Final Evening of Analog TV?

In alt.tv.tech.hdtv Matthew L. Martin wrote:
| Bill R wrote:
| Elmo P. Shagnasty wrote:
|
| In article ,
| "Matthew L. Martin" wrote:
|
|
| Some stations have already abandoned analog broadcasts.
|
|
| Bull****, of course, but what should we expect from you.
|
|
| What is BS about that? It is true; in some cities stations have already
| shutoff their analog stations.
|
| Your correspondent believes his opinions to be true facts. Reality does
| not matter to him.
|
| I always check my nonsense before I post it to the interweb.
|
| Matthew

Actually, I believe you secretly don't check a damned thing. You just
spout lies and label them with "check your facts" so that people thing
you are such cool stuff.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

In alt.tv.tech.hdtv Jo wrote:
|
| "Elmo P. Shagnasty" wrote in message
| ...
| In article ,
| "Matthew L. Martin" wrote:
|
| Some stations have already abandoned analog broadcasts.
|
| Bull****, of course, but what should we expect from you.
|
|
| Actually some stations have dropped their analog transmissions. One
| example that comes to mind in my area is WLNY 55, a Long Island station. It
| dropped its analog transmission for all digital last year.

It was paid to expedite this so that channel 55 could be cleared. I don't
see that as being a problem, though.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

In alt.tv.tech.hdtv Matthew L. Martin wrote:

| Do you ever actually read what I post? Obviously not.
|
| Au contraire, mon ami.

Then why is it you say things that contradict the facts?


| So yet again you show yourself to be an asshole.
|
| You descend into name calling first? Why am I not surprised?

This has been ongoing for over a year when YOU started it first.
It has become your moniker. It's what you do. It's in your
nature.


| This seems to be a lifelong career for you.
|
| Calling you out when you are wrong, or arguing how everything would be
| better if only they let you make all of the decisions would be a
| lifetime task for a staff of 20.

And specifically what was I wrong about?

Oh wait. What you'll end up doing is taking things out of context,
or misinterpreting the wording, or just plain lying, as you have done
so many times before, including when I first started posting here.
Then you fail to follow up on any points you claim. You don't even
know how to be specific when you challenge people, it seems.


| But here is your chance to read and understand. Here (and in a
| couple other posts a few weeks back) I was talk about a potential
| time window just prior to the cutoff where the FCC simply can't
| process STAs fast enough, and just lets station make the change when
| they want (as long as they coordinate with conflicts), and don't need
| STAs (but must file a report indicating what they did and when).
|
| So, you speculate, and I must take that as fact?

Sure, there are speculations in much of what I post. You can figure
that out if you pour the beer out and put the brain back in your head.


| If you had read my other posts you'd see I have talked about some
| stations that have already make the switch to all digital. I don't
| have a list, nor do I care to have one. If you want to cite numbers,
| go ahead.
|
| Why bother, it appears that you have finally done some research on your
| own. I didn't think that was possible.

Gee. You finally did actually read something I posted rather than
just spot the name and jerk the knee?


| But you need to stop these false statements you seem to like to
| always make claiming that people (you do it a lot to me, but I have
| seen you do it to others, too) don't read anything, when it is not
| true at all.
|
| Sorry bud. I will continue to correct your BS (and that of others) as
| often as I like. There is precious little you can do about it except
| throw another tantrum. That won't work.

If you want to debate, that's one thing. But you sure as hell didn't
start that way.


| The fast is that it is YOU, Matthew L. Martin, that don't read what
| it is that people post. You pretend they posted other things, then
| you come around to act like the big bully of ATTH.
|
|
| That is really your MO. Too bad you are too self centered to recognize it.
|
| BTW. No one is required to read everything you post. If they respond to
| a post they are responding to the content of that post. Here is what you
| said:

Of course you are NOT _required_ to read my posts. But any decent person
who wants to challenge what I have posted would read it to be sure they
are in fact challenging that which I posted. You really look so much like
the fool when you say I posted something wrong, then post what you believe
is correct, when in fact I posted the thing that was correct.

