Re: Washington Post Knocks Digital Reception

phil-news-nospam@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On Thu, 29 May 2008 08:48:29 -0400 Bob Miller <bob@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
| phil-news-nospam@xxxxxxxx wrote:
|> On Wed, 28 May 2008 12:51:33 -0400 Bob Miller <bob@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
|> |> |> How far of a far field was tested? |> |> |> | B Grade plus I believe. After all any signal that goes past the B Grade |> | is potential interference with the same channel's reuse. Many use the |> | argument that they can get 8-VSB at 200 miles but that is bad. One of |> | the main problems with the US model is to get TV to work they cranked up |> | the power to MEGAWATTS which screws up any efficient reuse.
|> |> Nevertheless, it is the system we have. There are many locations where very
|> distant (beyond B grade) reception is necessary.
|> | Back to the old saw, "it is the system we have" so we are stuck with | it?? When you have a bad system you CHANGE it. That is what we did with | NTSC. When we found that we had a bad system, or that we had a far | better system we changed it.

The cost of change is a very steep and high cliff. Part of why that is
the case is because we have to decide where to completely restructure
transmitters to cover large areas with many smaller units, or increase
the power on the big ones by 2.5x.

Not that steep and the cost of continuing a failed system is incalculably higher and goes on every day as it has now for almost 10 years.

| Or is there some immutable law that says you can't change a system, no | matter how bad, no matter how beneficial a new system might be, no | matter how much it might save consumers, not matter that it would | increase the carrying capacity of a channel by a factor of three or | four, until some simplistic time table or hour glass has passed its sand?

Who wants to pay for the costs?

The broadcasters would pay for the cost in a second. They would have to be insane not too. As it is they are planning on implementing MPH or A-VSB ASAP. It would be far better for them to have three times the carrying capacity to compete with the likes of Dish, AT&T, Verizon and Qualcomm. Not to mention that DVB-T is a proven system while MPH and A-VSB are bit and energy hogs and have no operational or equipment history.

| There is NO location where beyond B grade is necessary where a repeater | of SFN would not be the right way to go. If you are talking the desert | you can use repeaters since there is lots of unused spectrum. If you are | talking cities and their suburbs then SFNs are in order, something that | 8-VSB still promises after 10 years and hasn't delivered yet.

SFN?

Single Frequency Network, essential for a modern broadcast network. Something that 8-VSB advocates have been promising for 8 years or so.

|> Signal level also drops rapidly around 160 miles due to curvature of Earth.
|> |> Channel reuse was poor with analog. Digital can handle it better. Locations
|> where it would be an issue would have high gain antennas and this directonal
|> and can exclude one station over another.
|> | Great back to 30 ft. rotarized directional antennas in an age of omni 3 | inch antennas. Caveman garbage.I got a haircut yesterday. Looking out | the front window I could see a reflection of midtown Manhattan with its | Empire State Building less than two miles away. The owner asked me if I | wanted to watch TV which was visible in the total wall mirror in front | of me. The picture was lousy. I asked why. She said because they had not | set up a DVD player yet and didn't have cable hooked up so they were | using an antenna.

Omni 3 inch antennas are for mobile. Fix antennas on homes can be larger.

Omni 3" antennas are for reception. If that is all you need why would you even contemplate anything else? If your TV comes with a hidden 3" internal antenna and you get all the stations available why would you want to climb on the roof? Is there a rule that says for fixed you need big and for mobile you need small? Logic suggest it at least would be the opposite. The far harder to receive would be mobile so that should require the more complicated antenna right? You have it backwards.

| They were getting analog. I took the remote and did a scan and had HD on | in a moment. They were running out in the street to show people the | magic I had wrought. They were ecstatic, why had NO one told them of | this. I said you could have done this for years. They were incredible. I | said well don't get your hopes up. They were already saying they were | going to cancel cable which wanted to charge them double for commercial | service.

They had cable and were watching an OTA analog channel that was lousy?

