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http://www.Tech-Notes.tv February 18, 2002 Tech-Note - 097 Sponsored by: Bloomfield & Associates +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ This is YOUR forum! +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+ Subject: Arrogance From:
This is from the New Zealand Herald:
Auckland businessman James Storrie discovered the $337.50 charge, printed under "product or service", when he opened his mobile phone bill on Monday. ************************* From: Roy Trumbull rtrumbull@bay.csuhayward.edu Roy Trumbull tells us that a few years ago, he had problems with a normally quiet [satellite] receive-only site as did several other microwave type dish users at the same location. He said that this was located near a tower with several FM antennas on it and old pieces of transmission line and waveguide that hadn't been removed. When there was enough wind, the old pieces of transmission line and waveguide would wave back and forth and the induced RF from the FM stations. The induced energy was sufficient to make them arc to the tower leg and would take out a range of transponders on several birds. ************************* By: Jim Mendrala ISB (International Sports Broadcasting) is the host broadcaster and is the technical group hired by the Olympic Committee to implement the host broadcasting function. They hire all the trucks and people, contract with various telecom companies to provide circuits, and hire a systems company to build the actual facilities. Most of the key and support people of the ISB have had the same responsibilities for multiple Olympic broadcasts over the years. For some reason, though, the name of the organization changes for each Olympics. The ISB does all the pickups and distributes all the television and radio venue (remote) feeds to all the countries that paid for the Olympic broadcast rights. These signals are brought into a central transmission area inside the IBC (International Broadcast Center) and then are handed off to the various countries whose facilities are located inside the IBC. There are about 85 countries involved with the televising of the games. Most broadcasters take these host feeds, which are intentionally generic in nature, and air them either live or in edited form adding graphics, and announcing in their own language. This keeps the costs down and prevents chaos from having 85 countries trying to do their own thing. The host broadcaster (ISB) also supplies the HDTV feeds to NBC, HDNet and the Japanese. The feeds are done with just natural sound with no announce. It is assumed the broadcaster will add their own announcers. NBC struck a deal with HDNet for the NBC part. The HD signals come to the NBC transmission area of the IBC and are passed on to the HDNet production truck out in the IBC parking lot. In addition HDNet has a modular building set up next to this truck that houses an HDTV tape room where the HD feeds are recorded and logged on HDCam tape decks. The building also has a very small single camera studio where HD announcers are located. In addition there is a satellite uplink dish to get the HD signals to HDNet and the NBC-DTV equipped affiliates via a transponder normally used for 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'. In order to keep the transponder clear for this service 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' is not being broadcast for these two weeks. As the program goes live to air over NBC in SDTV the HDTV is recorded on a server in the HDNet truck. This server then plays it back twice more to fill the broadcast day and is in operation from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. MST. Because of the agreement between NBC and HDNet, the server plays back the recordings made the previous day, adding commercials, graphics, and voice overs. This goes to the NBC-DTV network and HDNet for their HDTV channel on DirecTV ch. 199. As for the SDTV, the NBC broadcast that originates from the NBC UBC (Unilateral Broadcast Center) located at Snowbasin, UT, the ISB is providing about 30 cameras feeds with natural sound. NBC takes each camera (not a switched feed) and adds about 12 more unilateral cameras, 39 tape or disk recorders (includes slowmo and editing) and announcers. For editing NBC has a double wide business trailer with two Editware linear systems and three Avid systems with a Unity server. It is not clear yet at this time as to what type of HDTV cameras are being used and if some of the signals, both SDTV and HDTV, are off the same cameras. The HDTV signals, however, are all digital and are being encoded into an HD MPEG-2 bit stream with 4:2:2 resolution. From: Prinyar Boon, Snell Wilcox prinyar.boon@snellwilcox.com A conventional SD analogue video signal with embedded syncs are 'bi-level'. In the HD analogue domain the bi-level sync is replaced with a tri-level version. The tri-sync does exactly the same job as the bi-syncs. So why bother? well.....basically the reason is jitter. There is a fundamental problem with building a bi-sync sync separator. To do the job properly you have to determine the exact half height of the sync pulse and use this as a reference voltage to a comparator which will then trigger at the correct point in time. So what is the problem? The reference edge of the bi-sync pulse is the leading [falling edge]. So you