After many years of getting by with standard definition television, we finally upgraded to 1080p capable HDTV in our household, and upgraded our DirecTV service to HD as well, and, for the most part, it's been an incredible experience; the picture is utterly fantastic - I wish I had done this sooner! However, there is one thing bothering me about the service, and, after speaking to some of the experts involved, I've come to the conclusion that DirecTV is, in fact, ripping off their HD subscribers, at least in the Twin Cities market... here's why...
Some time ago, KSTC Channel 45 upgraded their broadcasts to having a main channel, now broadcast at 720p resolution, and a secondary channel (not a simulcast of their primary), broadcast at 480i. When we had the HD service of DirecTV installed, I was so busy watching all the hi-def content from other channels, I hadn't noticed that our local channel, KSTC-45, was still being broadcast over DirecTV at 480i. I know it wasn't a settings issue on my end, since all the other locals in HD were, in fact, coming in as HD over the satellite. I called and e-mailed the station engineer, who got back to me with some troubling news... they are passing to DirecTV their feed in 720p, just like I can pick up over the air - but DirecTV is *intentionally* DOWN-converting it to 480i, which is what we get from our "HD" receivers... does DirecTV have any idea how pathetic that video actually looks on an HDTV? It's utter crap; Wild hockey games look particularly lousy like that, let alone the rest of the KSTC-45 programming schedule.
(I have spoken with other Wild fans, who have Comcast as their provider, and they, too, are deliberately down-converting their KSTC feed to 480i as well, so they are getting ripped off as well.)
What needs to be done? Well, call, complain, or simply terminate your service - since they are falsely advertising, and making you pay *extra*, for "high definition" service, and intentionally degrading the service on at least one local channel (KSTC-45), you should not be subject to any early termination fees, due to their failure to provide the advertised product - at least, that's how it should be interpreted, in my opinion. If anyone has any other info, or points of contact to help get this deliberate service degradation issue corrected, leave it as a comment here. Thanks!