They were watching OTA analog NTSC. It was lousy.

| They then picked a favorite channel and started to actually watch.
| | Then the inevitable came, the station started to blank out and "low | signal strength" appeared on the screen. Now I heard "what is this" what | is happening? What do we do? And their miracle turned to garbage. They | were even more unhappy when I left then when I arrived.
| | I told them they would have to stop walking around the room.
| | I told them they would have to petition the building to run a line up to | the roof 19 floors above to put up an antenna (with a rotor).
| | I told them it would then take a while to change channels.
| | And I told them that even with a rotorized antenna on the roof it may | not work.
| | I told them call your Congresscritters and tell them you will pay them | more than the special interest and they can fix it.

What kind of antenna did they have right then? They could just upgrade
that somewhat.

They had the best antenna I have ever used, a simple loop. I have tried as many as 12 different types of antennas in our testing and the loop was fantastic.

The FIX this country needs is for us citizens to pay our Congresscritters more than the lobbyist. Then watch them very closely and always pay attention.

Another simple fix is to change modulations. NO you don't have to change modulations all you have to do is allow one additional decent one, the bad one, 8-VSB, would go away immediately.

New chips are coming on line that will allow the reception of all the worlds modulations. Laptops will get them first. No need to dictate modulations just need to regulate interference. That is what the FCC was set up for anyway, not to maintain insane and very expensive monopolies.

|> |> |> |> | was for fixed reception ONLY it just didn't/doesn't work for mobile. And |> |> |> |> | in fact the original designers and promoters of 8-VSB said that ANY |> |> |> |> | problem of reception related to multipath and mobile reception would be |> |> |> |> | FIXED in short order at the hearings in 2000. They claimed all would be |> |> |> |> | well in as little as SIX months. That testimony was part of the reason |> |> |> |> | Congress and the FCC did not allow COFDM.
|> |> |> |> |> |> |> |> The vast majority of OTA television reception is fixed. No suggested was
|> |> |> |> even needed to confirm the obvious.
|> |> |> |> |> |> |> | As I said NTSC doesn't work and in the US 8-VSB does not work mobile. |> |> |> | But no one ever said that NTSC or 8-VSB were only for fixed reception. |> |> |> | Since they don't work mobile it becomes a fact.
|> |> |> |> |> |> If NTSC doesn't work mobile, then it's pretty much a done deal that OTA is
|> |> |> accepted as fixed broadcasting.
|> |> |> |> |> | No logic there. People probably are still buying small NTSC TVs that you |> |> | can carry around and try to receive mobile. OTA is emphatically NOT just |> |> | for fixed reception of DTV. Verizon and AT&T are offering it now.
|> |> |> |> Of course people can buy portables, although today they must also have ATSC
|> |> tuners. But that doesn't mean this is what is intended.
|> |> |> | The ONLY "intended" use was by the CEA to be able to hound the |> | broadcasters through their clout in Congress to do as much HD as |> | possible as soon as possible so that CEA members could make bucks |> | selling HDTV sets with high margins. The CEA could not do that with |> | cable and satellite since the FCC and hence Congress does not have the |> | same power to control their modulation and codec.
|> | |> | That was the intent. Nothing else was on the radar. Congress brought up |> | the issue that the Digital transition was MINIMALLY to match NTSC's |> | capabilities and one of them was at least portable. The limits of the |> | technology did NOT dictate what was intended. Congress and the FCC would |> | have loved that NTSC worked mobile.
|> |> NTSC worked adequately mobile. I used to have a battery powered portable TV.
|> | There you go, NTSC was mobile and we know perfect is not the criteria | since 8-VSB is surely not perfect so by Congress's own criteria, DTV | must AT LEAST EQUAL NTSC to be acceptable is NOT MET. And Congress DID | expect it to work mobile. In 1999 top 8-VSB proponents DID promise to | "FIX IT" so that it would work mobile and in multipath environments. | They promised Congress, I was there at the time, that 8-VSB would be | fixed in as little as six months. And before all this they had said, in | the persons of Motorola and NxtWave, that it HAD been fixed in the | latest silicon.

Apparently ATSC will be adequate for mobile, too.

