Real bad advise Phil unless by the near future you mean a year or so.
Most people want to have a $300 piece of equipment work for at least 5
years in the TV set area.

USDTV is going to be selling receivers that do MPEG4 in
August/September. Their partners in this venture include WalMart (an
investor) and Hisense, a Chinese TV manufacturer who is trying to break
into the US market. USDTV is already starting to try to answer the
question about their own outmoded receivers that are being sold NOW.
These are the least expensive 8-VSB receivers available and there is a
real company that is advertising and trying to sell OTA HD and SD.

This is something quite new, a business whose focus is OTA for their
survival. Up till now no broadcaster or other company I know of was in
this position. They actually advertise. And they have the interest of
all broadcasters. This was the focus of attention at NAB this year...

http://www.idate.fr/an/qdn/an-04/IF308/index_a.htm
New business models for digital terrestrial TV

"Other solutions include consortia of local channels which could go as
far as purchasing their content from cable operators.

This type of trend was the focus of lively discussions at the NAB, and
poses a number of problems: terrestrial TV will have to rely solely on
its broadcasting capacities, and its future will be largely decided by
the existence of high quality receivers, but also by consumers’
willingness to install terrestrial antennae that have long disappeared
from the rooftops. A possible decision by the FCC to charge for
frequencies may also play a role here."

So everybody in the industry is talking about it, 400 of 1600 TV
stations have already joined a "consortia" with most of the rest
expected to join (Emmis), we have the biggest retailer and the NO ONE
company in the US, WalMart, as an investor and already selling the
lowest priced receiver on the market and we have one of the biggest and
hungriest Chinese TV manufacturers making and financing those receivers
and all you can say is DON"T WORRY!

I think Phil you may be one of those early adopters that want to "HELP"
newbies join the HDTV club at all cost.

I think telling the truth and getting it right the first time would go a
lot further to fostering HDTV and the US would be a lot further along
with HDTV if that had been the direction Congress, the FCC and early
adopters had taken.

If CGott doesn't mind buying a new receiver in a year or two then he can
go ahead. I think sound advice would be to know the risk that he is taking.

To me it makes sense to buy a monitor with NO tuner in it at all, NTSC
or ATSC. Then if you can get a receiver from cable or satellite do that
on a rental basis. If you must buy some kind of stand alone receiver and
can wait a month or two buy a USDTV receiver that can handle MPEG4 but
make sure you can return it if you have a reception problem.

The best of all (8-VSB) worlds would be to wait for a 5th generation
receiver that does MPEG4.

The best of all worlds today would be a COFDM receiver/PVR with
VP6/WM9/MPEG4 capability IMO and it is coming to the US also.

BTW Phil I did not lose the COFDM/8-VSB battle the US and all its
citizens did. We (business wise) won since our business plan depends on
broadcasters being stuck with 8-VSB or at best (also worst) E-VSB. The
new improved 8-VSB receivers will cement in 8-VSB in the US and ensure
that current broadcasters will not be offering a mobile service.

And I have been an advocate of HDTV from the 1980's. Being pro COFDM is
being pro HDTV. HDTV OTA has suffered a 5 year and counting DELAY
because of 8-VSB.

Bob Miller


Phil Ross wrote:
Go for it. Everything will be obsolete in the future, so don't get hung up
on it. In the NEAR future, you should be OK, and any changes in any
standards will be spread out over time (look how long it is taking just to
kill off NTSC broadcasting).

Oh, and don't listen to Bob. He has a bug up his rear about losing the COFDM
vs. 8VSB battle, and he just can't tolerate the thought of HDTV possibly
being a success.

Phil

"CGott" wrote in message
om...

I'm thinking of buying a set like Sony's KV 32HS510, for use in
receiving over the air programming (I don't plan on getting cable
anytime soon). This TV has the DVI HDTV connection. Does that prevent
it from becoming obsolete in the future, if broadcasters scramble
their signals, or should I wait a few years?

Bob Miller wrote in news:WCkDc.1951$lh4.1432
@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:

This is something quite new, a business whose focus is OTA for their
survival. Up till now no broadcaster or other company I know of was in
this position.

Now there's a statement that's typical of Bob - twisting stuff around to
his own means and posting something that sounds fairly reasonable as long
as you don't think about it or do any research.