do not have the exact height of the sync pulse you are using - until it is too late. All you can do is infer the mean sync half height value from previous sync pulses. This involves some sort of integration/averaging process which is required to suppress noise. One of the design parameters is to select the time constants for this loop. In addition to this the rise and fall times of the sync edges are carefully controlled about - and are quite slow. These two effects meant that there is a window of uncertainty in the comparator – which leads to jitter in the output of the sync sep. There are ways to overcome some of these effects - but there are practical limits. This relatively LF jitter may be then transferred onto any clock and time base circuitry - yes we do use VCXO's so that does help - but this jitter can build up through a TV system. Remember the at some point you have to generate an output image - this will wobble, and at some point you will probably have to meet the jitter specification of an serial digital link. A much better [clock] reference is the color burst. You have 10 cycles of a relatively stable clock every 64us - much better signal to noise ratio - but the sub-carrier to line relationship is complex. The bi-sync pulse also falls below the normal picture range - and is quickly affected by any non linearities in the system - which usually tend to manifest themselves at the extremes of the voltage ranges [we don't use class B amps - too much diff gain and phase distortion] Vertically you have a similar problem. You can only determine the Vertical reference point after it has happened - and then count back. In the HD world, meeting the HD-SDI jitter spectrum specification is a bit of a black art and the allowable amount of picture wobble is also reduced......so we need a better reference. With tri-syncs, the engineers had an opportunity to address these issues. The reference value is now blanking - which should still be the half height of the tri-sync - and the reference H edge is the rising edge of tri-sync. The rise time is also much faster - takes advantage of the increased available bandwidth of the HD system: This all leads to better jitter performance from a practical sync sep. Vertically the V point is flagged in advance - just before the appropriate H point. Tri-syncs are also DC balanced. There is still work going on to define an HD equivalent of SD black and burst system reference from an SPG - what are the HD equivalents of SD line 6 for 1080I and 720P? How do you embed timecode? In a facility with mixed SD/HD plant - this can get complex. An update of the SMPTE switching point recommended practice (RP 168) is now published for public comment on the SMPTE website at: http://www.smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/trialpub.cfm This document illustrates tri-level sync in detail and defines a relationship with standard reference signals. The important characteristics of the tri- level sync signal are that it is analog so not subject to offsets caused by re-clocking and the timing datum is at black level avoiding the uncertainties caused by variation of sync amplitude and rise time. Now, whether you NEED it is another question.... ********************************** By: Larry Bloomfield According to a number of sources, President Bush is not going to let the transition to digital continue at a snail’s pace. According to NAB, as of February 12, there are 249 stations in 86 markets delivering in digital signals. With just under 1300 commercial stations all supposed to be on the air digitally in May, you do the math; something is not going as planned. Earlier this month the president proposed that broadcaster be taxed as much as $500 million a year if they don’t make the transition to digital by 2007 and return the loaned second channel so it can be auctioned. The proposal was part of the president’s 2003 budget which has gone to Capitol Hill for review. This is the second attempt at getting revenue from the all but stalled transition. Last year a similar plan was defeated by congress, who said it wasn’t fair to penalize broadcasters for the delays in their migration to digital TV. This year’s budget proposal is two and a half times stiffer than was proposed for the 2002 budget. The idea of stiffing broadcasters with fines for the delays is not an original Bush idea. President Clinton had also proposed fees but was likewise turned down. The proposed tax was a small part of the president’s proposed $278 million budgeted for the FCC. There isn’t much hope for broadcasters being all digital by 2007. The concept is to get the money – one way or another. If the broadcasters don’t turn over the loaned spectrum, they should have to pay for it as if it had been auctioned. NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton pointed out: “What the (Bush) administration fails to acknowledge is that broadcasters are the only participant in the digital transition who've made real progress. The real stumbling block is cable's refusal to carry broadcasters’ DTV signals, and a lack of DTV tuning devices in TV sets.” A long list of factors are contributing to the delay, including matters of copy protection, equipment supplies and development, and a fierce spat between the broadcasters and cable companies over carriage of digital terrestrial channels. Wharton also pointed out that broadcasters are doing their part to make the transition to digital TV, with more than 248 stations now broadcasting in digital, which can be viewed over a regular set with a converter. But digital TV sets still do not allow access to local broadcast programming and cable providers are not carrying digital signals. In Tech-Notes #94’s Parting Shots, there were three things mentioned as the major road blocks to the transition to digital TV: cable must carry, TV sets with analog and digital tuners built-in and inexpensive STB converters for legacy analog TV sets. Until these are addressed, all the budget proposals in the would won’t make digital happen any faster. *********************************** Subject: Wavelet Modulation - 10Gbps
