About Us

September 16th 05, 04:29 AM

From: on Thurs 15 Sep 2005 03:43

Jim Hampton wrote:
wrote in message

What I think that blurb is really all about is the desire fo some to
turn off their NTSC TV transmitters. And I can't say I blame them.

Okay, so you DON'T understand the coding system of DTV that
evolved through MPEG and the Grand Alliance. Use all those
"IQ smarts" and that double degree to understand it. The
Grand Alliance test program was long and thorough (8 years?)
and has plenty of literature to eddicate you.

Most TV stations here in Philly are simulcasting DTV and NTSC. That's
expensive, both in tower rental, power and labor costs, and because the
NTSC stuff is all going to be worthless when they finally shut it down.

No, it won't be "worthless" sweetums. You've never worked in
any TV station and don't know what's involved. The NTSC video
transmitter is basically a linear AM type and can transmit
ANY digital signal fed to it. Yes, it will require a few add-
ons to meet whatever DTV specs there are, but it can be made
compatible. The basic ham HF transmitter is really a SSB (AM)
linear yet it can do on-off keying with just a few circuit
changes built-in. Same, same.

The NTSC aural transmitter is straight Class C for FM. It can
be altered and retuned to FM BC or any other FM transmit
frequency in VHF or UHF.

ALL of the RGB camera/film/slide/tape "studio" equipment is the
SAME for either system. That's what is being used NOW for all
those simulcasts. Video and audio control consoles are the
Same. Same = Same in math terms.

The major thing added between NTSC and DTV is the ENCODER for
DTV and the necessary "air monitors" to monitor the transmitters.

All those Tektronix (and others') "vector scopes" will be
obsolete. So are things like the Local Subcarrier Generator
and Synchronizer for NTSC. Not major cost items.

Philadelphia is NOT the center of United States television
production...just one of many major market areas in the USA.

The migration to DTV has taken a long time and it's going nowhere fast.

On the contrary. New DTV transmitters for locales requiring
channel reassignments have been sold and installed for some
time. They ARE working out fine.

The stores keep selling NTSC TVs, VCRs, etc., so the 'installed base'
isn't shrinking.

Those same stores (Circuit City, Best Buy, et al) are doing
just fine selling LCD/Plasma/Projection DISPLAY units that are
COMPATIBLE. You need to read the advertisements more often.
Check out the DVDs which are rapidly REPLACING mag tape.

DTV sets still cost a pretty penny, and if someone
doesn't watch that much TV it's not a high priority to replace an NTSC
set.

I just don't see any marketing person coming to you for
"customer insight" on what to sell! :-)

How many more years and dollars before they can shut off the old NTSC
transmitter? That's the big issue.

How many years before YOU decide to go solid-state in a ham
transmitter you "designed and built for yourself?" :-)

One solution is to distribute set-top boxes that convert DTV signals to
NTSC, so that you can watch the DTV transmissions on your NTSC set,
tape them on VHS, etc. But who is going to pay for it?

Real customers is who. [not you, of course...]

Get a clue. DVD has replaced magnetic tape for recordable TV.
Check any TV rental store. Read those ads you ignore. DVD
RECORDERS are available. My wife's computer has a DVD recorder
built-in as well as DVD playback through the computer. With a
thin flat-screen display the linearity is superb and so is the
"gamma" (linearity of contrast/brightness).

DTV Coupled with DVD recording and thin flat-screen displays
is a whole order of magnitude BETTER than Betamax ever was.
VHS mag tape recording got excellent a decade ago and the
prices have been dropping while the general economy has grown
more expensive. VHS is doomed, has been doomed by DVD, just
as much as CDs doomed the vinyl disc recording. CDs and DVDs
are BETTER than the old media.

Cable TV is now the leading TV input to households nationwide.
Cable TV is cutting over to digital transmission from the
head end to neighborhoods, the neighborhoods having ALREADY
added a second cable line in many service areas. Nearly all
Cable services offer rentable set-top-boxes to decode digital
into analog TV visual-aural or NTSC RF. My wife and I have
one of those with its own remote and extra services such as
"view-on-demand" (a bit like TiVo, but only in general).
We get MORE free channels plus more premium channels plus
some two dozen free audio-only "channels" just for listening.
Superior picture, no RFI as was once seen on analog service.
Yes, it costs more. Yes, there is more pleasure with it.

Wife and I bought a little palm-sized still/motion-picture
camera (with image stabilization) that records in a 512M
or 1Gig memory chip. Costs less than $200. The Panasonic
still camera that records on a SuperDisk (size of a 3 1/2"
floppy, holds over 450 images in hi-res) cost $600 in 2000.
Still works fine. Technology just keeps getting better.
Maybe you want to make that some paranoic charge to defeat
Eastman Kodak? Sorry, Eastman is doing digital cameras too.

By wrapping the issue in disaster-communications bunting, the whole
thing can be made to look as if it's in the national interest to shut
down NTSC broadcasting ASAP. The red herring is that the freed-up
spectrum will somehow enhance disaster comms.

Tsk, tsk. You should take your anti-paranoia pills REGULARLY.

The DTV channel reassignment FREED UP SPECTRUM for MANY radio
services. If you had followed the Mass Media Bureau and OET
at the FCC you would have seen that...and the several auctions
for users ALREADY past. Lots of information there, just look
around to see what is what...or indulge in meaningless
paranoia. Your choice. Both ways are free.

A Revision of the HUGE Part 2, Title 47 C.F.R. frequency
allocation table appeared last week in the Federal Register.
You might want to check it out and compare it with old
tables from 1995 to see the differences on what happened
to all those big UHF TV bands.

The DTV channel reassignment problem was complex yet the FCC
(through OET?) did a masterful job of figuring it all out.
You can even download the computer program that figured it
all out from the FCC website. You DO know how to program
a computer, don't you?

You get down to the museum yet? They have a working pre-NTSC B&W/color
TV set complete with color wheel...

That was the old "CBS System." Saw one in Chicago around
1948 at an NAB demo. Pretty at the time. But DOOMED from
the beginning on display size plus flicker to some viewers.
Anything larger than 15" diagonal needed a projection
system...the color wheel couldn't be made stable or reliable
at 32" diameter or larger and certainly not quiet enough.

Have you examined the Texas Instruments "micro mirror" chip
that is used for digital light projection. Thousands of
little deformable mirrors, one per pixel, that replacing the
projection CRT. Technology advances, gets on the market and
customers buy it. Nifty system, ey? But you aren't in the
loop. Too bad. Just play with your morse code radios and
be happy.

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