You indeed do well to post things that are correct. You just have a bad
time and understanding things other people post. I'm not sure if it is
a language problem you have, or a personality problem. It's definitely
at least one of those things.


| Perhaps the FCC will allow stations to choose to make the switch
| at any time they choose within a time window without having to do
| anything than send them a report on when they did it.
|
| The fact is that some number of stations have already dumped analog,
| presumably informing the FCC that they have done so. There is no reason
| for there to be a situation about which you speculate.

It appears I've read more about this than you have. At least one of the
stations which I read more about had to ask the FCC for permission to do
so. What I don't know is what form that permission was. Oh, I'm sure
it is on the FCC site somewhere. Was it an STA or a license modification?
I don't know or care. My only interest is whether the FCC open a time
window of a few days or weeks leading up to Feb 17, 2009, in which they
waive the requirements to file for these things in advance of the change.
Maybe they will do that. Or maybe they will make it hard and not do that.

You should do some more of that research stuff you talk about.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 03:44:08 GMT Bob Miller wrote:
| wrote:
| On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:45:32 -0500 Bruce Tomlin wrote:
|
| | Keep in mind that some will be going back to their old frequency, and
| | others will be going to a third frequency entirely (because their
| | current digital channel is 55+ or whatever the new cutoff is). It takes
| | time _and_equipment_ to start broadcasting at full power on a new
| | frequency, because the transmitter equipment is built for the channel it
| | will be broadcasting. But I think it's not that hard to adapt an
| | existing analog transmitter for ATSC on the same frequency, and that was
| | one of the reasons 8VSB was chosen over Bob-o-Vision.
|
|
| 8-VSB was chosen because of three very important political
| considerations, money, money and money. Had nothing to do with technical
| considerations. There is no advantage in using 8-VSB in switching to
| digital. I have used a transmitter that had both COFDM and 8-VSB
| modulations that could be changed by pushing a button.

I suggest we suspend the digital transition for another 8 to 10 years,
put everything on hold, take back channels 52-69 for this period, and
run a lot more tests to show COFDM along side 8VSB in each market.


| The same could be true for receivers that could receive both
| modulations. In Asia they are now starting to build receivers that have
| the ability to receive multiple, 3 or more, modulations.
|
| They, manufacturers in China for instance, want to make sure their DTV
| sets will work anywhere in the world and this also saves more than the
| extra cost many times over in inventory alone.
|
| Guess which modulation they left out? Yes right, 8-VSB.
|
| They include, DMB, DVB-T and H, DAB, ISDB, all COFDM based.

Wow, COFDM is sure a fragmented field. Maybe it is just too complicated
to be considered for the US market.

Or maybe I just don't consider those to be different enough. Maybe it is
just not hard to make one demodulator matrix work on all of those, or any
other COFDM class modulation, by just loading it with the appropriate
numbers to set the modulation parameters.

8VSB is radically different. It would need a separate chip. Or if both
are done in one chip it would mean a large die.

BTW, 8VSB could come in a number of varieties, too, even while keeping
the 8 levels. And of course there is 16VSB if you want more bandwidth
while getting less noise immunity (quadrupling the power could compensate).
But at least in 8VSB, there is no complication of different governments
choosing to use different variations of the modulation.

Personally, I'd have chosen QAM for OTA. But I don't see this as being
important enough to go back on the decision. But if we do, I'll jump in
and be pushing for QAM.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 23:40:39 -0500 Bruce Tomlin wrote:
| In article ,
| wrote:
|
| Maybe you can even get a signal by "tuning" to channel 37 :-)
|
| But certainly the _numbers_ from 70 to 99 could be up for grabs. Branding
| as channel 99 might be interest.
|
| I could envision hams using ATSC on ham radio frequencies setting the PSIP
| to some fun stuff like 73.
|
| That's an amusing thought, but I'm not sure how good an idea it is to
| depend on the auto-scan of tens of thousands of TV sets to find your
| mis-numbered channel.