(500 HDTV channels) to the home over exist
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020131.html Soon, It's Gonna Rain. A New Modulation Technology Promises to Turn Your Cable TV Connection Into a 10 Gigabit-Per-Second Digital Fire Hose The following article by Robert X. Cringely says how. One of the great problems with technical progress is that it often requires throwing away much of a previous investment. I have boxes filled with old modems, ISDN routers, and Ethernet hubs that are all perfectly functional, but useless to me. I have closets filled with old computers that run like a charm, but do so at 16 MHz. Still, I gladly replaced this equipment each time I could increase performance or decrease cost. And it is this willingness to throw away what's perfectly good in favor of something perfectly better that is the very basis of high-tech industry. It is exactly what makes Microsoft and Intel so powerful, yet both companies have to know they could be replaced in a moment if the right competitor comes to market with the right product. What makes a product right enough to create such disruption? My rule says a 10X increase in price-performance will do the trick. If a new application, operating system, computer, or piece of networking equipment comes along that has 10 times the performance at the same price or the same performance at one tenth the cost, it doesn't matter who makes it, that product will take the market. Brand loyalty is nothing against the power of 10X. As systems become more complex, it is easy to think of them as being more difficult to replace, but that isn't really true. What's true is the more complex a system, the more points of opportunity there are for improvement. When personal computing was truly personal, and every user's desktop was its own little world, the areas for improvement came down to applications, operating systems, processor speeds, hard disk capacities, graphics subsystem performance, and the speed of your modem. Those all still exist, but now we can add to them the Internet, the servers that sit at the other end of the wire, the wire itself, and a myriad of new services headed our way courtesy of initiatives like Microsoft's .NET. Today, it is possible to gain that 10X increase without changing a thing at your house, or at least by changing very little. And sometimes the things that change aren't at all what you expect. Rainmaker Technologies, for example, is a Silicon Valley startup that simply wants us to use a new technique for modulating the network signal coming into our homes and offices, thereby gaining for each user a 10X increase in bandwidth. Bandwidth is good. At the heart of Rainmaker's business plan is an awful truth: The part of the network most resistant to change is the wire itself. Plugging in a new box is easy, but replacing the wire that is in our walls and under our streets, well, that takes decades and isn't undertaken lightly. If it was easy, we'd all have optical fiber connections to the Net, yet few of us do. The very heart of network infrastructure, then, is the wire, and Rainmaker claims to have a way to use the same old wire to carry 10 times as much data or more. While their modulation technique can be applied to many media like phone lines, optical fiber, and even wireless applications, Rainmaker's initial plan is to improve the capacity of cable television systems so they can carry more video channels and more data. As a modulation scheme, Rainmaker's technology exists on layer two of the OSI seven-layer networking model. If you are not familiar with the OSI model, just understand that layer two is the data link layer that specifies how signals fire over the wire. Level one is the wire, itself, and level three is the network layer that differentiates Ethernet from, say, Token ring. The beauty of the OSI model is that it allows designers to make changes in one layer that have little or no effect on the layers above or below. So Rainmaker's modulation scheme, which affects only the data link layer, can run on any physical layer (layer one) like twisted pair, coax, optical fiber, or wireless, and can serve up bits for any network layer like Ethernet, Token Ring, SONet, you name it. The modulation scheme on the cable, then, has no effect on your internal network other than to deliver viruses and worms 10 times faster. Modulation is the most basic definition of how to inject information onto a wire. The simplest form of modulation is just turning the power on and off, but that doesn't give us very much data capacity, carrying information at only the modulation rate. Each time the power is