OTHER TECH

Remember when those poor, starving contestants on Survivor finally got a serving of sustenance? Only, instead of being rewarded with a good rib eye or a yellowfin tuna roll, they get a big dollop of termite larva. Or perhaps a skinny slice of bat-wing. It's like, "Yeah, they're hungry enough to eat anything. But really, who wants this crap?" So it's gone with the long wait for a square meal of high-definition cable channels. For years, you've been famished by your provider's lack of HD offerings. Now, slowly, the numbers are picking up. But what are you getting? One of the latest channels to go HD is . . . QVC! Seriously, do we really need to see every pore at the bottom of that Teflon pan? And look at some other semi-recent additions: TNT and TBS, which show nearly a full day's worth of stretch-o-vision: standard-def fare stealthily upconverted into a wide-screen format. These down-market ingredients degrade the savor of that fancy cable tasting menu known as the "HD tier." Meanwhile, why is there no high-def version of the FX network, which brings us popular original programming such as Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me? Or how about the USA Network, home of Monk? With such limited space on the dial (cable and satellite providers face a tight bandwidth crunch), why waste it on the dumbed-down channels? Like the telecom industry itself, the answer gets complicated. Fact is, carriers are fully aware of how little actual high-def content some of these channels broadcast. And they're not playing dumb, either. Each carrier has guaranteed lots of HD to their shareholders. But in an effort to keep their promises in a timely fashion, these carriers are pushing ahead with HD right now, even though many media networks have yet to transition all programming to HD. Instead, providers are trying to strike a balance between loading up on HD channels that were early to the game (this includes many "transitioning" channels that broadcast plenty of standard-def), and being picky about what makes it on from here on out. And being picky doesn't necessarily mean green-lighting something just because it's in pure HD. "We don't think our customers are paying us because they want to watch paint dry in HD," says Derek Harrar, Comcast senior vice president and general manager of video services. Still, Harrar knows viewers are irked by upconverted content. "We've gotten calls and blog posts about it. It's not a good outcome. But it's not unusual - that's just going to happen on some channels right now." However, purely upconverted channels are unlikely to be launched, he says. Carriers might move a channel with limited HD offerings to the top of the list if it brings tantalizing exclusives (such as sports and movies) and promises to boost the proportion of true HD material. So just how do some of these HD-lite channels win a spot in the high-resolution zone? Here are eight tactics a fledging HD network can use to improve the odds of quick carriage: