Cliff Benham wrote: > I think Bob meant that UHF OTA stations weren't as successful > until they got cable carriage... Maybe he did mean that, but I would still disagree. Cable didn't begin as an urban phenomenon until about 1981 or so, with gradual availability after that in the further suburbs. UHF stations were very well entrenched by then, and there were plenty of them. And tuners had gotten completely integrated into TV sets by then too, and worked at least as well as VHF tuners. Seems to me that the UHF mandate turned out to be a great idea, and it's not clear that UHF would have worked out except for the govt mandate. It's the mechanism that breaks the chicken/egg impasse. And, for the Libertarians among us, since the govt manages the spectrum, it is logical that they be the ones to decide how it should be used in broad terms, and consequently establish some baseline technical requirements on the receivers and transmitters. Just as the IETF and IANA do for the Internet, or the IEEE does for the various LANs and MANs. Some entity has to do this, to have a successful system. About the business models that can work with 8-VSB, I agree that a *necessary* condition is that reception be solid. But this is not sufficient. Whether USDTV or other such subscription services can succeed here depends on more than just good reception, IMO. But clearly without that, nothing can work. So now we'll see if the OTA DTT transition will turn out to be successful, or whether it will be irrelevant. At this point, I think it's only up to the broadcasters. That wasn't the case before, especially for those of little faith. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.