John Shutt wrote: > Ah, you finally get it. Small portable sets are exactly what=20 > E-VSB and > DVB-T HM HP streams are designed for. Large HD home theater=20 > systems will be > most likely fed by DBS, Cable, or a huge outdoor antenna, so=20 > C/N performance > of LP streams is not as critical. But the small portable in=20 > the kitchen > needs a robust low C/N, high immunity to dynamic multipath=20 > data mode to be > useful. Sorry, John, but I always "got it." And I never much agreed with the concept that "small portable sets," especially portable as opposed to mobile, would somehow be satisfied with a reduced set of programming options available over the robust channel. Either via E-VSB or via COFDM HM. There's very little justification for this, IMO. Mobile sets maybe, on the premise that when you're commuting, you might be interested more in special programming aimed at short viewing periods (more like radio), rather than feature length movies or other TV shows. > Unfortunately, with the current 8-VSB system, the types of=20 > ATSC tuners that > these sets really need to make them practical contain the=20 > most expensive > chipsets, which will not be placed in the cheapest=20 > televisions. So do you > see the dilemma of requiring such computing power at the receiver to > compensate for multipath? Nope. First of all, once again, Linx showed that equalizers can be built to be quite effective *without* a lot of computing power. The lesson was that their equalizer does not require any special hardware, which is why it is not more exensive than the competition. The next point is that this is highly integrated hardware, whose price will do nothing but drop over the next few years, as it gets built in large quantities, and performance will continue to improve for no extra cost. Nothing new about *any* of this. We've seen it happening in CE products for many decades already. > Either the DTV tuner works, or it doesn't,=20 > and the ones most > likely to work also cost the most. Yes, the digital cliff. The better the digital receivers become, the more they will receive signals in situations where NTSC would have been unwatchable. So the goal is to move the cliff far enough that it won't matter if you're off the edge. Because analog would have been too degraded anyway. I think it is very informative to pay attention to the price of HD vs SD STBs in Australia, by the way, compared with prices here. Mark posted them in his memo yesterday. This shows to me how price and performance are less correlated than price and quantity. 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.