying both 4:3/SD version of a fulltime HD network and its 16:9 HD counterpart? Are there that many people watching NCIS or Big Bang Theory on an old tube set with a converter box?
I don’t see FM stations still broadcasting duplicate programming in the old 42-50 MHz band, people had to buy new radios.
There are some out there. Cable providers can certainly generate the numbers based on their usage data. It will get phased out, but some people adopt technology slower than others. It will happen, but it’s not clear that there’s much of a need to rush it.
Where have you seen the claim that cable providers are unable to provide some HD content because they are using up bandwidth providing SD content?
But they converted those TV shows from film to videotape long ago, well before HD was a thing. So the broadcasts they’re showing are digitized versions of the 480i videotape conversion of the film. No one is going back to the old Mary Tyler Moore films and redigitizing them in 4k.
I have called Comcast (and Cablevision back in the day) and complained that certain channels weren’t in HD. I was told insufficient bandwidth. In my area today, FS2 (fox sports 2nd channel) is only available in SD. It is in HD in my friend’s area (in another state, so I know it exists).
Some older shows were filmed and they certainly have re-scanned them. Start Trek and ST:TNG come to mind. You can see the difference if another channel (like MeTV) shows the original versions; the image is at best upscaled.
I think we’re agreeing with each other? psychonaut said that shows filmed in the 60’s “don’t need to be upscaled.” If you rescan them from the original film now, sure. But with a few exceptions, they haven’t been, they’ve just been showing the digital versions of the 480i videotapes from when they first went into syndication.
I don’t know about filmed shows from the 1960s, but filmed shows from the 1980s have certainly been preserved on film and scanned for home media release and HD broadcast.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is somewhat of an exception, in that the live-action sequences were filmed, but all the special effects were done using a video transfer. When the series was rereleased for HD, it wasn’t simply a matter of digitizing the film, but of painstakingly redoing each and every one of the special effects using modern CGI.
By having a basic tier in SD, Comcast can advertise one price for programming and charge $10 more for the ability to tune in the same programming in HD. I think every HD channel has an SD equivalent (but some channels in my lineup are only SD). Even if the only STB you can get is HD, Comcast Weill still charge the HD Programming Fee on top of the rate on the rate card when you get that HD box.*
*One exception is if you have a TiVo DVR and weren’t charged the HD fee at some point along the way. I get HD programs on my HD TiVos without paying the HD fee to Comcast - but on the Comcast Roku app I can only tune to the SD channels because the $10 fee isn’t on my bill (as explained by a Comcast employee).
Edit: There are also SD-only digital tuning adaptors that you can rent for a couple of dollars a month. They only tune up to channel 99 in my experience. When Comcast first went all digital there wasn’t a fee for a DTA but after a few years that ended.