Craig Birkmaier wrote: > Let's get something clear here. > > I am not talking about reusing the same channels in two adjacent > markets. We would still have a "checkerboard" allocation system > as we have today. The difference would be that the signals from > one market would not be at such high power levels that they would > interfere with a market a "checkerboard jump" away. By keeping one's positions vague enough, I suppose one can make all sorts of claims. If you take five adjacent, large markets in the East Coast, Wash/Balt, Philadelphia, NYC, Hartford/Sprinfield, and Boston, you have already achieved what you are saying. It is very unusual to receive Phildelphia stations within Baltimore or Washington, but at the same time, those living between Philadelphia and Baltimore can and should be able to receive stations from both markets, without interference. Ditto to the North of NYC and South of Wash. > And this would primarily apply to areas like the NE corridor > where we have channels that cannot be reused several hundred miles > away. NYC uses the same channels as Balt/Wash. Philadelphia is the market between them. And Boston uses the same channels as NYC as well, with Hartford/Springfield intervening between them. This is as it should be, considering the size of these markets and the reality that people in communities between the cities often commute to one or the other for work. I don't know what greater reuse you think makes sense here. And if you want to set up LPTV stations within Philadelphia proper, for instance, this should be possible on the same frequencies as used in either NYC or Balt/Wash. > In some rural market you might be able to use virtually all of the > channels allocated to TV broadcasting, as there would not be any > markets close enough to interfere with. All you're saying here is that you prefer rural communities not to have any significant TV coverage. Say, where Cliff lives. You would prefer that Cliff have no OTA TV access at all, other than perhaps some local-yokel station. I'm saying that this is not a good plan. There's no logical reason to create areas with no OTA TV coverage up and down the East Coast. It is all inhabited, even if some parts might not have dense population. Nor is there any reason to think that a significant number of TV stations would survive if they only served sparesely populated communities. Why handicap OTA TV that way, when clearly it's not an emphasis on "local" that makes DBS and cable successful? I'm all for a more enthusiastic OTA TV system. IMO, it's not *large area* SFNs that will make the (positive) difference here. On-channel repeaters are, of course, a different matter entirely. And low-power translators. 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.