Re: analog equipment and the FCC

"David McCall" <mccallmail@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Dmuek.128$Cw5.30@xxxxxxxxxxx

"Smarty" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:lGtek.170$kf4.29@xxxxxxxxxxx
"Rick Merrill" <rick0.merrill@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:Z_Odnau0pMw3YuTVnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Smarty wrote:
...
I don't understand your point. My local Time Warner cable company delivers nearly 70 analog TV channels to this day in analog format. Are you referring to some cable companies which are purely digital?

It seems to, but if you have a cable box (STB) then they send digital
signals to the STB which converts to analog for your "consumption."


Not necessarily. My TimeWarner cable box which provides the 'latest' 1080p HDMI HDTV service on the "digital" channels also tunes and down-converts standard analog broadcasts for the lower 68 channels I receive. If you look at the cable spectrum with a spectrum analyzer, you will see traditionally spaced 6 MHz analog channels with traditional audio carriers at 4.5 MHz, color bursts at 3.58 MHz, and a traditional single sideband (VSB) video signal.

In fact, a nearby paging service which operates in the normal VHF high-band 160 MHz range will often come on the air to do paging, and their signal strength is strong enough here that the classical beats and herring bone which we ham radio operators call "TVI" (television interference) are produced. This would never happen if the originating analog signals had been converted to digital before being put on the cable wire as a modulated signal.

My point really was / is that analog transmission from the cable company front end to the consumer RF input jack still exists, at least in some cable systems, even when a new vintage STB is employed. Time Warner is actually "bragging" in their local ads that the February 09 FCC mandate will not adversely impact their customers, and are encouraging people who lack newer ATSC tuner-equipped TVs or converters to drop their off the air reception and switch to their cable system.

Smarty
This thread was not about the February 09 FCC mandate.
It was talking about an all new mandate for February 2012.

I'm not saying it's true, only that I heard that rumor before. Some
cable systems have already switched to all digital, but many still
send a set of analog channels along with the digital signal for the
sake of customers that still haven't updated to digital. Some of
those will not sell you analog service because they really would
like to dump analog all together. It sounds like they have gotten the
government to step in and make that possible.

In terms of your TVI. You may be correct. It would be an indication
that a cable (likely not at your house) that has gone leaky.

Having said all of that, It is still conceivable that your digital STB
could still be all digital. Some (maybe all) cable systems get their
local channels over the air. This could still allow TVI to get in at the
head-end and be sent along with the desired signal to all customers.

Just a thought.

David


David,

I fully understand that the original post referenced the recent FCC announcement regarding cable transmission, not OTA. My only reason for referencing the Feb 09 OTA mandate was to make the point that the local TimeWarner ads emphasize that they, TimeWarner, will continue to deliver analog broadcasting to their subscribers well beyond Feb 09, and thus provides an alternative for those who are resisting the idea of replacing their TVs, antennas, etc. Their continuation of analog delivery was and is my point......

My original reply and the subsequent follow-up reply merely state that analog transmission on cable is still a very real and viable method, and cable companies have not necessarily switched, as Rick Merill states, to all digital. In fact they have good economic reasons not to switch, and their investment in head end and distribution equipment can be squeezed for years, especially if the consumer also avoids buying new and expensive equipment as well.

Regarding TVI, while it is true that some interference could hypothetically appear at the head end and create the very same visual interference effect, you have to consider the following, which totally disproves this possibility:

The majority of cable channels lie in bands of frequencies which are shared with other broadcast services. High band VHF public service band radios, for example, sit in a band of frequencies which are exclusively reserved for police, fire, taxi, paging, etc., and these transmissions are deliberately located at frequencies far removed from television broadcast. The paging system which interferes with my cable reception, for example, is located in the 152 MHz (approx) spectrum, which is well outside any neighboring frequency where TVI could occur. This frequency range is, however, directly where Cable Channel 19 is located in the "Midband" cable allocations used by most cable companies including mine. The *******ONLY********* way that this paging system could interference with cable 19 as it does in my home is by directly competing at approx. 152 MHz with my cable mid band signal. My STB box could ***NOT*** be all digital and still have mixer products / RF interference arising from a nearby paging service, since it requires both the analog TimeWarner signal sent on channel 19 along with the competing pager signal sent at 152 MHz to beat against one another. If you can think of a way that "It is still conceivable that your digital STB could still be all digital" I would like to know what you have in mind. The paging service transmitter, incidentally, is less than a mile from my home, and about 25 miles from the TimeWarner head end and OTA antennas.

I've spent a lot of time with my cable system and a spectrum analyzer, having been in RF engineering for most of my career, and fooling with cable descramblers, and there is no doubt in my mind that TimeWarner continues to carry classical (1960's vintage) analog signaling in the lower 500 MHz or so of their system ( roughly 70 channels) and has piggy-backed their digital onto the higher bandwidth expansions above 500 MHz as they build-out their network and add capacity. This strategy makes tremendous economic sense, since it retains and milks their original investment to the max. The eventual plan as I have been briefed and read is the obvious one........namely, to eventually replace the lower 500 MHz with digital signaling. The gain in efficiency with mpeg will then add yet another one hundred + channels if and when they are needed with replacement hardware needed in the head end only, since the STBs can be easily re-programmed to handle these new digital channels in the same manner as the ones currently being sent above 500 MHz.

There is still one puzzling aspect to me, and this is the point the original post alluded to. How the FCC has any authority to mandate any private wire signaling escapes my understanding entirely.

Smarty

.

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