That is like saying that a leaky garden hose is adequate to put out major fires when everyone knows that high pressure hoses that don't leak are available.

|> |> Did they actually invent it or just buy the patent?
|> |> |> | They bought Zenith immediately after the modulation was set. Did anyone |> | NOT know this was going to happen?
|> |> So it was originally Zenith's patent?
|> | Yes and then LG bought them up and quickly began the rounds in DC paying | off our representatives to keep quiet and fight for 8-VSB while telling | their shareholders back in Japan that they would get their purchase | price back in spades since they would have a $100 million revenues | stream from the US IP royalties on 8-VSB per year.
| | Royalties 10 times higher than those on DVB-T.
| | And when the US public didn't bite, didn't start buying the garbage | 8-VSB receivers, Congress sat on the FCC to do something and then passed | the MANDATE of 8-VSB receivers in every TV set sold to guarantee that LG | would get the payoff they wanted for their corruption. The US consumer | will pay without knowing it since no one was telling them anything.
| | My barber asked me, "How did you know this? The store told us that we | had to use a DVD player or cable.

Sales people in stores don't know stuff.

Very parochial. Do you get around much. Sales people in other countries in stores know a lot. I owned a professional photo lab. A professional photographer who had coffee table photographic books printed in different countries told me the difference in high end printing plants in Japan, Germany and the US. In Japan everyone in the plant including the guy sweeping the floor seemed to know ever nuance of the technology involved, in Germany everyone was a master of their job and new others while in the US there only seemed to be one person that really knew what was going on. He ended up getting all his work done in Japan.

| I have always said that at the SAME power from the same antenna COFDM | DVB-T will be easier to receive at any distance than 8-VSB. And I have | over the years offered to prove that by driving around any location you | can reliably receive 8-VSB receiving DVB-T mobile.

I guess you'd have to set up a transmitter to carry out the test to see
if you can get COFDM from Cleveland at the mall in St. Clairsville OH.
8VSB works there.

I wouldn't have to carry out a test. If 8-VSB works in that mall then I can drive around the mall receiving COFDM mobile, no problem. As long as the power level, location and height I can broadcast at is the same.

|> |> I can't disagree with the waste theory. But I don't think it would happen
|> |> very soon, or even should happen until we get a competitive model fiber
|> |> infrastructure significantly in place (or more specifically, sell off the
|> |> spectrum location-by-location as the fiber infrastructure rolls out).
|> |> |> |> FYI, I don't believe "sell" should be done. It should be on a "lease"
|> |> basis, even if long term.
|> |> |> | No what we should do is change modulations and make sure there is an |> | upgrade path as best we can for the future so that OTA can compete with |> | fiber. Fiber has a hard time doing mobile for instance and I don't think |> | fiber is the answer. OTA in other spectrum is capable of multi gigabits. |> | Much more efficient than fiber. Fiber is already old IMO.
|> |> What other spectrum would you be referring to? 40.5-42.5 GHz (V band)?
|> |> The problem with using OTA for data is the bandwidth sharing. Even if you
|> can get V band to work, are you going to nano-spot beam every customer or
|> share the bandwidth?
|> |> Fiber can easily do 3 or 4 optical carriers of 5gbps each. And that would
|> be 15 to 20 gbps _per_ home peak potential. I'm not talking about FiOS's
|> goofy design here, BTW.
|> | Not that bandwidth and I am not talking. But you could put 8 Gbps into a | house wireless with current technology on just one piece of spectrum | with lots more to come both technology wise and spectrum wise. The | future is a long time. How much does a house need? Surely not planning | on delivering all possible channels to every house all the time in the | future are you? And rebroadcasting a lot of that content over and over | in the current fashion. The same commercials the same programming | broadcast over and over. Old school.

I'm talking about building an infrastructure to replace the whole twisted
oair infrastructure we've be using for the past 100 years ... for the next
100 years. It may well be that each home has 8 gbps of continuous use by
then. And the neighborhood of 125 homes would thus be doing a terabit of
bandwidth. How does the technology you are thinking of do that over RF?

VERY EASILY! WITHOUT BREAKING A SWEAT! NOW! Fiber needs heavy maintenance. It needs to be installed. It needs right of ways.

