Japan HDTV

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Bob Miller wrote:
There is no impulse noise problem hampering the sales of DTV OTA receivers in
Japan or Australia and they are both doing HDTV with COFDM.

That is not what the reports from Japan and Australia are saying.

Furthermore, I'm about to do a first-hand investigation of the HDTV
situation in Japan. In about a month's time I shall be rubbing your face
with the facts as opposed to your misinterpretations.

I already know the facts, but I'm going to wait until I have personally
verified each one.

The US has a stagnant OTA transition

Stagnant? Then what explains all those HDTV systems being sold every day
from Best Buy, Circuit City, Sears, Wal-Mart, Target, etc.?

What explains all those UHF yagis showing up on rooftops?

In the COFDM corner we have Japan doing spectacularly well with only ONE year
into it with 80% of the county being covered by the end of 2006.

That does not match with the facts.

Meanwhile the US has most of its broadcasters doing the minimum required to
maintain their licenses while consumers seem to be under no such mandate to
buy mandated DTV sets.

For most people in North America, analog TV works just fine. Cable and
satellite did an excellent job of solving reception quality problems.
The only people who have any need (or desire) to switch to digital TV are
those people who want HDTV.

Quite a different way of putting it than to say
"almost the entire USA has HDTV" which is sadly pathetic.

What is pathetic is you and your psychotic crusade.

Anyone who wants HDTV, almost everywhere in the USA, can have it. That is
not the case in any other country in the world. HDTV is available over
the air in every major market. HDTV is available from many cable systems,
and all satellite systems.

-- Mark --

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

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Bob Miller wrote:
Our Republican President talks of cutting taxes while he pays for his
spending by running the dollar down. The dollar has lost over 25% of its
value against the Euro in just the last two years. That is a tax on every
dollar you have ever made and every dollar ever saved by anyone in the US.

What's the matter, Psycho Bob?

That COFDM equipment from Europe is becoming too expensive for you?

-- Mark --

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

Mark Crispin wrote:

For most people in North America, analog TV works just fine. Cable and
satellite did an excellent job of solving reception quality problems.
The only people who have any need (or desire) to switch to digital TV
are those people who want HDTV.

Most people differenciate between Over The Air (OTA) broadcasting and
satellite and cable.

Cable was initially a fix for the reception problems of OTA but it is a
seperate business now.

Bob Miller

On 2-Dec-2004, Bob Miller wrote:

Most people differenciate between Over The Air (OTA) broadcasting and
satellite and cable.

Cable was initially a fix for the reception problems of OTA but it is a
separate business now.

Since you seem to be in the nit-picking business may I suggest that you
"differentiate" between the correct spelling of the word and the way it
appears in your post. You might also learn the proper way to spell
"separate" so that your posts do not appear to be from a grade school
dropout.

I have no idea how old you are but I was around when both television
broadcasting and what is now called cable began.

Cable or CATV is an abbreviation for Community Access TeleVision which began
in areas that had no access to television. A television receiving antenna
was erected atop a hill or on a tower high enough to access distant
television signals and distributed them to people throughout the community.
It was a way for a small town or rural community to receive television
broadcast stations which they otherwise would not be able to access.

In those days CATV was seen as a way to overcome the natural limitations of
OTA television broadcasting which is largely limited to line-of-sight. I
never heard anyone in those days describe it as a '"fix for the reception
problems of OTA" as if there was something wrong with OTA.

However, as time went on CATV was seen as (and became) more than merely a
distribution system for OTA television programming. What transformed CATV
into today's cable television was the opportunities (not fixes) it offered
for additional programming which led to the wiring of larger towns and
cities with cable. In some areas it became a substitute for OTA until the
'must carry' rule took effect.

What all of this has to do with "Japan HDTV" is beyond me!
--
John in Sun Prairie

Bob Miller wrote:
Jeff Rife wrote:

Hervé Benoit ) wrote in alt.tv.tech.hdtv:

"Mark Crispin" a écrit dans le message de
...

Berlin does not have HDTV.


So what ? This has nothing to do with the merits of the modulation used.



Actually, it does.

It's possible to choose a modulation scheme that does better at low
bitrate data in a given bandwidth if you know that high bitrate (i.e.,
HD)
is never going to happen.


What does that mean? COFDM does better at 19.76 Mbps mobile than 8-VSB
does at 19.34 Mbps fixed reception. (Congressional COFDM/8-VSB hearings
2000)


COFDM happens to have this property: impulse noise problems increase
dramatically when the bitrate is increased and bandwidth is not also
increased to compensate, yet it works OK with SD.

