The concern of analog supporter is not what digital is capable of but what
it invariably devolves into, a mechanism for adding saleable minutes at the
expense of audio or video fidelity.

Jerome



"Tom Desmond" wrote in message
...
Joe Blow wrote:

Analog cable looks and sounds better than digital cable.

And both look terrible compared to over-the-air DTV, which can far
exceed the quality of analog cable or analog broadcast.

As for digital cable -- as overcompressed as it typically is, it should
hardly be used as an example of what digital is capable of.

tony sayer wrote:

In article , Tom Desmond
writes
Joe Blow wrote:

Analog cable looks and sounds better than digital cable.

And both look terrible compared to over-the-air DTV, which can far
exceed the quality of analog cable or analog broadcast.

Well you must have some terrible analogue signals where you are if you
reckon that DTV is better!..

Our off air analogue from Sandy Heath out does DTV all the time and the
NICAM sound is better that the MPEG equivalent..


As for digital cable -- as overcompressed as it typically is, it should
hardly be used as an example of what digital is capable of.


--
Tony Sayer


It think that I may have written "And both look terrible compared to
over-the-air DTV, which can far
exceed the quality of analog cable or analog broadcast."

And that is true ... OTA DTV looks astoundingly better than analog
cable or broadcast. Really. There is simply no quibble possible.
Of course I was referring to the situation in the United States
(or Australia) where we have HDTV, not in backward places like
Europe.

Doug McDonald

On 18 Aug 2003 14:23:26 GMT, "Bob Haberkost"
wrote:

AM is dead, FM is dying, and they can have their IBOC in its dying days. In the end
the only broadcasting left will be the satellite-subscription services, and you'll
need to pay for that, just like everything else worth watching or listening to.

How will the satellite services find the space to serve every
community with the news and local information they need? Virtually
every community has a relatively local station. Whether they actually
provide service is another matter. Rural areas, I doubt, have
repeaters, so localization can't be done that way even if the FCC
allows it.

Then the repeater becomes a radio station (as cookie cutter as you
could ever imagine) at a diffferent frequency.

During the recent blackout I listened to WINS. Once WINS is gone, will
the satellite providers provide an identical service to me? I didn't
go to CNN (though WINS carries CNN among other networks). CNN or the
satellites can tell me what's happening across the country but
couldn't possibly support the cost of all the local news departments
(yes, they're dwindling) for every market. Who is going to tell me
which subway lines are running or where there might be food. Please
don't tell me wireless Internet because the cell site UPSs ran out of
power a couple of hours into the blackout. No cell service. My phone
switched to analog, then the dreaded "no service" message appeared.

Here the outage lasted 29 hours. Does every translator have a
generator capable of that fuel duty cycle and where will the fuel be
stored. Gas stations had fuel but no pumps working. As you can
imagine, New York has extrememly strict rules about fuel storage and
handling. I can't even bring a camp stove propane tank through a
tunnel. It's a felony if you're caught, according to the NYFD. If I'm
renting cell site space to Verizon I don't want a gas tank in the
building. Clearly, the weren't running on natural gas.

I believe all the news services on both satellite services are
pass-throughs.

I found it funny that TV stations stayed on the air with virtually no
operating receivers. They were talking to themselves.

Rich

In article , Doug McDonald
writes
tony sayer wrote:

In article , Tom Desmond
writes
Joe Blow wrote:

Analog cable looks and sounds better than digital cable.

And both look terrible compared to over-the-air DTV, which can far
exceed the quality of analog cable or analog broadcast.

Well you must have some terrible analogue signals where you are if you
reckon that DTV is better!..

Our off air analogue from Sandy Heath out does DTV all the time and the
NICAM sound is better that the MPEG equivalent..


As for digital cable -- as overcompressed as it typically is, it should
hardly be used as an example of what digital is capable of.


--
Tony Sayer


It think that I may have written "And both look terrible compared to
over-the-air DTV, which can far
exceed the quality of analog cable or analog broadcast."

And that is true ... OTA DTV looks astoundingly better than analog
cable or broadcast. Really. There is simply no quibble possible.
Of course I was referring to the situation in the United States
(or Australia) where we have HDTV, not in backward places like
Europe.

Doug McDonald


Well he would say that, wouldn't he!..
--
Tony Sayer

On 19 Aug 2003 14:21:25 GMT, "R J Carpenter"
wrote:


"Jake Brodsky" wrote in message
...

The beauty of digital broadcasting is that it works
better overall in a wider variety of conditions and the radio doesn't
have to be outrageously large, heavy, expensive, or high maintenance.

Weird claims.

No. Market forces will make this happen.

