Craig Birkmaier wrote: > So you agree. What you need is a product that > people actually want to buy. IF you can provide > this, the plumbing underneath is largely > irrelevant. > > Dare I say iPOD and AAC in the same sentence? > How in the world could Apple hope to succeed, > when the masses were traveling down the MP3 > highway? I simply find the comparison pointless. The iPod is a fad that will only keep the public interest for a short time. Poprietary is fine for such a fad. In fact, newer iPods will no doubt obsolete older iPods as soon as Apple thinks the time is right. TV is a mature service that has stood the test of time. Forcing the public to a fad model is totally unwarranted, and the FCC was perfectly correct in not buying into that argument. That is, the FCC was absolutely correct in not accepting the notion that only the Physical through Transport layers needed to be specified for FOTA DTT. For subscription DTT, sure. For FOTA, absolutely not. It's like trying to sell the DOT on the idea that every road should be a toll road, and it's okay for the toll keeper to specify the (non-standard) vehicle type permitted on the road. That model *can* work. But if the DOT balks at this, I say thank goodness. > This is true. But the reality is that the U.S. > chose to stay with the big stick model, > sacrificing spectral efficiency. But this is not necessarily true. First of all, no telling what the DTT planst will look like, long term. The addition of gap fillers might well happen, if they're found to work reliably with the receivers out in the field. And once again, the big stick model is the correct model for wide area coverage, *even if* supplemented by small sticks. The Eiffel Tower TV antennas are over 1000' up, in case you didn't know. That's pretty tall, I'd say. Low power, yes, but pretty big anyway. Spectral efficiency *does not* necessarily mean you need to reuse the same frequency band over and over, in a small area, for different content streams. Sometimes, for wide area coverage, spectral efficiency is achieved by only using one frequency allocation over a very large area. That's like TV networks, and big sticks make a whole lot of sense. > in areas with dense populations this ALSO involves > the allocation of channels for sub-market services > that can handle the local needs of each sub-market. No problem at all. That's what low power TV and radio is supposed to be. This does not mean all transmitters need to be low power. > 2. The infrastructure must be flexible with respect > to the services that can be delivered on an > instantaneous basis, providing efficient use of > allocated spectral bandwidth for a constellation of > services that will adapt dynamically to real market > requirements. And those services that fit this model can be designed to find empty frequency bands and use them, then get off as soon as they're done. This does not mean that TV, or GPS, or other fixed services, have to go this route. > 3. The correct answer will change over time as > technology evolves. The correct answer is to apply the right technology to the right application. Not to force-fit the latest gee whiz technology into applications that are inappropriate for it. > Who said anything about NATIONWIDE DTT networks? > If that's all we want, then Satellites are a far > better way to reach the entire nation. I said nationwide or market wide. The correct answer is a continuum of possibilities. Satellites can certainly be seen as the ultimate big stick. But satellites don't necessarily provide ease of reception or market-only coverage, so they are *not* the right answer all the time either. Besides which, it's not as easy to deploy satellites as it is terretarial transmitters, so the satellite model will force you into an umbillical model, which terrestrial plants won't do. So it all depends on the application. 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.