The Pac-12 Network and Dish came to an agreement last week that allowed for the national TV channel to be distributed by the satellite company. The agreement actually appeared to come at the last moment on Saturday at midnight, and the channel only got put up a few hours before the Week 2 kickoff.
So it's not a huge surprise that the Pac-12 Network was probably not distributed to you in high definition. The timing between the announcement and the actual channel going up required the most basic arrangements, so the network could only do so much. But Dish made it clear that high definition would be on its way
Now it looks like the HD channel is right here for us. The uplink is apparently ready to go for this weekend!
Channel 413 will be the source of the high definition content, just like channel 413 is the original standard definition channel. It looks as if the HD is going to be a part-time thing, probably only for football and men's basketball broadcasts and then everything else goes on a game-by-game basis. It doesn't seem to be an HD-only channel as everything else will be televised in standard definition. It remains to be seen what will happen here.