turned on, it sends one bit down the wire, giving us one bit per hertz, which is not enough for Everquest, believe me. The modulation scheme that Rainmaker has to compete with is called QAM for Quadrature Ampitude Modulation, and is simply a way of using various lower and phase levels to trick an electrical signal into carrying more bits of data per hertz. But eventually, Shannon's Theorem throws QAM up against a wall as line noise limits the amount of data that can be carried. Rainmaker's patented modulation technique is not immune to Shannon, either, but its noise resistance makes the total bandwidth capacity of the line substantially greater. Rainmaker uses wavelet modulation. Wavelets are mathematical transforms that are typically used at higher levels of the network to compress images or digital video signals. In this instance of modulation, though, we aren't so much interested in wavelets' ability to compress data as much as their immunity to noise and ability to coexist both with other wavelets and with other modulation schemes. Because it is very resistant to noise, wavelet modulation can use the whole data pipe and not have to give up bandwidth on the margin to separate it from other traffic. Indeed, wavelet modulation can be thrown right on top of the current cable TV signal, so old and new systems can coexist. Old customers can have their 30 to 50 channel analog cable service, while new customers -- connected to the very same wire -- can have hundreds of video channels and very high speed data service. Where current cable modem users share a data pipe that can carry about 30 megabits-per-second, Rainmaker customers will get 170 megabits-per-second or more. With wavelet modulation filling the entire one gigahertz capacity of coaxial cable at 10 bits-per-hertz, the ultimate capacity of the system is 10 gigabits-per-second for each segmented subnet. That's enough room for 500 HDTV channels on the same cable that's connected to your house right now. If we forget for a moment the heroic effort required to marshal 500 HDTV channels on the cable head end, all that moving to wavelet modulation requires is a new $10 modem chip at each end of the line, according to Rainmaker CEO Paul Chin. Rainmaker, of course, wants to sell those chips, 152 million of which would be needed to retrofit the entire U.S. cable system. Rainmaker's is a compelling argument for cable operators who can see their infrastructure lasting years longer than they ever hoped. Suddenly, the fight over whether and how to carry HDTV is over at the same time that wavelet modulation enables new services at both the top and bottom of the digital food chain. Ten gigabits-per-second would make possible practical videoconferencing with high quality video at the same time that wavelet modulation's lower power requirements would support lifeline voice-over-IP telephone service even after the power goes out. I have no connection of any sort to Rainmaker Technologies, which is right now finishing-up the chips that will enable wavelet modulation. But if it gives me 10 times the bandwidth for no increase in cost -- heck, I say, "Let it rain!" Welcome to Wavelet University http://www.rainmakertechnologies.com/tech/WaveletU.html *********************************** From: United Entertainment Media United Entertainment Media's (UEMedia) Digital Cinema magazine announced today it will produce the first-ever NAB 2002 Digital Cinema Summit with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). The Digital Cinema Summit will be held at NAB's annual 2002 Convention April 6 - 7 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. For more info: http://www.epulse.org/cgi-bin/prsearch.cgi?record=2772 *********************************** By: Fred Lawrence As expected, the Association of Local Television Stations board agreed on Jan 31st to ax the organization, sources said. We’ve still seen no official announcement. Sources attributed the decision to the loss of key ALTV members and a soft advertising market. One can not help but ask if there is much of a future of other trade organizations? For more info: http://www.emonline.comhttp://www.emonline.com *********************************** From: The wire services Check out the website at the end of this article. Some new and interesting HDTV capabilities are afoot. HDTV Recording Unity Motion DTC100 DTC-100 Uma HDR-1000A HDTV test tape HDR-1000 hdvr-uma DVHS PV-HD1000 HDTV high definition Integra TV HDTV DTV recording timeshifting DV miniDV IEEE-1394 firewire ILINK HDTV Recording. http://www.169time.com/ From various sources and edited by: Fred Lawrence An easing of federal limits on station and cross-media ownership is expected to unleash a wave of mergers and acquisitions among television station owners groups this year. The television networks and their parent conglomerates already are mapping out strategies to bolster their station holdings in anticipation of a relaxing or outright repeal of FCC rules that currently bar companies from owning stations that reach more than 35% of U.S. TV households. If the FCC lifts or eliminates the cap, it could set off another wave of consolidation in the TV station business and leave far fewer "pure play" broadcast companies a year from now. Comparatively tiny, often family- owned broadcasters might hold on to their independence on principle, but midsize firms will be under pressure to decide whether to buy or sell stations, get gobbled up by larger rivals or risk sitting on the sidelines. Easing of FCC regulations has sparked other waves of consolidation, as with reforms of the 1996 Telecom Act, which eliminated rules limiting companies to owning no more than 12 stations and raised the limit on national audience reach to 35% from 25%. That same deregulatory act led to a radical realignment of the radio industry, with Clear Channel Communications alone being able to amass more than 1,200 stations by buying rivals. In 1999, the FCC further eased limits on duopolies. *********************************** Subject: Digital Sensor Is Said to Match