Bitrate can be adjusted using COFDM to allow for a more robust reception
in the presence of multipath. Lowering the bitrate has no affect on
impulse noise. I think you have mixed up multipath with impulse noise.

BTW when I turn on or off my desk lamp within two feet of my Samsung or
LG 8-VSB receivers the picture hiccups. Every time! Could that be
impulse noise?

Resistance does not mean immune. Any fool knows that.

COFDM was able to deliver HD to a mobile receiver at a higher bit rate
per HZ than 8-VSB uses in the US for fixed reception in an Australian test.

And this was on the highways and byways of Sydney where you should
expect a lot of impulse noise from all those vehicles.


How often do you hear impulse noise on AM radio? Cars are exremely RF
quiet internally because thera are so many computers in them now.

Matthew

--
Thermodynamics and/or Golf for dummies: There is a game
You can't win
You can't break even
You can't get out of the game

"Bob Miller" wrote in message
ink.net...
Stephen Neal wrote:
Bob Miller wrote:
[snip]
[snip]
Their sales pitch of 30+ rather than 5 channels (excluding the digital
radio services also carried), for a single, low, one-off cost, with 16:9
(and in some cases improved picture quality over analogue OTA) and
interactive TV services, does still seem to be a big driving force.
Whether HD versions of the original 5 networks would have had the same
driving force I don't know... (I'd have liked it...)

The UK will have HD via satellite.

Yep - it'll be interesting to see if by 2012 - current proposed UK analogue
switch-off (though some regions might go earlier) - the UHF spectrum freed
up is sold for other purposes. The switchover plan involves moving DTV
stations into a smaller section of UHF Bands IV and V nationwide AIUI - so
creating a lump of free space in the current analogue/digital TV spectrum.
Conceivably this could be used for HDTV OTA - though satellite will have had
a headstart of 5+ years potentially.

Steve

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Stephen Neal wrote:
Yep - it'll be interesting to see if by 2012 - current proposed UK analogue
switch-off

But, but....

According to Psycho Bob Miller, DTV in the UK is such a resounding
success. Why then is the analog switch-off date so late as 2012? That's
years after the most pessimistic guess for analog switch-off in the
"failing" US.

Why not switch off analog next June? Psycho Bob says that all that is
needed to convert to digital is a $42 (presumably UKP 25) set top box and
rabbit ears.

Could it be that Psycho Bob isn't telling the full story?!?

-- Mark --

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

A few small areas have gone digital in a trial that will see analog
turned off next March.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/w...st/4058069.stm

I think a lot of the 2012 talk has to do with politics. No one wants to
step on that snake. If the analog turnoff trials go well I think a brave
politician or two may suggest an earlier transition with some help for
the poor and elderly. If sales continue to increase like I expect they
will the turnoff could come in 2007 IMO.

Sales this holiday quarter may exceed a million and next year they say
another three million like this year. I say next year will see close to
five million. Come the spring of 2006 and major talk of an earlier
turnoff will be rampant. Especially since they will blow past Murdock's
Sky next fall.

Bob Miller

Mark Crispin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Stephen Neal wrote:

Yep - it'll be interesting to see if by 2012 - current proposed UK
analogue
switch-off


But, but....

According to Psycho Bob Miller, DTV in the UK is such a resounding
success. Why then is the analog switch-off date so late as 2012?
That's years after the most pessimistic guess for analog switch-off in
the "failing" US.

Why not switch off analog next June? Psycho Bob says that all that is
needed to convert to digital is a $42 (presumably UKP 25) set top box
and rabbit ears.

Could it be that Psycho Bob isn't telling the full story?!?

-- Mark --

"Mark Crispin" wrote in message
ashington.edu...
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Stephen Neal wrote:
Yep - it'll be interesting to see if by 2012 - current proposed UK
analogue
switch-off

But, but....

According to Psycho Bob Miller, DTV in the UK is such a resounding
success. Why then is the analog switch-off date so late as 2012?

The problem is partially political, partially technical - mainly political.

UK Digital TV - cable, satellite and terrestrial - has been really quite
popular. Freeview, the FTA non-pay-TV OTA system IS proving popular with
people who don't want to subscribe. However the analogue switch-off issue
is related to quite a few issues:

1. Secondary viewing and VCRs. Many houses that have "gone digital" have
only switched their primary (and in some cases secondary) receivers - but
not every bit of analogue reception kit (like a VCR or bedroom TV) There
are still few digital-TV ready VCRs (or set top boxes with two tuners
allowing a secondary independent VCR output)

2. Coverage. This is a political chicken and egg situation. Because DVB-T
in the UK is fitting in around the existing 4+1 analogue networks (4 have
VERY high coverage levels, the 5th network was only ever a partial coverage
network due to frequency overlaps with our European neighbours) the
transmissions are currently very low power compared to analogue. Even with
16QAM the coverage from OTA DVB-T is still nowhere near as good as
analogue - but it won't be able to be ramped up significantly until analogue
IS switched off. This conundrum means that some very careful change-over
planning is required - as the fallout involved with the entire nation losing
analogue TV on a single change-over day could be massive.

