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DirecTV to end SD service in 2019

They couldn't have been clearer. Almost 15 years after the company first rolled out HD channels, they're pulling the plug on standard definition. There's a firm cutoff here... DIRECTV will be stopping all SD service in 2019. While you have some time to plan, it's time to start thinking about your options if you're still rocking that round dish.

SD service for DIRECTV started in 1994 when HD was still a faraway hope. Throughout the years, DIRECTV launched more and more satellites to add SD, HD, and 4K capacity, but they made a decision some years ago that the future was HD-only and stopped adding SD capacity to new launches. That means the satellites that carry SD local and national channels are getting older and older. By 2019, the last of them will have reached its operational limits and DIRECTV will stop all SD service.

Starting today, DIRECTV is on a path to an SD-free life that started several years ago when they stopped lighting up new MPEG-2 markets. The list of markets that require HD boxes keeps growing, and in 2015 DIRECTV stopped activating new SD-only customers. Today the only way you can get an SD DIRECTV receiver activated is to use it to replace a broken one... but DIRECTV doesn't want you to do it. They want you to move to HD, and right now.

http://blog.solidsignal.com/content.php/5483-THE-END-IS-COMING-DIRECTV-announces-end-of-SD-service
 
The only thing I can't figure is why they are waiting until 2019. HD is already so much the norm, I don't think there are more than a handful of viewers today who still require SD broadcasting. I would think that by 2019, it would be virtually zero.
 
Count me in that group. My main TV is HD, but I have old SD sets in my bedroom and basement.
Just can't see throwing them out while they still work well. I've been watching SD most of my life,
(hell, the first 12 years or so in black-and-white) and frankly my eyesight is not getting any higher-def as I get older.

I presume that a DirecTV HD box can display a 480i picture on those sets?
Of course who knows whether DirecTV will even be around in 2019?
 
AT&T looks to be phasing out the U-Verse video service

AT&T now owns DirecTV, so they seem to be using it to replace U-Verse. By most reports, it was a failure. I know in my area it is.

From what I see, AT&T is using DirecTV to be at the center of a content creation and distribution service similar to Comcast buying NBC-Universal. I see Comcast is now adding DreamWorks to that group.
 
DISH no longer offers SD service to new subscribers, either. Like DIRECTV, DISH will only replace an existing SD receiver if there is an issue.
 
KSAZ (virtual RF 10) in Phoenix has such a crappy HD signal that they simulcast in SD on their .2 channel. All my 'modern' TV's display the SD picture as clear as the HD signal.
 
KSAZ (virtual RF 10) in Phoenix has such a crappy HD signal that they simulcast in SD on their .2 channel. All my 'modern' TV's display the SD picture as clear as the HD signal.

Not quite. They simulcast on KUTP 45, RF 26. The PSIP is programmed as 10.2. None of the Phoenix VHFs (KAET/8, KSAZ/10, & KPNX/12) do very well unless you use an antenna specifically cut for VHF-Hi, roughly 14 inches on each leg of the dipole.
 
Not quite. They simulcast on KUTP 45, RF 26. The PSIP is programmed as 10.2. None of the Phoenix VHFs (KAET/8, KSAZ/10, & KPNX/12) do very well unless you use an antenna specifically cut for VHF-Hi, roughly 14 inches on each leg of the dipole.

Yeah, got it backasswards yet again. 10.1 comes in all pixelated. 10.2 comes in solid. 8 and 12 have the same trouble as 10.1 although not quite as bad. They are watchable. Most are particularly bad about this time of year when the sun sets directly behind the TV towers on South Mountain.
 
My mom will not be a happy customer if she lives to see the day Comcast ends SD service (She only watches channels in SD even though she has an HDTV & HD service).....

Cheers & 73 :D
 
My mom will not be a happy customer if she lives to see the day Comcast ends SD service (She only watches channels in SD even though she has an HDTV & HD service).....

Cheers & 73 :D

is Comca$t SD service cheaper than HD service? does she watch local HD channels through an antenna?
 
One of the other reasons I intend to run my SD sets till they drop is that Pennsylvania passed a law two years ago that makes it very difficult to get rid of old TV sets.

They will no longer accept them in the landfills, and you can not put them out with your household trash.
They have to be recycled. Problem is, all of the places that signed-up to be dropoff points for recycling were quickly
overrun with old TV's, and the labor needed to deal with them quickly made it a money losing proposition. So most of
them dropped out of the program. You have to search long and hard now to find a place where you can legally drop-off
your old TV for disposal.

Most people are not willing to do this, so you are starting to see these things abandoned in the parking lots of closed businesses, ditched in the yards of vacant houses, tossed over hillsides, into rivers, etc.

The law in essence is doing the exact opposite of its stated intent.
 
Where I live we have a program where you go to a central location in the county on a Saturday in April. We take our hazardous waste and electronics (several years ago this meant waiting in a line, but last year there was no line) and they remove them from your vehicle and process them. I forgot to watch for the date this year, but I used to see the announcement when I took the trash to "the dump". Now that my community is incorporated and gets its trash and recyclables picked up, I have to remember to ask when that will be.
 
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