OTA wins on all counts easily.

|> |> |> |> What broadcasters do you think are working on this?
|> |> |> |> |> |> |> | All of them.
|> |> |> |> |> |> I doubt that very much.
|> |> |> |> |> | Even the Low Power TV owners are very excited by the prospect of OTA mobile.
|> |> |> |> I know one such former LPTV owner, and he had no interest in it whatsover.
|> |> |> | Poor guy. As you say "former".
|> |> It was one of the fallouts of the UPN+WB->CW change.
|> | I am talking about current owners who are trying to survive the DTV | transition and under this pressure, they don't have must carry on cable, | they are very excited about mobile. It is the one thing they could do | that cable and satellite will not compete with them for.

I'd bet the majority of them don't know anything about this.

Well maybe you should join their thread and ask them about it.

|> |> |> | They are the same. The best modulation for fixed is the best modulation |> |> |> | for mobile. With DVB-T or T2 you can dial in a more robust mobile |> |> |> | reception if you want but you first need a decent modulation for fixed |> |> |> | which is for example DVB-T or T2.
|> |> |> |> |> |> It would take a proper test to convince me. I think maybe none has ever
|> |> |> been done.
|> |> |> |> |> | Australia, Taiwan, the broadcasters of S. Korea and Brazil all tested
|> |> |> |> How did they carry out a "proper" test, as it would apply to the USA, if
|> |> their TV transmission models don't match?
|> |> |> | They tested 8-VSB against DVB-T before they has a DTV transmission |> | model. I think that a place like Australia or a combination of these |> | countries covers the US as to topography etc.
|> |> Did they run the tests to 250km? 200km?
|> | I don't know, I think they are relying on a more sane approach of using | SFNs instead of killing birds with RF.

Does SFN mean the array of transmitters? Do you know how much it would cost
to put those in mountainous areas? If you put them up high you create
interference problems. So they have to be down low. That means so many
of them to fill in every valley and ridge.

You are talking repeaters not SFN's. The cost is a lot lower than fiber. A lot lower than cable.

|> |> |> | With DVB-T we did our test and believe that with a decent Single |> |> |> | Frequency Network we could deliver over 18 Mbps that would be very |> |> |> | receivable mobile and fixed. One for both and with MPEG4
|> |> |> |> |> |> Except that it will fail in many locations around the country.
|> |> |> |> |> | It would fail NOWHERE!
|> |> |> |> Only if the peak power level were boosted.
|> |> |> | If the network is built correctly it fails NOWHERE period. Unless of |> | course you choose not to cover a certain area. But if you want to cover |> | an area you can with the tools provided with a COFDM based modulation.
|> |> Changing over to an array of mini-transmitters is not practical. Changing
|> the modulation from 8VSB to COFDM would mean doing this, or using a much
|> more expensive transmitter and reducing channel reuse due to the peak to
|> average power ratio being higher.
|> | Broadcasters competitors seem to think it is practical to build out | mini-transmitters. Multiple solid state over lapping mini-transimtters | on shorter towers are more reliable than single stick that have a | tendency to fall down or get destroyed.

So put in an array of 500 little transmitters that someone has to run
around fixing all the time.

Solid state low power transmitters are extremely reliable and if one fails it is not a disaster like what happened in New York or happens regularly around the country, fires and 1500 ft antennas crashing to the ground. Each time this happens stations are totally off the air for long periods. An SFN would never be off the air.

All new broadcasters will be building such networks. If current broadcasters stick to 8-VSB and MPEG2 and think it cost to much to modernize then they are history. They already have been scared into coming around to mobile. Next it will be that they want the right tools also.

| It is now becoming the second most talked about topic with broadcasters | who are planning on going mobile with MPH or A-VSB. I believe it is | practical for those who actually want to survive the OTA transition and | who don't have must carry on cable to fall back on with per subscriber | fees. Broadcasters make more money the worse their OTA works. How | useful. But now they are tempted by a brand new revenue source, mobile. | Must be frustrating. Have to weigh the benefits of having a lousy OTA | and more revenue from cable subscribers or a decent OTA that works | mobile and getting subscriber fees from that.

Sounds like fiction to me.