Seems to me that before the proliferation of cable TV, every local
broadcaster and the national networks were in the position of having to
focus on OTA for their survival. And in all but the largest markets with
relatively well to do broadcasters, the local broadcasters still depend on
OTA - that's how their signal gets to the cable head!

Jeff Shoaf wrote:

Bob Miller wrote in news:WCkDc.1951$lh4.1432
@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:


This is something quite new, a business whose focus is OTA for their
survival. Up till now no broadcaster or other company I know of was in
this position.


Now there's a statement that's typical of Bob - twisting stuff around to
his own means and posting something that sounds fairly reasonable as long
as you don't think about it or do any research.

Seems to me that before the proliferation of cable TV, every local
broadcaster and the national networks were in the position of having to
focus on OTA for their survival. And in all but the largest markets with
relatively well to do broadcasters, the local broadcasters still depend on
OTA - that's how their signal gets to the cable head!



Before cable yes I should have said recently like the last ten or twenty
years. And making sure the engineer keeps the transmitter going so that
the signal get to the cable headend so that the broadcaster qualifies
for must carry has been THE ONLY reason that justified the use of the
broadcast spectrum for a long time.

Broadcasters FOCUS has been on maintaining and increasing their MUST
CARRY rights. USDTV is the FIRST company to FOCUS on OTA to make money
broadcasting OTA to actual customers with NO other visible means of
support.

In recent years UHF applications to the FCC were specifically positioned
near cable headends to make it easy to get the signal there and with
little or no concern for the demographics of their actual OTA coverage
area. Many believe that this is the only reason there much success with
analog UHF spectrum from the get go.

Bob Miller wrote:
The MPEG2 HDTV is free OTA DTV but the
MPEG4 can be free or subscription based. As USDTV or Emmis bring all
broadcasters on board the only programming left on MPEG2 will be ONE SD
program.


Should there be only one SD program left for free broadcast TV, the
citizens, who own the spectrum, will have been ripped off. I know that
the FCC rules say that only one SD program of NTSC quality need be
broadcast; but, this is not what the public has been expecting. The
public expects free OTA HDTV. This even effects satellite and cable
viewers. Broadcast TV has consistently held the highest ratings, higher
then even cable only programs. Is a popular show like CSI (currently
being broadcast in HDTV) going going to be shown in HDTV on cable and
only SD OTA because the local CBS affiliate (as an example) has sold
their spectrum to USDTV? Or possibly CSI will only be available in HDTV
on USDTV and only SD on cable, satellite and OTA. Either way the viewers
get screwed. Maybe its time for either the FCC or Congress to mandate an
HDTV requirement for broadcast TV; a requirement for a full 19.39 mb/s
HDTV data rate. Lower then this rate results in annoying pixelation;
haven't yet seen good quality HDTV when there is more then one program
being simulcast.

numeric wrote:



Bob Miller wrote:
The MPEG2 HDTV is free OTA DTV but the

MPEG4 can be free or subscription based. As USDTV or Emmis bring all
broadcasters on board the only programming left on MPEG2 will be ONE
SD program.


Should there be only one SD program left for free broadcast TV, the
citizens, who own the spectrum, will have been ripped off. I know that
the FCC rules say that only one SD program of NTSC quality need be
broadcast; but, this is not what the public has been expecting. The
public expects free OTA HDTV. This even effects satellite and cable
viewers. Broadcast TV has consistently held the highest ratings, higher
then even cable only programs. Is a popular show like CSI (currently
being broadcast in HDTV) going going to be shown in HDTV on cable and
only SD OTA because the local CBS affiliate (as an example) has sold
their spectrum to USDTV? Or possibly CSI will only be available in HDTV
on USDTV and only SD on cable, satellite and OTA. Either way the viewers
get screwed. Maybe its time for either the FCC or Congress to mandate an
HDTV requirement for broadcast TV; a requirement for a full 19.39 mb/s
HDTV data rate. Lower then this rate results in annoying pixelation;
haven't yet seen good quality HDTV when there is more then one program
being simulcast.


A few early adopters are the only ones even paying attention and as time
goes by and more HD is on cable and satellite even they show less
interest. Congress has stated in both Hearings in the House and Senate
over the last few weeks that they are tired of the digital transition
and just want to get it over. The last thing they want to hear is any BS
about HDTV and OTA and they said as much publicly.

A broadcaster posted on AVSForum that he demonstrated pristine HD to a
civic group and they all were impressed and then in passing he mentioned
USDTV. The group was very interested in USDTV, many wanted to sign up on
the spot and showed no more interest in the HD demo.

