HDTV makes debut in city

By Dan Daly, Journal Staff Writer | Monday, January 06, 2003

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RAPID CITY - A philosophical question for broadcasters: If a TV station switches to HDTV and there's nobody with a TV set to see it, does it make a picture?

Local high-definition television quietly made its debut in the Rapid City area on Dec. 17, when KOTA-TV flipped the switch on its new high-definition digital transmitter.

Monte Loos, operations manager for KOTA's Duhamel Broadcasting Enterprises, said he has received just one telephone call from a local HDTV-equipped viewer. "But other than that, I haven't heard from anybody else," Loos said.

The station's low-key launch of HDTV was intentional. "When you're putting something with that much new equipment on the air, you don't want to ballyhoo too much until you make sure everything's running like you want it to," he said.

The KOTA transmitter on Skyline Drive carries the full high-definition, wide-screen TV signal. Duhamel's satellite station on Terry Peak broadcasts a digital signal but not in the high-definition format. On Tuesday, Duhamel's KDUH in Scottsbluff, Neb., will go digital, and KOTA's satellite station in Sheridan, Wyo., will convert in the spring. Both are also standard-definition DTV.

Later on — Loos isn't saying how much later — all of Duhamel's stations will switch to HDTV. "We decided to do that here in Rapid City just to see if anybody's going to buy those (HDTV) sets," he said.

That has been the multimillion-dollar question throughout the long, often contentious transition to digital television. Are viewers willing to spend the money on HDTV, especially when until recently there was nothing to watch?

Since at least 1995, the Federal Communications Commission has been pushing digital television. By switching to DTV, the U.S. broadcasters will be able to push more video, music and data through the increasingly crowded broadcast airwaves, the agency argued.

The only FCC requirement for broadcasters is that they offer at least standard-definition DTV to their over-the-air viewers. HDTV is optional at this point. The deadline was May 2002, but the FCC has been granting extensions on a case-by-case basis.

You don't have to run out and buy a new TV set. At least not yet. Stations can continue to broadcast on their existing channels, at least until 2006 or when 85 percent of the TV households in their markets are digital.

But it seems that everyone — broadcasters, cable companies, television manufacturers and consumers — have been dragging their feet.

For broadcasters, the cost of beefing up towers and buying new transmitters can run into the millions. That's not bad for WNBC in New York, which reaches millions of households with a single transmitter. But in the rural West, stations have several transmitters scattered across sparsely populated areas. For them, the per-tower cost is the same.

"I have one tower in central South Dakota that reaches 35,000 households," Mark Antonitis, president and general manager of KELO-TV in Sioux Falls, said. KELO is going digital with full HDTV in Sioux Falls on Jan. 15. It will later add standard-definition DTV in Rapid City and other markets, probably in the spring. Eventually, all of KELO's towers will broadcast HDTV, he said.

Managers at Rapid City stations KNBN and KEVN were not available for comment on Friday, so the status of their conversion is unclear.

The cable question

In South Dakota, a significant number of viewers don't get their TV programming over the air but from cable. That's another conversion altogether. Locally, both Black Hills FiberCom and Midcontinent Communications are working on picking up KOTA's digital signal.

Ron Schaible, FiberCom's general manager, said he hopes to add the new KOTA as early as Super Bowl Sunday, Jan. 26. But it might not happen until mid-February.

It will be on Channel 94, Schaible said. Subscribers must have the set-top cable boxes in their home. But Schaible said they won't have to get a different box or buy an extra box. The analog KOTA will still be on Channel 4.

"Our network is very compatible to carry it, so we really don't have to do a lot," he said.

At Midcontinent Communications, Vice President Tom Simmons said his company is making the transition to digital in its markets throughout the region. In addition to local network affiliates, HBO and Showtime are moving to HDTV as well.

However, Midcontinent has not set a DTV date in Rapid City. "We have a little work to do testing it," Simmons said. Also, Simmons said Midcontinent must replace the set-top cable boxes in homes that want to receive high-definition programming.

For now, over-the-air digital viewers must buy a separate tuner along with their digital TV sets, often called digital compatible. In the future, those tuners will be built right into the sets.

KELO's Antonitis said his company is working with a number of cable providers in South Dakota to carry the station's digital signals. Cable operators are still a bit reluctant to devote much of their bandwidth to HDTV, because as FiberCom's Schaible put it, "I don't know if there's 100 HDTV sets out there."

Viewers coming around

Consumers, however, are apparently warming up to HDTV. A year ago, during the 2001 holiday shopping season, Rapid City retailers said they had a lot of HDTV lookers but few buyers. But in the 2002 holiday season, shoppers were buying, Louis Ross, a salesman at Karl's TV & Appliance in Rapid City, said.

"The first couple of weeks before Christmas, we were selling them like crazy," he said. "We're stocking a lot more of them, and they are more reasonably priced right now, so people are really receptive to them. So it really is a good investment if you're looking for a big-screen TV."

Today, you can buy a big-screen HDTV for as little as $1,500. Not long ago it was twice that.

The networks

OK, so if the TV stations convert and if your cable provider converts, and if you go out and buy an HDTV set and an HDTV tuner, then you'll be able to watch all your favorite shows in high-definition television. Right?

Well, not exactly. Not all programs are being broadcast in the HDTV format. ABC Television, which KOTA carries, currently has about 14 hours a week of HDTV-format programming, Loos said. But the networks are ramping up more shows. And ABC will air sports programming, including this year's Super Bowl and next year's "Monday Night Football," in HDTV.

Is it worth really it?

The picture and sound on an HDTV are indeed a marked improvement over today's TV pictures.

Most analog television pictures have 480 vertical lines of resolution. HDTV packs about 1,080 vertical lines into its screen.

And the screen ratio is a wide 16-by-9 (for every 16 inches of width, there are 9 inches of height), about the same as movie screens. Standard TVs have a squarish 4-by-3 format, and movies are edited to fit the screen.

"It's well worth it, to many people anyway," Antonitis said. "Especially for sports. It's like sitting in the stands and looking down on the field. It really is a remarkable upgrade of picture. It's just been very difficult getting here."

Contact Dan Daly at 394-8421 or dan.daly@rapidcityjournal.com