Which part? Do some reading on the recent NAB show. It was all about mobile.

| Oh! there is an answer. 8-VSB works for this. Segment off a bunch of the | spectrum to mobile and collect once for that. Thereby killing off HD | which the public must buy via cable, second revenue stream.
| | End result. SD free OTA on lousy 8-VSB. HD version only available on | cable or satellite for a fee. Free SD now available mobile for a fee.

Won't happen that way. Too many people like their HD over the air.

Not very many people at all. Not one percent, not a half of one percent. They can squawk all they want, broadcasters will do what makes them the most money and Congress has and will back them.

|> I'd rather to the fiber scheme I have as the ultimate long term solution.
|> It would serve for decades and put the bandwidth of cable to shame while
|> opening up a fully competitive free market.
|> | Fiber is NO solution for mobile or portable. NO free market. OTA will | kill fiber. Fiber cost to much to maintain. Cost to maintain fiber will | be higher than the total operational cost of OTA by a factor of 10.
| | OTA will work so well that fiber will only be used inter-city and | country. The rest will rot.

I'm not suggesting fiber for mobile/portable. I'm suggesting fiber to be
the future data infrastructure which TV will be a small portion of. Once
that is done, then the demand for OTA to fixed locations will fade out and
mobile gets more of the spectrum.

Mobile gets all of the sweet spot spectrum now used for DTV. Broadcasters will be doing that next spring. OTA will be the infrastructure for TV and data locally. Fiber between cities and countries. Rots everywhere else.

|> |> |> | There is NO way to make broadcasters stick to providing HD in OTA. And |> |> |> | no need that they do. They will just deliver content that the public |> |> |> | wants in any resolution 24/7. You will watch what you want when and |> |> |> | where you want to. The market will decide, the public will demand and it |> |> |> | will be delivered. Those that deliver the most of what the public wants |> |> |> | will survive.
|> |> |> |> |> |> Maybe no legal way, but people are already getting used to HD and will be
|> |> |> angry enough to riot in front of the stations that decide to take away HD.
|> |> |> |> |> | 85% already get their TV from cable or satellite. And other broadcasters |> |> | will supply all the extra HD they need. And broadcasters will deliver HD |> |> | OTA just not free.
|> |> |> |> It varies from location to location. In Dallas TX that figure was less than
|> |> 50% when I lived there (2003). The number of OTA stations was rather large
|> |> there, including 3 Spanish language stations. OTA could satisfy more people
|> |> there than in places like Little Rock AR.
|> |> |> | Dallas is flat with few trees, even 8-VSB works reasonably there as did |> | NTSC. If we provided the public with a decent modulation that would be |> | true across the country with DTV.
|> |> West Virginia is hilly with trees all over. Based on reports so far, 8VSB
|> is working OK, at least in VHF-HI.
|> | Lots of people cramming the stores buying antennas right?

No. They are using the ones they used before. Away from the big cities people
aready have these things. It's common all over the state; either a big OTA
antenna or a satellite dish or both. A few places that are especially isolated
do have translators. But not many.

30% of the land area of the US is serviced by translators.

|> |> |> |> What level of QAM was that? QAM4? It would be dumb to use a high symbol
|> |> |> |> rate base modulation with any FDM modulation. It's better to increase the
|> |> |> |> number of discrete carriers up to what is practical for demodulators to
|> |> |> |> handle.
|> |> |> |> |> |> |> | We used 16 and 64 QAM.
|> |> |> |> |> |> At what symbol rate? How many discrete carriers? |> |> |> |> |> | 8K
|> |> |> |> Two questions. One answer. I'm not sure how to interpret that.
|> |> |> | As far as I remember it was .7440 kS/s per carrier with a 2/3rd Error |> | correction but we also used .7878 and .8117.
|> |> I'll munch on those figures sometime. I assume the carrier spacing was chosen
|> to interleave the excess sidebands of each carrier.
|> |> One thing I would have liked COFDM for is it could be easier (depending on the
|> flexibility of encoding the transport stream over the carriers) to slice the
|> channels up smaller and do things like small channels for community TV.
|> | Or you could just do IPTV.

That's what would eventually happen when the bandwidth is achieved for everyone
to do it at once.

Don't understand your statement. If you want efficient use of bandwidth you need a better modulation. That is one way of "achieving" more thruput.

Bob Miller
.

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