C/N margin is but one (1) of the requirements to receive a signal...many other 'factors' determine an ability to provide service...and many of THOSE are NOT technical. It is not always the best technology that wins... Mark the Mark who knows that just 'good enough' is sometimes what we end up with ----- Original Message ----- From: "Albert E Manfredi" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 4:43:25 PM (GMT-0500) America/New_York Subject: [opendtv] Re: Opinion: Mobile TV's New Free Market Economy Tom Barry wrote: > I do not have access to DVB/COFDM to test. Do you now > believe that you can get equivalent after-FEC throughput > (spectral efficiency) with 8vsb using non-directional > antennas at the same power and spectrum width? With 8T-VSB set up as it is in A/53, we get 3.23 b/s/Hz (calculated as described below). That is better than just about all deployed DVB-T setups, in some cases by just a tad. The most spectrally efficient COFDM used in DVB-T that I know of would be the French 64-QAM, 2/3 FEC, 1/32 GI mode, which offers 24.13 Mb/s. To be completely fair about expressing this in b/s/Hz, I'll use the total channel bandwidth, not the actual bandwidth used by the signal. Which will favor COFDM in 8K mode, because it's shoulders are steeper than those of 8-VSB, meaning it can fill in more of the 8 MHz channel than 8-VSB can fill of its 6 MHz channel. So in 8 MHz of RF bandwidth, 24.13 Mb/s comes out to 3.02 b/s/Hz. In that mode, the C/N margin required in a gaussian channel is 16.5 dB. 8T-VSB provides 19.39 Mb/s in 6 MHz, or 3.23 b/s/Hz, for 15.2 dB of C/N in a gaussian channel. Now, I'm sure that most DVB-T receivers out there now are better at this than most 8T-VSB receivers are, but I know that I can take my DB4 antenna downstairs, in the den, indoors, and wave it around the room, and receive a solid signal for at least some of the broadcast channels. I happened to try this on the local Fox 5 station, which fortuitously is one of the stations that gives me a strong signal. I know for a fact that other stations won't allow this sort of behavior, though, e.g. the Baltimore stations. Still, the Fox 5 transmitter is more than 12 miles away as the crow flies, and I'm down in a valley. Honestly, I believe that today there are far more interesting and intriguing things to wonder about in the future of TV distribution, than modulation standard. 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.