ABC degrades HD picture quality in 11 markets...

[KenAF]

ABC owned and operated (O&O) stations are in the process of adding a second HD subchannel (Live Well HD) at the direct expense of picture quality on the main ABCHD feed.

Each station has 19.4Mbps total to split among their various subchannels for weather, traffic, news, etc.  Until now, most subchannels were SD, so that left the HD feed with most of the bandwidth.  The addition of this new HD feed by certain ABC affiliates comes at the direct expense of picture quality on the main ABC HD feed, whose bandwidth was reduced from ~12.5Mbps to ~8.5Mbps.

Affected (or soon to be affected) markets include:

 
New York City - WABC-TV 7
Los Angeles - KABC-TV 7
Chicago - WLS-TV 7
Philadelphia - WPVI-TV 6
San Francisco Bay Area - KGO-TV 7
Houston - KTRK-TV 13
Raleigh-Durham - WTVD-TV 11
Fresno - KFSN-TV 30
Flint-Saginaw - WJRT-TV 12
Toledo - WTVG-TV 13

If this change hasn't taken affect in your market yet, you should notice it within the next 1-2 weeks.

To reiterate, these changes are being made at the affiliate level, so there may not much that cable providers (or FiOS) can do about it.

If this new channel (Live Well HD) is successful, and viewer ratings on the main ABCHD feed are unaffected, then we can probably expect the same thing to happen in many/most markets later this year.

[forya1]

I wouldn't have noticed, It's been a while since I watched anything on ABC.  But I hope the other networks don't follow.