Greg writes:
> If memory serves, HDTV signals require 1/4 the bandwidth of analog, and some
> watchdog groups have protested that a switch to HDTV makes the bandwidth
> rich even richer.

I believe the problem is that high quility HDTV signals (on the order of
1024x768x60hz non-interlaced or somewhere in there) require vastly greater
bandwidth (even MPEG-2 compressed) than a VHF TV channel.

Therefore the government is loaning(?) large amounts of bandwidth (in the
old UHF TV spectrum I believe) to broadcasters.

Unfortunately what many broadcasters want to do is to take this large
chunk of bandwidth that is being provided to them for free and use a
small portion of it to broadcast a lower quality HDTV picture and then
use the rest of it to sell net services, data broadcast, and other
non-TV related services with which they can make much more money than
commercial TV broadcating.

Another thing that can be done is to broadcast four channels of low
quality HDTV rather than one high quality channel.  At least one of
the networks plans to broadcast four channels during the day and then
switch to a single high quality channel during prime time.  So rather
than better quality channel quality, HTDV may mostly just bring you
*more* channels.

Sigh.

G.