Audio Video News

Satellite broadcasting will be first out of the chute with HDTV. While local broadcasters scramble to comply with FCC mandates to be HD-ready by 1999, satellite services are almost there. On August 25, U.S. Satellite Broadcasting (USSB) announced that it will lease transponder space from DirecTV at the 95°W fixed location so it can begin transmitting HDTV previews. DirecTV will also beam HD programming from the same satellite.

EchoStar's Mark Jackson puts it succinctly: "Our customers want access to more channels, and they are increasingly demanding bandwidth-intensive HDTV channels." But there is only so much bandwidth available between the satellite in the sky and the dish on the ground, and that bandwidth is carefully divided among channels. The more channels on the system, the less bandwidth available for added features like HDTV.

A Massachusetts tax on satellite TV service has drawn legal fire from the two major satellite operators.

Local stations suffered a setback in the transition to digital television last week when the Federal Communications Commission ruled that satellite providers needn't carry local signals in HD till 2013.

I was wrong. (It's not the first time, but it is the first time I've publicly admitted it.) Before satellite radio (first XM and then SIRIUS) blasted off and began broadcasting, I thought it had about as much chance of succeeding as the Red Sox had of winning the World Series. (Oops...) After all, other than truckers and traveling sales reps with lots of ground to cover, who would want to pay for the privelege of listening to the radio? I even gave (what turned out to be) bad financial advice concerning the prospects of satellite radio to a drummer in a Texas rock band who told me he'd included XM Radio in his stock portfolio. (A drummer with a stock portfolio? I should have known right then that I'd totally lost touch with reality.)

Obviously, there's no love lost between most customers and their cable companies. In fact, there's no love lost between a cable company and itself, either. So it's not surprising that more people are satisfied with their direct broadcast satellite...

Is your local cable company tempting you with a low-cost upgrade package? The improvement it's offering isn't coming from the kindness of its corporate heart, but because cable companies are feeling the heat from satellite competitors, thanks to some strategic alliances with regional telephone companies.