Quality of Film
If Carver Mead is right, photographic film is an endangered species. Dr. Mead, who is 67, was a pioneer of the modern computer chip industry in the 1970's. But he has never stopped inventing. And on Monday his Silicon Valley start-up, Foveon, plans to begin shipping a new type of digital image sensor that outside experts agree is the first to match or surpass the photographic capabilities of 35-millimeter film. The company's sensor chip is being used in a single-lens reflex camera that Sigma, a Japanese camera and lens maker, plans to begin selling for about $3,000 later this month. A second generation of Foveon's sensors is scheduled for shipping this fall and, if other camera makers embrace it, could become available early next year in more popular brands of digital cameras selling for less than $1,000. The first new sensor the company is now shipping is made by National Semiconductor (news/quote) and will have approximately 3.53 million pixels. Such a resolution would put the device in the middle of the market for digital image sensor chips used in digital still and video cameras. Because of the new technology's color-capturing technique, however, its designers say it is actually comparable to existing sensors with 7 million pixels that are currently available only in cameras costing $6,000 or more. "It will completely transform the industry," George Gilder, an economist and an information industry analyst, said of Foveon's sensor. Executives at Eastman Kodak (news/quote), one of the largest makers of both consumer and professional digital cameras, say they have talked with Foveon about possibly using the company's sensors in at least one part of the Kodak product line. "We've been very aware of what they're doing and monitoring their progress," said Madhav Mehra, manager of Kodak's professional digital-capture group. "Our contention is that if this technology gets proven out, it's very significant." If Foveon is to realize its goal of becoming a dominant player in the market for digital image sensors, the company will need to attract manufacturers like Kodak. The sensor market is currently dominated by consumer electronics giants like Sony (news/quote) and the big European chip maker ST Microelectronics, which have invested billions of dollars in their own technologies. "I have no doubts this is a great technology," said Chris Chute, a senior analyst at the International Data Corporation, a research house. "The rub is that the market has heavily entrenched competitors. The No. 1 digital camera manufacturer in the world is Sony. They're the 5,000- pound gorilla compared with little Foveon." Still, photography experts say Foveon's approach to sensors could be the most significant breakthrough in digital photography since the original black-and- white sensor was invented at Bell Laboratories in 1969. Foveon's sensor significantly simplifies the process of capturing a digital image and avoids most of the color aberrations that have plagued digital photography. The current crop of digital sensors capture light using a mosaic of red, green and blue filters that limit color information to one color per picture element, or pixel, on the sensor surface. The technique requires the chip to perform as many as 100 calculations per pixel to approximate the color, which can cause inaccuracies. The limitations also sacrifice picture resolution and limit the sensor's ability to operate in low light. "Most digital cameras don't do a good job of giving you the colors you actually see," Dr. Mead said. Foveon's sensor, rather than break images into separate colors and distribute them among separate pixels, captures color by measuring how deeply photons of light penetrate the surface of the imaging material. Not only is there higher resolution from a given number of pixels, but there is less loss of light and less need for the correcting calculations that can distort the image. "There is no longer any need to use film," Dr. Mead said. With more than a billion film cameras in the world, conventional photography is unlikely to disappear soon, in the view of Don Franz, publisher of the trade publication Photo Imaging News. But Mr. Franz notes that the digital camera market is growing fast, with about 8 million digital cameras sold in the United States last year and an additional 10 million internationally, for a global market valued at about $8.6 billion Alexis Gerard, publisher of The Future Image Report, a newsletter that tracks the digital photography market, said the industry was at "a crossover point" in terms of digital technology and Foveon's technology could help speed the transition. "Having a sensor that measures all three