The current government plan (we'll probably have had two more general
elections by 2012 though) is for the digital TV change-over to be phased
regionally - allowing a LOT of manpower and publicity to be concentrated on
a smaller area to get the change-over message across. Last proposed start
date for the phased change-over was 2007

Germany has been able to do this far more quickly because far more people
use satellite and cable as their viewing sources - in the UK a huge number
of people use OTA as their primary source - usually with a roof-top aerial
(antenna), and it is almost universally the secondary viewing source (though
second cable and satellite receivers are growing in popularity, and I know
people with cable and satellite for primary viewing are buying Freeview
boxes for their bedrooms - The advert free, public service, CBBC/CBeebies in
a kids bedroom is a particular driving force etc.)

That's years after the most pessimistic guess for analog switch-off in the
"failing" US.

I think the massive popularity of OTA TV in the UK is significant. Cable TV
is a very minor player in the UK - with digital satellite (until very
recently) being seen as an exclusively pay-TV platform (where each secondary
receiver costs an additional £10-15 per month for subscription) The UK
DVB-T FTA system really only began being marketed about 2 years ago (prior
to this it was also seen as a Pay-TV platform until the Pay-TV operation
fell apart) - but I think the UK are taking a "worst-case" view.

(Incidentally I don't think this timescale includes the Channel Islands -
who are not fully linked with the UK - though they have their own BBC and
ITV operations. They currently have no DVB-T stuff due to frequency re-use
issues with France - they have analogue OTA and digital satellite)


Why not switch off analog next June? Psycho Bob says that all that is
needed to convert to digital is a $42 (presumably UKP 25) set top box and
rabbit ears.

Whilst the DVB-T system works well where it works - the coverage levels are
nowhere near to matching analogue. We have over 1100 analogue TV
transmitter sites in the UK to provide the very high levels of coverage
(99% of the UK population - might be 99.9% from memory) - even coming close
to replicating this with DVB-T is going to be difficult - and I believe
there is a requirement to meet this as closely as possible - so the
timescale probably reflects this?


Could it be that Psycho Bob isn't telling the full story?!?


I think he is right to stress the popularity of Freeview in the UK- it IS
remarkably popular (Fastest selling consumer product in years - outpacing
DVD, the VCR etc. in uptake speed) - and the cost of receivers have made it
a very attractive proposition. The DVB implementation in the UK is a really
early version (we use 2k which isn't good for SFNs) - but the implementation
has been consistent nationwide (which follows our national network, rather
than local TV, infrastructure) and the facilities provided are really quite
an improvement over analogue (16:9, component digital pictures, digital text
services, digital radio services). However the most compelling reason to
move to Freeview are the extra services provided by teh national
broadcasters - which are high quality when compared to some of the pay-TV
stuff. (I can't stress how much, anecdotally, the presence of two BBC
childrens channels - with no adverts and really high quality output - has
driven Freeview in the UK!)

However the UK broadcast landscape is pretty different to the US and
Germany - so may not be comparable. Interesting differences for sure - but
I think we're past "We're better than you are" or "You're better than we
are" arguments these days - aren't we?

US drama is incredibly highly respected in the UK (The Sopranos, The West
Wing, ER, Six Feet Under etc.) - it may not rate through the roof but it has
a loyal following. As a broadcast industry we just don't have the budgets to
produce this kind of stuff. On the other hand we have a different kind of
TV schedule on some of our channels - with networks carrying more arts,
documentary, and our news bulletins on the main networks provide a much
greater amount of global news. (We also have mainstream networks who have a
public service remit, rather than a commercial imperative - and no
commercials to interrupt the programmes!)

Steve

"Bob Miller" wrote in message
ink.net...
:snipped:
: BTW when I turn on or off my desk lamp within two feet of my Samsung
or
: LG 8-VSB receivers the picture hiccups. Every time! Could that be
: impulse noise?

Hmm, funny, my desk light (halogen with a transformer), that actually
sets right NEXT (base is actually sitting on top of my STB) to my LG
LST-3510 can go on and off and never make it flicker, not once, I just
tried it three times on each station that I receive OTA.
:

: Bob Miller
Russ