[opendtv] Re: Barriers eroding to LCD TV adoption

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2004 18:06:55 -0400

John A. Limpert [mailto:jlimpert@xxxxxxx] wrote:

I had written:
> > Perhaps, although I don't see that incoporating analog UHF
> > tuners with a similar mandate was any big deal burden to the
> > CE vendors or the public. Quite the contrary.
>
> Then why were performance requirements written into the FCC
> regulations? Was
> it because there was a price difference between a UHF tuner
> designed to
> satisfy a mandate and a UHF tuner that actually worked in the
> real world?

Probably yes.

Speaking purely as an engineer now, it makes zero sense, from
the designer's perspective, to get a govt mandate for a
feature without also being told how that feature must perform
and the environment in which the govt is expecting it to
perform. No sense at all. You cannot design anything that way.

For example, had the FCC assumed that all UHF transmitters in
a market would share a single tower, they would have written
a set of requirements different from multiple towers in
multiple locations.

Also, had the FCC planned to use consecutive frequency bands,
or even alternate frequency bands, for UHF in a single market,
again that would have placed a burden on the designer that
the govt decided at the time would have been too much.

The same of course applies to ATSC. In my opinion, performance
requirements or at very least guidelines were always necessary.
As it was, we sort of fumbled along assuming something similar
to the analog system, with more selectivity (consecutive bands
were going to be used now, unlike previously). As we all saw,
the fumbling has been going on for five years, and only with
the Lynx prototype receiver in 2003 has trial and error
process resulted in a decent design.

> I do remember the manufacturers complaining about the added=20
> cost of later
> mandates that attempted to put UHF on an equal level with VHF.

I don't hear a lot of complaining now. Was UHF good or bad for
the television industry and for the public? That's the question.

Bert
 
 
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