colors at every element at full exposure has been the engineering holy grail," Ms. Gerard said. Industry experts say that one of the most intriguing aspects of the Foveon sensors is that they might allow for a hybrid digital camera that performs equally well for both video and still photography. Currently, the markets for still and video digital cameras are separate because most sensors cannot easily adjust from high resolution for still pictures to lower resolution for moving images. Foveon's new sensor technology, which the company calls X3, is a departure from the two types of image sensors that have proliferated in a wide range of consumer products: CMOS, which is pronounced SEE- moss and stands for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, and a more complex variety called C.C.D., for charged coupled device. Two years ago, Foveon was concentrating on expensive, professional cameras based on CMOS sensors but abandoned them after coming up with the X3 approach. Foveon is being deliberately vague about its manufacturing methods but says its design greatly reduces the cost of making sensors and could create an opening for American chip makers in the digital-sensing field. National Semiconductor, one of Silicon Valley's oldest chip companies and the maker of Foveon's current sensors, is an investor in Foveon. Brian L. Halla, National Semiconductor's chief executive, is optimistic but does not assume it will be easy to gain ground on the entrenched players. "Sony has invested in a brand new C.C.D. FAB, and they could fight this technology by driving price down," Mr. Halla said. A FAB is a chip- fabrication plant. Dr. Mead, who founded Foveon in Santa Clara, Calif., in 1997, was a longtime physicist at the California Institute of Technology before his retirement two years ago. In the 1970's he pioneered design techniques that helped form the basis for the modern semiconductor industry — most notably, a process known as very large system integration, or V.L.S.I., which made it possible to imprint tens of thousands of transistors on a single silicon chip. Dr. Mead was a co-founder of Synaptics, the dominant maker of computer touchpads. He also helped start Impinge, a maker of analog semiconductor technology, and Sonic Innovations (news/quote), a maker of hearing aids. "Carver's strength is his clever understanding of physics," said Carlo Sequin, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who was the co- inventor of the digital video camera at Bell Labs in 1973. "He comes up with fundamental shortcuts to make things simple again." *********************************** Subject: Getting the facts straight
In a recent article by Peter Carlin entitled: "Cable Provider Doesn't Show HDTV," that appeared in the Oregonian Newspaper, he quoted AT&T Broadband's Lindy Bartell saying that "each HDTV signal takes up as much space on the wire as six or seven cable channels would require." This statement has to be taken with a big grain of salt. The truth is that one SDTV analog channel takes as much space as one HDTV digital channel. The broadcasters with there old analog transmitters occupy 6 MHz of bandwidth as well as the new DTV digital stations on the air. What Lindy Bartell is alluding to is that, in the digital domain, you could transmit six or seven SDTV channels in the space of one HDTV channel. To support six or seven SDTV channels you have to have six or seven feeds from six or seven studios or sources. With the cables offering upwards of 100's of channels and not much to choose from, is AT&T Broadband suggesting that they can make more money by keeping the viewer in the old 20th century television system? Digital Television can support many channels in the same space as one present analog channel or it can mix and have one HDTV channel and one SDTV channel at the same time or it can use the residual "bits" for interactivity, something the new 21st century DTV television systems has yet to demonstrate. I agree with Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters: the cable providers' bandwidth problem is "bogus" when you know the facts. Carlin concluded that HDTV will become more affordable and the increased demand should surely prompt cable systems to get with the program can only be successful if the broadcasters would carry more HDTV themselves. The problem at the moment is; where do the television stations or cable companies get the "content" to show? Hollywood studios and the MPA have been, so far, reluctant to let out HDTV because that's what Hollywood is showing on their D-Cinema screens of which there are 40 worldwide. Cable companies carry, in addition to their Pay-Per-View (PPV), local television stations. If the old analog television system in SDTV is presented in DTV then there isn't any real incentive for viewers to make the switch because of the cost. But if HDTV is the reward for going digital then the new digital television (DTV) will be a success and all television carriers will step up to the plate. Remember one SDTV analog channel is 6 MHz and one HDTV digital channel is also about 6 MHz. It is true you can put six or seven SDTV signals into one digital channel but you can also squeeze an HDTV channel as well as one SDTV channel into the same 6 MHz with some room left over for data. I have found that the average viewer is not aware that the broadcasters are transmitting DTV signals. The stations seldom, if ever, promote that fact. *********************************** Subject: Hi-Definition D-VHS Backers
