TVBizwire
Report: TV Stations Degrading Main HD Signals in Favor Multicasting B&C
TV stations are increasingly "degrading their hi-def picture quality. The culprit is multicasting, i.e., transmitting digital subchannels alongside the primary HD stream within a station's 19.4 Mbps digital TV pipe," according to B&C. The reason is to increase revenues through the subchannels.
--Chuck Ross
Comments 3
Red Blanchard
Well you asked for de-regulation and now you got it! Time for the FCC to step in and define HDTV Signals for once and for all. Otherwise the poor unwashed masses
will see their HDTV investments wasted...
We know the TV industry is hurting, but why allow them to take it out on the watchers?
Nickolas Brungardt
Well I gotta say, even if you degrade the quality from 1080i to 720p, and have 2 digital sub channels in 480p ( not 480i) you still have great quality and on top of that depending on what equipment the broadcaster is using will effect the quality of the picture, I have seen great very high quality DTV sub channels that have no major difference from the 1080i picture they are broadcasting. I say bring it on, we need more local choice and alternatives to cable tv.
Adam Clayton Powell III
This has been anticipated for years. Bob Pepper, then at the FCC, predicted this would happen back in the mid 1990's at a seminar at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia. If there is financial return in diverting bandwidth to attract even slightly more revenue, at the price of slight or even noticeable HD degradation, broadcasters have every incentive to do just that - especially with local sales falling through the floor.
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