Digital broadcasting does not affect the size, weight, or maintenance of a
radio. It may increase the price. The digital signal is certainly is more
fragile than AM. Analog AM smoothly fades into the interference and noise -
digital quits.

Initially a digital radio will cost more. I don't disagree with that.
Digital signals may or may not be more fragile than AM.

They can certainly ride much closer to the noise floor than an AM
signal can. They don't suffer from background skip causing the
carrier to flutter. They don't put crap out of the speaker when
selective fading hits --they squelch instead. Most people would see
those features as acceptable tradeoffs.

In fact digital may increase the weight of a battery-powered radio because
of the current drain of the digital processing chips - at least in early
versions.

In early versions, you'd be right. Have you looked at the size and
performance of PCS phones lately? No, they don't sound as good as
analog cellular phones. But they're close enough that nobody cares
about the difference.

The size of a radio is determined largely by how good you want it to sound.

....And the program's desirability will directly determine if anyone
will bother turning this thing on in the first place. If you want a
CD of your brother in law's band, you're not going to hear it on the
radio anyway.

The bottom line: just because a certain degree of performance is
possible doesn't mean it is desirable by the general public. Dare I
say it: Mediocrity rules. If it didn't, do you think Bill Gates
would be a multi-billionare?



Jake Brodsky

"Never mind the Turing Test, what about the Turing Graduates?"

Jake Brodsky wrote:
On 19 Aug 2003 14:21:25 GMT, "R J Carpenter"
wrote:


"Jake Brodsky" wrote in message
...

The beauty of digital broadcasting is that it works
better overall in a wider variety of conditions and the radio
doesn't have to be outrageously large, heavy, expensive, or high
maintenance.

Weird claims.

No. Market forces will make this happen.


No, you mean advertising by the broadcasters will produce expectations in
the minds of the consumers that digital = better, which will lead to the
highly suggestible general public believing these claims whether they're
true or not (certainly untrue if you take the UK's experience), this
advertising creates demand, which allows manufacturing batch sizes to
increase which leads to lower prices, which goes on until the prices are low
and demand carries on going up as the prices fall.

This isn't market forces, this is manipulation of the market by broadcasters
and consumer electronics companies to ship new products to make extra
profit.


In fact digital may increase the weight of a battery-powered radio
because of the current drain of the digital processing chips - at
least in early versions.

In early versions, you'd be right. Have you looked at the size and
performance of PCS phones lately? No, they don't sound as good as
analog cellular phones. But they're close enough that nobody cares
about the difference.


That's mobile phones, not broadcast quality audio. Who gives a **** about
the absolute audio quality of a mobile phone call so long as it is
intelligible? This is very different for broadcast quality audio. And BTW,
I'm not supporting analogue AM because in the UK analogue AM is ****e.


The bottom line: just because a certain degree of performance is
possible doesn't mean it is desirable by the general public.


The bottom line is that the broadcasters are abusing their relationship with
their listeners in that their listeners trust them to provide as good a
service as they think is possible, when in reality in the UK we have sub-FM
audio quality on DAB when there is spare capacity on nearly all DAB
multiplexes left unused and going to waste, but the broadcasters just don't
want to increase the bit rates to improve the audio quality (96% of stereo
radio stations on DAB in the UK use 128kbps MPEG Layer 2, and Layer 2 was
supposed to be used at 192kbps for stereo audio streams).

The bottom line is that CD-quality on the radio is possible, and given the
choice between CD-quality or lower quality then the general public would not
turn down CD-quality.

But again the reality is so far away from CD-quality it is just a bad joke.
On DAB in the UK the audio quality is sub-FM, yet we hear adverts day in day
out saying crap like "superb digital quality sound" and such like. This is
an abuse of trust and the broadcasters should be ashamed of themselves that
they're conning the general public to earn extra profit (for the commercial
radio groups) or to try to hang on to market share and be seen to be more
politically correct (for the BBC).


Dare I say it: Mediocrity rules.


You've just said it.


If it didn't, do you think Bill Gates
would be a multi-billionare?


So basically because companies can get away with mediorcity then that should
be accepted and applauded?

Basically this is all to make a very small number of people a lot richer,
while the masses have to put up with crap audio quality passed off as
entertainment.

The bottom line is that we'll all be dead one day and the only actual
trade-off going on is people's enjoyment against fking profit for a very
small number of people.

But hey, that's capitalism for ya.

Think Enron and Worldcom.

And it seems one of the main purveyors of medicority in the US is getting a
bit of a backlash isn't it? Or are the reports about Clear Channel and a
load of unhappy listeners just bull****?


