American Forces Network plots upgrade to HD in 2013
By Richard Lawler 
posted Jul 6th 2008 9:56PM
posted Jul 6th 2008 9:56PM
Soldiers are generally used to making sacrifices for their country, but in our opinion one has to draw the line somewhere. The American Forces Network delivers programming to military personnel all over the world, and unfortunately does not plan to convert its satellite broadcast to high definition until 2013 at the earliest for Pacific regions, and 2014 for Europe. At that point all broadcasts are expected to switch to HD, but until then soldiers will have to put up with the same often highly compressed video now available. More details are expected about the plan in the next 18-24 months, but for now the network is advising personnel to skip picking up that new TV since there's not much to watch on it yet. Perhaps if we found a military application for 1080i we could things sped up a bit - at the least, we think it'd improve morale.
Sheesh. Five more years? I've done some time overseas and, as unbelievably lame as AFN is, it's still TV shows from the good ol' US of A. Still, considering the variable quality of signal available in many locations, I'm not sure I'd trust AFN with anything HD. Standard def ends up pixelated with out-of-sync audio most of the time. What will happen with HD?
Ah, well. I'll be retired out of the USAF by then. :-)
I kinda fail to see the point. I've never stayed in an overseas VOQ (or any, for that matter) that has an HDTV. All of my friends who are stationed in Europe or Japan live off base, so they don't get AFN. Of course, just leave it to engadget to write about the least newsworthy topics.
Have you considered the possibility that they don't have HD on the bases, because the TV station isn't in HD yet, so it would only look worse? Regardless, five years should be enough time for them to get an HDTV or two.
The basic premise of this article is flawed. The author assumes that AFN is the primary source of television signals and entertainment viewing for our troops. That's simply not even CLOSE to true.
As for "a military application for 1080i", perhaps if the article author had done even a small amount of research he would have found numerous unclassified and fully disclosed on the web uses of hi resolution displays by our military. I was installing 1280x1024 3 tube CRT projectors on Navy ships 15+ years ago, and even then there were 2kx2k monochrome Hughes light valve projectors on board, so don't think for a moment that our military isn't interested or using high resolution display technology. From submarines to aircraft carriers, large screen high def displays (and access to content to watch on them) have proliferated throughout the Navy and I have no doubt throughout the rest of the services too.
Sorry if I offended your military sensibilities, but even though high res screens are obviously used in other areas, until one of them has TV signals on them, then it's not an HDTV. No one ever said AFN was the only thing troops watch, but unless I'm mistaken, its the primary one produced by Armed Forces personnel and a good way to get programming from home, even overseas.