[opendtv] Re: Interview: ARE MANY TRANSMITTERS BETTER THAN ONE?
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:51:39 -0400
At 3:57 PM -0700 9/15/07, Dale Kelly wrote:
I agree with your conclusions regarding SFN deployment and also on the
merits of Merrill's article. I've known and worked with Merrill Weiss for
almost 30 years and he is one the most talented, innovative and completely
genuine engineers in this business.
I too have known and worked with Merrill since the early '90s, when I
started working on the U.S. DTV standard.
Merrill had done more than anyone I know of in the U.S. to promote
the SFN concept.
I think it should be noted, however, that Merrill also had a hand in
the decision to reject the COFDM system, when it was evaluated by the
Advisory committee. He developed the economic model for deployment of
COFDM, which was one of the major reports used to eliminate it from
consideration. The report noted that it would be prohibitively
expensive to deploy COFDM SFNs in the U.S. because of the telco
tariffs on the data lines needed to deliver synchronized feeds to
multiple transmitters. This effectively forced COFDM to be compared
with ATSC using only single high powered transmitters. In this
comparison, many of the advantages of the COFDM approach are lost.
Ironically, he then went on to help develop technologies for ATSC
broadcasting using SFNs that ALSO require synchronized feeds to the
transmitters. But now this is economically feasible due to
competition in broadband data services.
I'm not suggesting any foul play here, but it is interesting how
assumptions that turned out to be wrong have been used to manipulate
the U.S. DTV process.
Can you say:
I T R A E
N E L C
Regards
Craig
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