Most people watching cable tv, still watch non-Hi-Def

a friend of mine that works for a local cable company, told me something very interesting. the majority of the people watching cable, still watch the non-hi-def channels. 9 out of 10 times when he visits a home to install or repair something , and the TV is on, people are watching the non-Hi-def channel. Does not matter if the person is 18 or 80 , rich or poor , republican or democrat ....they just turn to the standard definition channel .....he thinks most people just don't care one way or the other ...and are so use to tuning in to certain channels , it really doesn't seem to matter for most people....thoughts????

 

My main TiVo is always "watching" the standard-def news channel, which is where I record the daily new commentators. I also catch The Daily Show on the standard-def Comedy Central channel. Why? Because for years I only had the half-gig TiVo model, so to conserve space I would take the standard-def channels for the ones I recorded every day, to make sure I would have enough space left to record prime-time shows in hi-def, without running out of space.

When I got a second TiVo for the basement (the "geek DVR"), it had 2 gigs on the HD, and I could record all my sf-nerd shows there, avoid logjams with stuff I would watch upstairs with the wife, and there was plenty of room to hold onto everything, no matter how long I would need to hold onto it. Thus, hi-def channels.

 

Do cable companies still offer non-Hi-Def channels? I don't think mine does at this point.

 

yes , our local cable company does---about 500 standard channels, and about 400 hi-def (about 350 of the channels are the same channel )

 

I set my Verizon to default to HD when it is there- unfortunately some channels aren't offered in HD, most notably Turner Classic Movies which makes me nuts because 1) I do freelance work for them and 2) it's freakin' Turner Classic Movies! Verizon does make sure I get all of the shopping and religious channels in HD however

 

Most people are used t having the main channels as single digit channels 3, 4, etc. Cable companies 'hide' the hi def channels adding three digits to the channel number so if CBS is channel 4 hi def CBS is 1004. Most people just go to channel 4 as the guide defaults to go to those channels first.

 

That most people don’t care enough to bother tuning to the HD version doesn’t surprise me in the least. I have a relative who used to pipe SD analog cable into a 75” screen... just awful, but they did eventually switch to internet TV service (which doesn’t have SD as an option) in the last year or so.
My parents thankfully are able to see the difference and adjusted quickly when they got HD service in 2010 or so, and my grandparents have Dish which has an easy one-button setting to hide SD duplicates (which is either on by default or the technician enabled for them).

 

There are some channels on our system (Comcast Xfinity) that are only offered in standard def, as backwards as that sounds. It also doesnt help that high-def content is compromised so that it's sub high-def.

 

My cable provider, Spectrum, and their predecessor Time-Warner, both automatically switch to the Hi-Def channel if you select the old standard def channel. I'm surprised this is not industry standard, since otherwise Spectrum is a terrible company to deal with.

 

On my Comcast boxes, it is in the settings that you can auto tune to HD channels. I turned it on because my wife doesn't seem to realize she is watching the non-HD channel.

 

I watch standard def, but my TVs aren't HD or Widescreen. I wish news stations would still broadcast in 4:3. For a while, I watched CBS because it was the last one with a 4:3 picture. Now they all have those black bars at the top and bottom.

Even worse is the Sci-Fi channel. They take content that's supposed to be 4:3 (like the Twilight Zone), then crop the top and bottom to make it a little wider. Then, for the standard-def channel, they take that feed and shrink it down to 4:3, which gives you black bars on all 4 sides. Is it really that difficult to broadcast stuff in the original format? Disney ruined the early Simpsons episodes on Disney+ with the same nonsense cropping and stretching.

 

Even HD channels are compressed before sending...

I've said it before, until Samsung starts producing content or Netflix starts making screens, we have a long time to wait before we can enjoy proper distribution and resolution. Those 2 industries need to hang out more and learn to get along!

 

Yeah but then you don't see the option for the channels that they carry only in SD.

 

The way my grandmother's Comcast box works, it will auto-tune HD channels when available, but it will use the standard def ones if they're the only ones available.

 

At least when I had their box, it gave me that option for making DVR recordings, but there's another setting so that the guide only lists HD channels.

 

Huh, maybe they changed it, or it's a different box. Hers shows all the channels in the guide and will just automatically switch them if there's an HD version available. Most of the time she just puts in a channel number (like 2) and it will say "tuning to channel 802, CBS HD" or something like that.

 

Nope, shows all channels. If I click on the non-HD NBC channel, it will automatically go to the HD NBC channel. If I click on ME TV, it goes to ME TV, which is SD.

 

Funny story - many years ago, in the early days of HD, my uncle bought his first widescreen TV, a Panasonic plasma. I was over there for a family picnic and he had on the Boston Red Sox. He was telling everyone how incredible the HD picture was. I looked at it and said, "That's not HD". I went around back and the idiot from the cable company who installed the HD box used the coax cable output and had the plasma tuned to the channel 3. Luckily, my uncle had a DVD with component cables so I hooked them up and showed him real HD. You should have the jaws hit the floor. Many of them were seeing HD TV for the first time. It was impressive the first time you saw it.

 

Yes. The only problem I've found with this is I have to be careful when setting the DVR from the guide, because of course the DVR doesn't default to HD if you select SD. Took me a couple of times to realize that!

 

That's like when my older brother got his first HD television. He was so proud of the picture; I could tell instantly it wasn't HD. He had it hooked up with the regular cable coax, and the tv tuned to channel 3, just like your uncle. My bro didn't have the proper cables available, but I told him to pick up an HDMI cable, and showed him where to hook it up and how to change his tv's source to HDMI.

He said he was blown away when he finally saw real HD for the first time.

 

Many channels are simply not available in HD.

Native 16 x 9 aspect ratio is not necessarily HD.

"Fatinized" or stretched 480 is definitely not HD.

 

We live in times when people don't care about brickwalled music, cookie-cutter super hero movies where they essentially make the same damn thing over and over just changing the SFX, and Streaming is king. So yeah, not surprising this. And guess what, for the most part they're missing nothing, imo. Are soap operas, chat shows, and the like really improved by adding pixels? I doubt it. Besides, they probably spend most of their TV time staring down at their phones.

My question is - people still pay for Cable TV? Wow.

 

Get a new TV, for forks sake!

 

I eventually want to have no affiliation whatsoever with Spectrum Cable. However, if I want high-speed broadband in my neighborhood currently, my options are Spectrum, and Spectrum. Also, I can get it from Spectrum. No other options. And if you go with high-speed internet service only, they jack up the charge just enough to make the inconvenience of dumping cable TV for various streaming options unpalatable.

 

That's a free market not working, right there.