Maybe it's not a good idea.


| Let's say that channel analog 8, digital 32 kept their 8-1 8-2 PSIP
| numbers and stayed on 32. Then someone buys a new TV. Sure, they might
| even know to use the auto-scan, but if something goes wrong (like the
| antenna being hooked up wrong and messing up the signal), they will
| never find channel 8. They might try to tune to channel 8, find it
| doesn't work, maybe they take the TV back to Wal-Mart, maybe they give
| up and call Time-Weiner or Comcrap to put another drop in the guest
| bedroom.
|
| Okay, it's a bit unlikely that a majority of people will forget to
| auto-scan on a new TV, but what if "channel 99" starts as a new station
| on digital 38? All the people who already have their TVs scanned will
| have to either rescan, or know the dirty secret that the RF signal is on
| channel 38 in order to find it.
|
| I'm not sure that the FCC should even allow that kind of nonsense once
| the analog channels are shut down.

If they decide that PSIP IDs should always be the RF channel, that is fine
by me, as long as it applies to _all_ stations. Does that mean that those
on the Pittsburgh market will see "KDKA 25" instead of "KDKA 2" as they
are so accustomed to for decades?

And what if someone applies for, and gets, a license to broadcast low power
TV on RF channel 2 in or near Pittsburgh after the transition? Or on channel
4 or 11?


| FWIW, I know of at least one case in San Antonio and another in Waco
| where stations with two different callsigns are being broadcast on the
| same ATSC channel. The numerical PSIP only uses the analog number of the
| "primary" channel on all subchannels, though the Waco secondary has a
| 7/24 bug overlay with the actual RF channel number of the digital signal!

The same RF channel? Do you receive both?

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

On 18 Jul 2007 12:18:28 GMT, wrote:

In alt.tv.tech.hdtv Matthew L. Martin wrote:
|
| I always check my nonsense before I post it to the interweb.
|
| Matthew

Actually, I believe you secretly don't check a damned thing. You just
spout lies and label them with "check your facts" so that people thing
you are such cool stuff.

Hmmmm . . . Did you actually read what Matthew wrote, or merely skim
it while hoping to tweeze out some some pale approximation of what you
wanted it to mean?

"Jo" wrote

Some stations have already abandoned analog broadcasts.

Bull****, of course, but what should we expect from you.


Actually some stations have dropped their analog transmissions. One
example that comes to mind in my area is WLNY 55, a Long Island station. It
dropped its analog transmission for all digital last year.

So cable and satellite users are SOL?

--oTTo--

"Otto Bahn" wrote:
"Jo" wrote

Some stations have already abandoned analog broadcasts.

Bull****, of course, but what should we expect from you.


Actually some stations have dropped their analog transmissions. One
example that comes to mind in my area is WLNY 55, a Long Island
station. It dropped its analog transmission for all digital last year.

So cable and satellite users are SOL?

--oTTo--

No, they are entirely different issues. The analog shutoff
in 2009 is for ota stations. It has nothing to do with
either cable or satellite.

Chip

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wrote

Some stations have already abandoned analog broadcasts.

Bull****, of course, but what should we expect from you.


Actually some stations have dropped their analog transmissions. One
example that comes to mind in my area is WLNY 55, a Long Island
station. It dropped its analog transmission for all digital last year.

So cable and satellite users are SOL?

--oTTo--

No, they are entirely different issues. The analog shutoff
in 2009 is for ota stations. It has nothing to do with
either cable or satellite.

My TV doesn't work with HD, so my Direct TV will be useless.

--oTTo--

"Otto Bahn" wrote:

My TV doesn't work with HD, so my Direct TV will be useless.

--oTTo--

And why do you think that is true?

Chip

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