PBS HD on Cox OKC November 1st
Beginning November 1st (mid-day) Cox and OETA will be launching PBS HD on Cox channel 713 in Oklahoma City.
Additionally, 4 new standard definition digital channels will be launching on channels 111, 112, 113 and 114. Channel 111 will be a digital version of the OETA main feed re-broadcast in 100% digital. Channel 112 will be OETA Okla – a channel focused on all things Oklahoma. Channel 113 will OETA You – focused on education and personal improvement. Finally, Channel 114 will be OETA Kids – focus on quality children’s educational programming.
All of these channels will be coming to Cox in Tulsa in the near future.
Cox Tulsa customers are also going to have PBS HD and the 4 SD channels on November 1st as well.
Excellent news… Thanks for the update…
At around 7 this morning, PBS HD was in my program guide (in Tulsa) but it did not work.
This is nice and all, but when are we going to see things like ESPN2 HD and Nat’l Geo HD, Food HD etc? Oh yeah, what about getting ABC back?
My suggestion to the cable companies is to provide a tuner like Directv and Dish that receives OTA digital and HD digital signals. This would give the customer the option to hook up their own antenna and watch the HD and digital local channels through their box. This way, if Cox or any other cable company don’t want to pay for providing these signals, then the customer could simply set the receiver to switch to the antenna and watch them for free.
So much for public television being free.
Finally!
# Bags responds: November 1st, 2006 at 3:21 pm
So much for public television being free.
Exactly! When OETA launches their annual donation campaign why would I or any other viewer consider donating when OETA already carries advertising and now only carries full HD programming on cable?
I am just as upset as anyone on here that OETA dropped the PBS HD channel. It was my way of showcasing HD content on my cable system even though it had a very limited amount of programming that repeated endlessly. Hopefully PBS will produce all their programming in HD before long.
On a side note, this week we added ESPN-HD, FoodHD, and HGTV-HD to the lineup on Taloga Cable. Talk about pretty! HGTV-HD carries programming from three Scripps networks, HGTV, Fine Living, and DIY, and FoodHD carries some Fine Living programming as well as their regular fare. We carry HD channels two/6 mhz slot, which requires little compression, leaving a perfectly sharp picture.
The new channels are very cool. If Suddenlink added FoodHD and HGTV-HD, I’d have to seriously consider going back to cable, which I dropped in 1996.
I’m a Dish customer and Dish has those two channels, but I can’t get them without tripling my monthly bill.
I talked to a friend last night who has Cox in Edmond and he said PBS HD looked good, but that without a program guide he didn’t know what was on. I had to tell him the trick about using Amarillo as his home PBS station in order to get the HD schedule from the PBS web site…
ggore - OETA did not drop the PBS HD channel - watched it last night - although I think right now it is only available via Cox.
How does license fees work for cable companies and HD channels? Do you pay extra for the HGTV HD channel if you already pay for the regular HGTV channel?
Also, I had heard that FoodHD had very little HD programming - was that rumor incorrect?
OETA dropped the PBS HD channel from their over the air offerings. Where anyone used to be able to get PBS HD, now you have to be a Cox customer. Where OETA used to offer 17 hours per day of HD programming (far more than anyone since KSBI stopped carrying HDNet’s OTA service), now they offer about five hours per week, which is less than ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX.
In ggore’s case, he can’t offer it because he gets his local channel programming via OTA signals. Effectively, that means PBS HD is only available in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and those two cities surrounding areas on Cox cable. It’s a very exclusive arrangement that excludes viewers from a system that gets at least some public funding.
There might be some point in the future where cable systems such as ggore’s system or Suddenlink or satellite services could offer PBS HD by picking it up off of satellite and rebroadcasting that transmission, but OETA would have to permit that and it wouldn’t further their goal of raising money through their local offerings. They’ve effectively written off those of us who were early adopters and promoted their service. I won’t give them a dime for what they’re offering now and I discourage others from doing so.
As an aside on this whole topic, whenever OETA switches from four SD channels that I never watch to one HD channel and one SD channel, my Dish receiver flakes out and drops OETA’s digital channels together. I’m sick of going back in and manually adding that station so I don’t bother. I know they had a lot of reruns before, but they were compelling reruns worth watching instead of the crap they now offer instead.
This is sad Gore adds more channels than cox. Good for you Gore glad to see someone cares about HDTV because it certianley is not cox. Wait we just added pbs hd oh but you want to watch HDTV OU football I am sorry we don’t carry that channel what a joke!!!!!
To answer your question HKPokeFan, yes, the programmers do charge for their HD feeds, some are cheap, some are expensive, ESPN and Discovery charge about $1/HD customer which I think is outrageous. It forces you to put them on a tier instead of being in the clear for all HD customers to see.
PBS-HD is a Cox-only thing I think, I have no idea how to get it. It is a good HD showcase, but I have to admit the 39th time I saw Quest for Kilamanjaro on it I began to doubt its viability as a channel people would watch very much. Too little programming.
FoodHD has most of the regular channel shows on it but not all, but they’ve begun shoot everything in HD now, so it’s improving.
My customers don’t get to watch ABC football either, so don’t feel bad. I don’t offer KOCO-DT because I can’t receive it reliably because of the Lawton thing. That won’t change until 2009 with the switchover. KOCO doesn’t really care about off-air much anyway since they had their signal removed from all the translators. If I could receive it I would pick up KSWO and dump KOCO but I can’t receive it here, it’s too far south to receive here.
I forgot how nice it is to have PBS-HD available to enjoy anytime. OETA has their HD logo appearing in the lower right corner most of the time. It’s a small price to pay as a reminder of who is making this possible.
With the EyeTV tuner, the Titan-TV program info shown is the same as the analog channel information. The Mbps rate appears to be lower than the original PBS-HD feed so it’s ready for use when switching the OTA tower from 4 channel multicasting to 2 channel multicasting. In other words, the bit rate might be reduced for OTA use, and that is passed to COX 24/7.
Because of using the DirecTV Tivo, I do use a separate tuner to watch PBS-HD. More reason than ever to make sure future TV purchases are not monitors and have an ATSC/QAM tuner built-in.
I know as of right now, OETA HD goes “over the air” pretty much 8PM-10PM and 3 or 4 to 4 or 5. I’ve been told that they are trying to thet the channels on Dish and Direct TV. I’ve also been told they are going to be in the process of renevationg there new studio control for HD (as well as the news department).
Hehe They need a Lawrence Welk channel instead of the Okie Channel (JOKING ON THAT ONE)
Have a great one guyz
Just in case anybody’s curious… you can still get the channel for “free” as long as you have cox cable in some capacity (analog, analog expanded, or just the internet) because it’s not filtered and it’s sent unencrypted so if you have a clear qam tuner you can get it. As with any digital cable channel, the picture isn’t quite what it was over the air. But it’s something.