Posted by Chris Tarr on June 14, 2011 at 11:11:21:
In Reply to: Re: HD posted by Questionmark on June 14, 2011 at 09:41:00:
: At this point what is the savings? Unless the hardware crapped out and they aren't going to replace it, they've already made the investment. Unless we're talking about them not being able to pay their MGE bill.
There are some savings switching from the transmitter from Hybrid to Analog only. Broadcasting in HD reduces the transmitter efficiency by anywhere from 25-30% with a transmitter that can do both. If you're taking about high-level combining then you're talking about using even more power since you lose 90% of your HD transmitter power in the combining process.
So depending on the situation there could be some cost savings there. It all depends on where you sit on the cost vs. benefit scale. If you're running secondary programming and/or leasing data services then you won't see any savings at all by shutting down HD.