Poll: Do you still watch SD programming?
By Darren Murph 
posted May 17th 2008 12:00PM
posted May 17th 2008 12:00PM
[Image courtesy of Rickey]
posted May 17th 2008 12:00PM
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Only non HD show I watch is Rob and Big but the show has now come to an end for good :(
With Comedy Central and G4 still in SD... Colbert Report and Attack of the Show are in SD... so that's at least 1.5 hours of SD watching a day. Plus South Park or anything else on Comedy Central... :(
only when I have to...
Have you seen Sky's (UK) HD line up. If you don't count Sky Movies and Sports (Extra tiers) the actual line up is less than 10. And then you have to buy a SKY Hd box (about £300), which I don't mind. But then you have to pay a extra £10 a month on top of your subscription to just access HD, even the free stuff (BBC HD).
Hopefully the launch of Freesat will give Sky enough competition to sort themselves out and to stop screwing us over.
It would be 100% if my local ABC affiliate let DirecTV carry it in HD, but they don't. So I have to watch Lost in SD. Other than local news, everything else I watch is in HD.
Are you in antenna range of your local affiliate? I get a gorgeous signal off of my antenna.
About 10% - 15% of the TV I watch is in SD. Most of that is news or reality TV shows or TV shows that are broadcast in SD but have their own graphic bars on the left and right of the screen.
If these 100 HD channels actually showed HD content, we wouldn't be watching anything in HD.
A lot of my news content is in SD, and with half of my HD channels are encrypted QAM, I find myself watching SD unencrypted QAM over the HD encrypted variant.
I watch as much as I can in HD. But Amazing Race isn't available in HD (Scrubs wasn't either). I also watch things that aren't super popular like hockey and automobile road racing. Speed Channel doesn't air much racing besides NASCAR in HD. It isn't even produced in HD. Much of this has made the transition to 16:9, and thus shows full-screen on Speed's HD channel, but it isn't really HD resolution.
The Daily Show is still only in SD too.
OOPS! What I meant to say was that if the 100 HD channels actually showed HD content we wouldn't be watching anything in SD. And I wish E! and Comedy Central had HD channels.
I get Dish's HD-only package, so apart from locals, I don't even GET any SD channels anymore. I stopped watching them, so I decided to stop paying for them as well!
SD is for suckers.
Cablevisions HD lineup was poor at best to begin with but in the last 6 months the array of channels has certainly increased.
My only issue is the lag that occurs on some of the more heavy traffic channels such as Fox or TNT. Switch over to the SD channel and there is no lag present.
Scrubs is about it.
I watch SD stuff while I'm working on my computer. I have a SageTV server that records all my Judge Mathis, and Cops and Most Daring etc. I watch them while I'm working just to keep me from being bored to tears. On my 61" HD monitor connected to FIOS, I don;'t watch anything but HD.
DISH Network's HD Only package! Greatest move I ever made. No longer paying for 200 SD channels I never watched anyway!
I am a lot smarter now because if its not HD i dont watch it so i watch a lot of Discovery HD , HGTV HD , TLC HD Etc.. and there is great programing i would have never known about .. Flip this house anyone ?
I watch only the HD channels, few that there are because I can.
My carrier offers only 13 national channels plus all the network HD locals, but outside of watching the very bad analogue Sci-Fi Channel which is NOT available in HD on the TWC system, I ignore the rest.
Everytime a new HD channel is added, like once a year, I give the HD channel a chance, but always ignored its analogue version deliberately.
Attack of the show on G4 and fox news are SD. I also DVR batman, superman, and spiderman the animated series on toondisney because I'm a geek. Also deal or no deal on nbc is STILL in SD.
Otherwise... watching SD makes me sick. I even watched the chronicles of narnia on DVD the other day instead of blu-ray. It was awful. Anyone who says upconverted SD is almost as good as blu-ray is BLIND as a bat. I'm completely addicted to HD. These "false HD" stations like TBS need to get smacked in the face. What a crock!
Off the top of my head the only SD shows I watch regularly are South Park and X-Play.
Top Gear is my only show that I watch in SD (since the Brits haven't decided that they will invest in HD cameras for the show), and I record Oprah in SD for my wife, since her 18-20 episodes that she keeps on the TiVo would fill it up in HD (which is just upconverted SD anyways!!!). The wife doesn't know anyways and mostly they get erased and never watched.
im with shaw in canada and we only have 22 HD channels and 4 of them are time shifted .. were forced to watch alot of SD content ..
Since Dish doesn't have FX HD, it's still SD for Rescue Me and The Riches. Also BBC America SD for Robin Hood and Top Gear. Other than that, I'm almost all HD.
G4 - Come on, you're a technology and gaming channel but don't have HD cameras? Give me a break. I want Layla Kayleigh in HD. Now.
Comedy Central, and Top Gear are about it.
Cox has little real HD just a bunch of misleading ballonega and a million self-agrandising arrogant ads. :-(
only comedy central and E! for me in sd. otherwise, even shows that only air in sd (like scrubs) i still watch on the HD station. i wish i could only pay for the 20 or so HD stations i get instead of the 100 or so sd stations i get.
I have that EXACT afro.
I dont have any HD. Still got my old SD cable box.
Mad Men was in SD last Season, as was Damages. And how do you count DVDs?
I still watch G4's AOTS and South Park in SD.
Most of my SD watching is dedicated to comedy central. Daily show, Colbert, Lil Bush etc. If comedy central can go HD, i would gladly switch over to dish's HD only package.
i watch univision novelas in SD. *sigh* i wish they would broadcast the novelas in HD already.
seeing as there are no channels to watch real football in HD, over 50% of my time is dedicated to SD watching. When is FSC gonna go HD? I want my European football in HD now!
I wouldnt watch SD if FIOS would give me more HD already.
the only reason I EVER watch SD content is when the HD version of a channel keeps f&*ing up on my Canadian cable TV. It'll often freeze the picture and audio for about 5 seconds, then pick up again 5 seconds later. this will happen every 5 minutes or so, and drives me nuts, so I switch to the SD channel just so I can actually watch the show I'm trying to watch in its entirety.
The last of my SD viewing is CNBC and Comedy Central for the Colbert Report. I hope Comcast picks up CNBC HD and the Comedy Central will go HD
I used to watch CBS news (local and national) and went to NBC because the Tucson local and national feeds are 1080i. The news is bad enough, but it's truly awful in SD (quite washed-out).
The channels that my girlfriend likes to watch are all in SD (MTV, VH1, BET, Lifetime, and the Travel Channel), so when she comes over, I'm stuck watching SD. If it's not on an HD channel, I don't watch it.
Too much upscaled (badly upscaled) sd content. Even the so called true HD content is garbage. You get highly compresses, blurry hd stuff, it's horrible. Only once in a why I will be impressed with something hd on Directv. I'm trying to watch more bluray stuff, but content is still lacking in that department. We need some new blood in the tv business to give directv the cable companies a run for there money - Fios? Market is still too small and not enough channels.
Content is king.
Most of the content I want to watch is only available in SD. HD is great and all, but I'm not going to watch something just because it's in HD.
A couple years ago, there were only a few HD channels being offered and most of them seemed stuck on the idea of showing off the capabilities of HD.
That was cute for the first couple weeks, then I got over it and tuned back into my SD channels which had worthwhile content.
I didn't want to watch "Birds over sunset", I wanted MythBusters, I just wanted it in HD.
The only content I'm forced to watch in SD is USA (Monk & Psych) and CNN (my fiance loves American Morning), both of which have HD channels available, just not on Time Warner Cable in Charlotte. It is nice, however, when NBC and Universal show repeats of Monk & Psych in HD.
I don't have an HDTV...I just dream about it...
Sadly, HD still isn't available through Comcast where I'm at.
I have to watch SD...
I only have an HD OTA tuner and I never watch that much OTA content, just the occasional show here and there, local sports and PBS stuff but that's it.
We have a Direct TV HR21 DVR but its on the 52' Sony rear projection. Everybody else but me has SD only.
We will soon upgrade the newest Toshiba 26" LCD to a Direct TV HR21 as well, but I am waiting for D* TV's HDPC dual tuner which I hope is available by the end of the year.
Speed does shows races in HD, ALMS from Utah was in HD...