Pardon me from trying to stop the bind from leading the sighted, but there = are three contours for a TV station: city grade (must cover just about all = [99% plus of the city of license], Grade A and Grade B. =20 The grade B contour for KABC-TV extends into at least seven counties in Sou= thern California (on a good day, I can get the signal on a bow tie antenna = in Tijuana). The Grade A covers approximatelyhalf the area of the Grade = B signal.=20 To quote a 17% percent of the LA county population is a non-sequitur. =20 Were one interested in analyzing the situation fairly, one would run a quic= k Grade B population study and compare the results with the population figu= res cited to see if they can cover the entire Grade B coverage area. Also,= one needs to make adjustments between "covered population" and actual "sig= nal delivery" since LA has extensive shaded areas, even with he Tx on Mount= Wilson. It's important to compare apples to apples, and to insure that a = bushel is a bushel. I do wonder about Kilroy's statement that Disney has empirical data compari= ng ATSC to NTSC delivery. I concede they have empirical data on NTSC deliv= ery, but if they have done real-world ATSC tests (let alone direct comparis= ons) word hasn't reached me. And, without knowing the engineering criteria used in the pass/fail analysi= s on the web site, Bert's conclusions there are even further afield. A rea= l engineering analysis would incude terrain, distance, elevation tx antenna= patterns and power, rx antenna gain, pattern and location, and knife-edge = analysis of intervening terrain. AntennaWeb's idea is mpre apt: red orange = and green lights. Even then, probability comes into heavy play and teaches= a few lessons about the difference between predictions and reality. My gu= ess is that the pass/fail goes to fail if there is any doubt; if only to mi= nimize Dermot's "truck roll" costs. Also, I note that there are a heck of lot of fresh movies on a 100 gb had d= rive. John Willkie (a real broadcast engineer; not someone playing as one on on the Internet) Bert wrote: Kilroy Hughes wrote: [Bert] ... although I seriously dount that PBS thinks Dotcast provides bett= er coverage than ATSC can. [KH] They don't think that, they know that from a couple years of empirica= l testing. Sorry, then let me rephrase: "Even if PBS doesn't know this, Dotcast is wel= l aware of the fact that their signal won't cover the same area a proper AT= SC datacast can cover." Here's direct from the horse's mouth: http://www.dotcast.com/pdf/dNTSC_tutorial.pdf "In a nutshell, the dNTSC system inserts data as a quadrature component to = the TV signal. With Dotcast=E2=80=99s patented data insertion and extractio= n techniques, the dNTSC system can provide unimpaired analog television vie= wing while simultaneously delivering errorfree, rich multimedia content to = a TV station=E2=80=99s Grade A contour=E2=80=94for example, about 1.7 milli= on people in Los Angeles, CA for an ABC affiliate station." Isn't that less than 20 percent of the population (9,937,739 in 2004, accor= ding to http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06/06037.html, which makes = this 1.7M 17 percent). The way Dotcast works, first you provide your street address (and name, and= e-mail address) on their web site, *then* they tell you whether you have c= overage. Well, I suppose under those constraints, you can claim pretty good= reliability. By the way, I visited Best Buy yesterday. I spoke to one sales person who i= nsisted she wanted me to ask questions about their products. So I gave in a= nd asked where the recording devices for DTT were. She gave me a blank star= e. I was asking in Chinese, evidently. Then I spoke with a more "mature" salesperson who seemed completely tuned i= n to my questions. He said that he had bought a 32" Sony XBR integrated LCD= TV, and that the ATSC receiver was much better than all the previous ones = he tried. He also lives south of the DC area, and he said he could receive = the two stations I can't seem to get *without* having to re-aim his antenna= , but only on this Sony. One of the two is due West of where we live, and t= he other is WETA-DT on a low tower and at low power. The good news being that maybe other brands than just LG seem to have maste= red 8-VSB. (Or maybe Sony builds in LG receivers.) I asked him about the dearth of DTT products, like recorders. He thought th= is had more to do with copy HD protection issues than anything else. He thi= nks they will soon become available. We'll see. 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.