Starting an HD Station... Thoughts and Questions.
 

Hey everyone...

I'm tossing around the idea of starting (our market's first) HD station. The concept is to go public access style, over cable. If we're mostly volunteer based, I think we can get the basics going for a few thousand dollars.

I'm just wondering if anyone here has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, or anything to that extent. Also, has anyone here worked with HD broadcast? I'm trying to get an idea of what equipment I need to get our signal from our station to Charter.

I guess that's about it... just looking around for thoughts and suggestions.

Really? That's hard to believe... have you actually put together a budget? Unless you're talking about cheap consumer equipment, I think it's going to be tens of thousands of dollars at least. How would you make money from a low budget HD channel? Where would you find enough program material? Unless you have some good programming I don't think people will watch solely because it's HD.

Not to rain on your parade, but I think this is still a really tough market - look what happened to VOOM....

Good point. I talked to Charter, and (surprise, surprise) "HD is too expensive for us to add local channels. It's much more difficult than adding a basic SD channel."

Doesn't sound like it's going to happen without a way to get the signal out.

I really suggest Over-the-air Digital transmition, doesn't go nationwide but it will provide the local area with a HD signal, who knows, maybe the local cable operator might pick it up too.

The problem there is cost and licensing. (And cost of licensing!)

I don't think this one's gonna happen--between school and my two jobs, I'm pretty tight on time these days. (Of course--when I came up with the idea, I only had one job, and didn't have to deal with school--but with the change in scenery I'm too busy for much else.)