--
DAB sounds worse than FM, Freeview, Digital Satellite and Cable --
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/

BBC DAB is a national disgrace
Subscribe for free to the Digital Radio Listeners' Group Newsletter

Jake Brodsky wrote:

They don't suffer from background skip causing the
carrier to flutter.

I'd like to see that in actual use.

They don't put crap out of the speaker when
selective fading hits --they squelch instead. Most people would see
those features as acceptable tradeoffs.

I don't for one minute believe that people who wouldn't accept signal
fading will find complete muting an acceptable alternative.

Rich Wood writes:

Here the outage lasted 29 hours. Does every translator have a
generator capable of that fuel duty cycle and where will the fuel be
stored. Gas stations had fuel but no pumps working. As you can
imagine, New York has extrememly strict rules about fuel storage and
handling. I can't even bring a camp stove propane tank through a
tunnel. It's a felony if you're caught, according to the NYFD. If I'm
renting cell site space to Verizon I don't want a gas tank in the
building. Clearly, the weren't running on natural gas.

I visited a cell site recently where the back-up power was a
stack of gell cell batteries that, according to the AT&T guy, could
power the site for four days.


umar

On 20 Aug 2003 14:37:40 GMT, "DAB sounds worse than FM"
wrote:

This isn't market forces, this is manipulation of the market by broadcasters
and consumer electronics companies to ship new products to make extra
profit.

Call it manipulation if you want. Most go in to business dreaming of
becoming the proverbial 400 pound Gorilla of their market. It's still
a legitimate market force.

That's mobile phones, not broadcast quality audio. Who gives a **** about
the absolute audio quality of a mobile phone call so long as it is
intelligible? This is very different for broadcast quality audio. And BTW,
I'm not supporting analogue AM because in the UK analogue AM is ****e.

Look, the fact that I read news groups proves that I'll venture
through an awful lot of noise to read an intelligent thread.
Likewise, listeners will endure a lot to listen to views or music they
find interesting.

The bottom line is that the broadcasters are abusing their relationship with
their listeners in that their listeners trust them to provide as good a
service as they think is possible, when in reality in the UK we have sub-FM
audio quality on DAB when there is spare capacity on nearly all DAB
multiplexes left unused and going to waste, but the broadcasters just don't
want to increase the bit rates to improve the audio quality (96% of stereo
radio stations on DAB in the UK use 128kbps MPEG Layer 2, and Layer 2 was
supposed to be used at 192kbps for stereo audio streams).

Then turn off your radio. Find your own music and listen to it.

The bottom line is that CD-quality on the radio is possible, and given the
choice between CD-quality or lower quality then the general public would not
turn down CD-quality.

Possible? Yes. Would the public choose it? That's the question. It
largely depends on what choices they have.

But again the reality is so far away from CD-quality it is just a bad joke.
On DAB in the UK the audio quality is sub-FM, yet we hear adverts day in day
out saying crap like "superb digital quality sound" and such like. This is
an abuse of trust and the broadcasters should be ashamed of themselves that
they're conning the general public to earn extra profit (for the commercial
radio groups) or to try to hang on to market share and be seen to be more
politically correct (for the BBC).

Look, even plain FM stereo could sound much better if the dynamic
range weren't so terribly compressed all the time. But most
broadcasters are aiming for the middle of the market.

So basically because companies can get away with mediorcity then that should
be accepted and applauded?

I say you need to accept it, because it's a fact. I don't applaud it.

Basically this is all to make a very small number of people a lot richer,
while the masses have to put up with crap audio quality passed off as
entertainment.

Well, if you can convince the proletariat that this is the case, and
you win enough of their support to your side, you can do something
about it.

But hey, that's capitalism for ya.

Think Enron and Worldcom.

Enron and Worldcom pale in comparison to the graft, mediocrity, and
pointless wastes of most governments. It's not about capitalism.
It's not about corporations. It's about making a living.

As you pointed out, better audio is possible. So, what's stopping
you?

And it seems one of the main purveyors of medicority in the US is getting a
bit of a backlash isn't it? Or are the reports about Clear Channel and a
load of unhappy listeners just bull****?

It doesn't matter what sells. Some in this group have said they'd
play the sounds of roaring chain saws all day long if they could make
a good profit from it.


Jake Brodsky

"Never mind the Turing Test, what about the Turing Graduates?"

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote
in message ...

And it seems one of the main purveyors of medicority in the US is getting
a
bit of a backlash isn't it? Or are the reports about Clear Channel and a
load of unhappy listeners just bull****?

Yes. They are bull****.

Now, substitute " couple" for " load" and you would be very near the
truth.