Long On Visuals, Short On Specifics
Warren Publishing's Consumer Electronics
reports:
The report goes onto include some interesting comments from a Fox spokesperson: Studios said they would issue D-VHS software to support DTV owners with alternative programming to slim DTV broadcast fare. "This is a very viable platform for people with high- def TVs to see 1080i content in a way we haven't been able to show it to them before, so it's going to be market-led by that," Fox spokesman said. He called DVD "a mass market platform," whereas D-Theater content would be marketed to high-end consumer, at least at first. "We do not believe it will cannibalize the DVD platform or else we wouldn't do it," spokesman said. Subject: 24P HD Adoption Rate Among
Post Houses on the Rise
According to the 2001 - 2006 DTV Migration Trends Survey, conducted by SCRI International (www.scri.com), almost one in three (32.1%) post facilities are currently providing 24P frame progressive HD digital format capability -- this is expected to increase to about half of all facilities (49.1%) by the end of 2002, and to almost two thirds of post houses by the end of 2003 (64.2%). With 19% of post facilities currently unsure as to when they will offer 24P HDTV capability, the actual adoption rate is likely to be somewhat higher. 24 fps progressive mastering format in 1080x1920 was originally proposed back in 1998 to simplify the process of converting to the various video standards for the networks and broadcasters worldwide The recent 2001-2006 DTV Migration Report Series conducted by SCRI International includes the Production / Post Production DTV Migration Trends Report, plus TV Station Trends and Products Reports. To view the table of contents for the DTV Migration Reports online, go to: http://www.scri.com/sc_reprt.html SCRI also has a new HDTV Overview Report available for $495 | $295 to SCRI's Insider Report Subscribers (http://www.scri.com/newscov.html). For more information and table of contents, contact des_chas@scri.com ***********************************
A friend, and yes I have friends, suggested: To avoid spreading computer viruses, create a contact in your email address book with the name : !0000 with no email address in the details. He says that this contact will then show up as your first contact. If a virus attempts to do a "send all" on your contact list, your pc will put up an error message saying that: "The Message could not be sent. One or more recipients do not have an e-mail address. Please check your Address Book and make sure all the recipients have a valid e-mail address." You click on OK and the offending (virus) message would not have been sent to anyone. Of course no changes have been made to your original contacts list. The offending (virus) message may then be automatically stored in your "Drafts" or "Outbox" folder. Go in there and delete the offending message. Problem is solved and virus is not spread. Try this and pass on to your email contacts. This process works in Outlook and Outlook Express and it helped me before I got Norton 2002, which scans everything coming in and going out. Just a brief observation before closing out, as this has been a very full Tech-Notes: I have been called un-American, biased, having a highly slanted view of the (broadcast) industry and it has been said that I’m not an impartial observer. Gee…. If that’s all, I guess I’m lucky. You don’t want to know what my wife says when she’s upset with me and we’ve been married going on thirty-seven years; I’ve only been doing Tech-Notes for going on five years. It is interesting, when I’ve been challenged with comments like these; none of my accusers seem to want to come out into the open and meet me head- to-head, like most other school-yard bullies. If you think that I’m biased because I see the broadcast industry being slowly swallowed up by a handful of companies, (ownership caps) I see cable screwing broadcasters by not carrying their digital signals, because I don’t see set manufacturers helping with the digital transition and I see secret meetings taking place where the future standards of our industry are hammed out, then yes, I biased and will continue to be until these injustices are addressed and corrected. What do you think about all of this? Time to get out of the bully-pulpit. Let’s go to press! Later.
This will help keep Tech-Notes a free service to you. Remember, they are engineers who know how to write. What a novel concept. *********************************** The opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of their friends, employers, associates or publishers of the Tech-Notes. To SUBSCRIBE to the Tech-Notes mailing list, do so by send E-mail to: tech- notes-request@maillist.tech-notes.tv and put "SUBSCRIBE" in the subject box and body of the message. New subscriber will get a confirmation response. To unsubscribe, send E-mail to: tech-notes-request@maillist.tech-notes.tv and put "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject box and body of the message. You’ll get a confirmation response. Please visit our web page to review our policies and to see any additional information. http://www.Tech-Notes.tv Thanks.
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