KTXD Dallas To Launch Weekday Morning News In September

[JHBrandt]

Alternatively, I wonder what the legal situation would be regarding negotiating the HD broadcast rights for "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone" and then just running them from the Blu-ray sets.

They could probably do that as long as they got permission from the copyright owners (presumably CBS). I'm sure the owners would want extra $$$ for that permission, but for a small outfit (say Hot TV) the extra cost might be reasonable. I'm sure there are other issues like exclusivity windows to be aware of, but it'd be nice to see someone broadcast those shows in HD if they could make all the necessary arrangements.

 

[charles123]

Or do you want MeTV in HD 24/7? Unfortunately, all those old shows were recorded before HD existed.

This is not correct, since many of these shows were shot on 35 mm film. If the film prints still exist, the shows are capable of being remastered in HD from the film. In fact, this has been done for many shows airing on MeTV, including "I Love Lucy", "Perry Mason", "The Twilight Zone", and "Star Trek", to name just a few. Note that none of these shows are airing in HD on MeTV (or anywhere else, for that matter) -- but the fact is that the HD masters do exist in the CBS vaults. In a couple of cases ("Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone"), these masters have been used to generate HD Blu-Ray releases that look very good.

By "HD" I meant the technology that allows TV reception with at least 720-line resolution. I know film has quality equal to or better than HD, but the technology to broadcast it didn't exist when those shows were produced, just as I said.

Now that HD does exist, I'd love to see shows made available in HD to classic TV networks where possible. But that sounds like a big expense for networks like MeTV, what with buying remastered shows and securing more HD affiliates like KTXD and bandwidth for an HD satellite feed, so I'm not holding my breath. Maybe there's enough potential HD content to make the investment worthwhile, but the fact that MeTV hasn't made that investment hardly justifies Charles123's epithet.

(But now that you mention it, HD could be an opportunity for a local classic TV station like Hot TV! They could buy more bandwidth from Mako's KODF/26 for HD, and drop the simulcasts on 31.3 and 50.4. Even a couple of classic shows in HD would draw a lot of viewers.)

Anyway, I doubt that's what charles123 meant by "stinks." I was just trying to goad him into being a little more specific. If I had to guess, I'd say he was mad that 47.1 is replacing some good MeTV shows with less appealing local content. Maybe his cable co. doesn't carry 47.4 and he lives too far away to get it OTA. Who knows? Kinda hard to tell from "stinks."

Darn right I'm mad.