Are You Getting All That You Deserve From Your Local Television Station?

I don’t know about you, but I am really disappointed in those television stations that have chosen to abuse their allotted airspace so they can broadcast a larger amount of poor quality broadcasts. Now, I am not talking about the quality of the actual shows they are broadcasting. Rather, I am referring to the quality of the resolution and images of the programs that are being broadcast.

In an effort to help channels with the switch from standard definition to high definition, broadcasters have been provided with a larger amount of broadcast space. Therefore, they each get 6 MHz of space to play with. The purpose of this increase in space was to allow the broadcasters to continue broadcasting in standard definition for those viewers that haven’t purchased a tuner or switched to a high definition television. At the same time, they could broadcast in high definition so they could please those that have made the switch and so they could help encourage people to make the switch.

Unfortunately, many channels are using the extra space to simply broadcast multiple channels at standard definition. So, even if the station is broadcasting in HD, it isn’t truly HD quality because all of the SD sub-channels they are also broadcasting are gnawing away at the space needed to broadcast properly in HD. Basically, the parallel broadcast compresses the 19.4 Mbps HD signal. This results in a lower bit rate in order to make enough room for the standard definition sub-channel to broadcast. As a result, the quality of the high definition broadcast is hurt.

To make matters worse, many of these stations are broadcasting several standard definition sub-channels. Each one of these channels further hinders the quality of the high definition broadcast. This means you will actually notice a difference in the quality. For example, you may see blurring pixelation with fast moving images. The larger your screen, the more you will see these little annoyances, which are referred to as “artifacts.” If you are someone that went out and purchased the biggest and best television you could find, you will still see these problems because the station is simply broadcasting at a low quality level.

You can’t really blame the stations for trying to squeeze out as much programming as possible. After all, the more programming they broadcast, the more ad revenue they can bring in. Nonetheless, it is the consumers that are suffering. When you purchased your HDTV, you expected to get a higher quality broadcast, not just get more terrible looking images.