The public is not clamoring for free OTA HDTV. They hardly know what OTA
TV is anymore. Congress is now figuring that out. They are going to have
a hearing on Berlin where the digital transition took only 9 months
because their Government figured out that very few relied on OTA
anymore. Something less than 5%.

5%, if we look at the numbers right, is high for the US where those who
rely on OTA is more like 3 or 4% not the 15% bandied about. Congress has
also asked for info on that subject. They have a lot of comment request
ongoing about this subject at the moment. Can you read between the lines???

HD only requires 19 Mbps if you use MPEG2. If you use WM9, MPEG4 or VP6
you get higher quality at a much lower bitrate. That is why I was
arguing for VP4 and COFDM way back in 2000. COFDM is more robust at a
higher bit rate, 19.76 Mbps, than 8-VSB at 19.34 Mbps and if we had used
VP4 at the time we would now have the best of all worlds with VP6 and COFDM.

The BS decibel level and the money pushing it were just too high in DC
and we got what money bought at the time, MPEG2, 8-VSB and a major delay
during which the major players, broadcasters, major retailers and the
CEA members all knew what was going on. Or do you think there was little
in the way of full power broadcasting on the part of the broadcasters,
little production of 8-VSB receivers and NO advertising for nothing?

This was a delay to let 8-VSB get fixed and they probably thought they
would fix it by now. You have E-VSB coming out and a decent receiver
from Zenith.

But what if we had gone with COFDM and a better codec back in 2000? By
now we would have 50 million receivers in homes both for SD and HD and
their cost would be peanuts. By this Christmas it would be hard to find
a TV set that did not have a COFDM receiver built in and without a
mandate. Most of the media players would also receive mobile DTV not
just let you save programs to them to take with you.

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, numeric wrote:
Should there be only one SD program left for free broadcast TV, the citizens,
who own the spectrum, will have been ripped off. I know that the FCC rules
say that only one SD program of NTSC quality need be broadcast; but, this is
not what the public has been expecting. The public expects free OTA HDTV.
This even effects satellite and cable viewers. Broadcast TV has consistently
held the highest ratings, higher then even cable only programs. Is a popular
show like CSI (currently being broadcast in HDTV) going going to be shown in
HDTV on cable and only SD OTA because the local CBS affiliate (as an example)
has sold their spectrum to USDTV? Or possibly CSI will only be available in
HDTV on USDTV and only SD on cable, satellite and OTA. Either way the viewers
get screwed.

All of the above are reasons why it's not going to happen, Bob Miller's
psychotic rantings notwithstanding. A good rule of thumb is that if you
take anything that he says, the opposite is true.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Bob Miller wrote:
But what if we had gone with COFDM and a better codec back in 2000?

We would have had a lousy TV system that screws up the picture every time
some motor fires up, and Bob Miller would have been hung, drawn, and
quartered for his part in inflicting that abortion upon us.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Bob Miller wrote:
A few early adopters are the only ones even paying attention and as time goes
by and more HD is on cable and satellite even they show less interest.

Remember -- take everything that BOB says, and the exact opposite is the
truth!

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

"Bob Miller" wrote in message
ink.net...
wrote:

Blah blah blah COFDM blah blah blah blah blah blah COFDM
blah blah COFDM blah blah blah blah blah COFDM blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah COFDM blah blah blah blah blah.

Get over it BOB.

Bob Miller wrote in news:Y9nDc.14772$w07.7219
@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net:

Before cable yes I should have said recently like the last ten or twenty
years. And making sure the engineer keeps the transmitter going so that
the signal get to the cable headend so that the broadcaster qualifies
for must carry has been THE ONLY reason that justified the use of the
broadcast spectrum for a long time.


I'll make a deal with you, Bob. My parents get all of their TV reception
via OTA. If the majority of the local broadcasters in my area do what
you're predicting (broadcast one SDTV signal via free OTA and add a
multitude of pay DTV OTA signals) before the FCC mandates the broadcasters
drop their analog broadcast, I'll buy my folks a new 45" widescreen TV, a
receiver to get those pay OTA signals, and pay for a minimum of one year's
subscription to those pay DTV OTA broadcasts. If the majority of the
broadcasters in my area don't do what you're predicting and continue to
broadcast free OTA HDTV, you can buy them a 45" widescreen with an
integrated 8VSB HD OTA tuner.