[opendtv] Re: Interview: ARE MANY TRANSMITTERS BETTER THAN ONE?

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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