How do I get HDTV?

It is a simple question. But not such a simple answer. Many television viewers probably see a logo or an announcement that the program they are watching is available in High Definition. If you know nothing about high definition, you might do some research or most likely call your cable company. You might even call a satellite company like Direct TV or DISH Network. All of these entities claim to be the only source to tell you the truth.

Here’s the truth. Over the air broadcast TV (like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, the CW, and MyNetwork) are by law required to broadcast television signals for FREE. Local affiliates are also required to broadcast in 100% digital format by 2/17/2009. Once your local TV station transfers to digital format, it can then continue to broadcast in regular definition or it can broadcast programming in High Definition.

To receive High Definition programming, you need a High Definition TV. Once you have that you can get all of the FREE programming broadcast by over the air TV stations with an antenna. You should be able to use any UHF/VHF antenna. They do have some new models marketed as HD Antenna which essentially do this. I have one of the new ones and it works great but your older one, if you still have one, may work fine. These antennas picks up the signals in HD and shows them on your HDTV just like in the old days when television was invented. That is all you need. The new antennas cost between 30 and 60 dollars depending on which one you buy (which is a whole different article).

Now, if you want national cable TV stations in high definition (for example, The Food Network, A&E, The History Channel, The Biography Channel, National Geographic, etc) then you need to get more equipment and higher monthly charges from your cable company or satellite company. Again, how to handle this is would take a whole new article.

So the bottom line is that with an HDTV and an Antenna, you can receive all of the free HDTV broadcast available in your area without additional charges. There are right now only a very small percentage of cable channels (even the HD ones) that are actually producing ALL of their programming in HD to be careful what you pay for. Here’s an example:

TBS is a national cable channel and is on most cable and satellite channel line-ups. Programs like Seinfeld and Friends are on every day of the week. Those programs were produced back in the 1990’s before HDTV was being used to film TV programs. They are not now and never will be in High Definition even though they are being shown on what is called a “High Definition” Channel. The picture may be slightly, and I mean slightly, clearer than the original one, or maybe not. It may be stretched out to fit the size of your HD screen (16:9 aspect ratio) or it may have the black bars on the side of you HD TV and it would be in standard old style 4:3 aspect ratio. 4:3 aspect ratio is the size of all televisions since they were invented. They are basically square boxes. I’m sure you’ve noticed that HDTV sets are wider than an old style TV. This is the 16:9 aspect ratio. It is ALMOST twice as wide as it is high. So those old TV programs can be stretched and prodded to fit but they will never look normal on an HDTV and will never have the picture or sound quality of a true HD program.

So that’s how you get HDTV. You can get it for free and receive whatever you local stations are broadcasting in HD. Or you can pay the cable or satellite company lots of money and get whatever programming the stations in their channel line-up have that are offering HD programming. But keep in mind that there are only a very, very small handful of channels that are broadcasting ALL of their programs in High Definition, in fact I believe right now there less than 10, and most of them you have probably never heard of yet.

So be careful what you pay for. And please read more on this blog to learn more about the whole HDTV picture (no pun intended). Please feel free to email me if you have questions to which you can not find the ansers and I’ll try my best to answer them.