[opendtv] Re: Sony Vaio home theater PC

  • From: Tom Barry <trbarry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:39:02 -0400

Patience, grasshopper.

For better or worse the actual results of the choice of the various 8vsb
formats should be available this year.

Unless they delay it again.

- Tom


Bob Miller wrote:
> Sounds like New York City. Most people here will not get decent DTV
> with 8-VSB unlike with DVB-T, DVB-T2 or any of the COFDM based
> modulations. Still can watch my video, an hour of very good reception
> mobile in the canyons of Manhattan and N, Jersey with only omni
> antennas and a 100 Watt transmitter, 1kW erp, from 425 ft on the AT&T
> building at Canal St. And that is with 2003 tech. What if we were to
> allow DVB-T2 today?
> 
> Seems most people talking of decent DTV reception from New York City
> live in PA or farther out in NJ or Long Island.
> 
> And a lot of people who now claim decent reception will find over time
> that decent is not good enough when they get even the occasional drop
> out. I guess they will have to buy a new receiver for M/H and watch
> the mobile version in some kind of SD.
> 
> Nice that this is so compatible. Why was it again that allowing both
> COFDM and 8-VSB was so bad? And just how different would doing that be
> from 8-VSB and M/H? Have to buy a new receiver??? Sounds like the rant
> against allowing COFDM. I still see M/H as a new modulation since it
> is not receivable by legacy receivers or decodable anyway and steals
> bandwidth from the main channel that promised pristine HDTV. I see M/H
> as not compatible with the spirit of the DTV transition as promulgated
> back in the day.
> 
> Of course we all know that that promulgation was all about killing
> COFDM and nothing about any spirit of anything.
> 
> All that energy just to kill off the good modulation. The last ten
> years have been so incredibly negative that everything looks up from
> here. I would love to get a bunch of broadcasters in a room and have
> them extol at length on just how good 8-VSB has been for their
> industry and how having 75% of homes with OTA receivers in them, like
> the UK today, would be bad for US broadcasters today.
> 
> Add maybe 75% of cars also by now if we had opted for 8K DVB-T back in the 
> day.
> 
> Bob Miller
> 
> On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Kilroy Hughes
> <Kilroy.Hughes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I have line of sight to those 3 towers you mention (on Queen Anne Hill) 1 to 
>> 2 miles away across open water (Lake Union).  The Space Needle is about 15 
>> degrees left of the towers and 2 miles away.  I started with omni then 
>> reflector antennas because towers are spread in a 50 degree arc, but a 
>> silver sensor pointed away from the towers with gain set high gives the best 
>> results.
>>
>> I have to point another 15 degrees left of the Space Needle to get stable 
>> reception, so maybe I'm getting the bounce off the Space Needle while 
>> rejecting the first arrival of the 3 nearest towers.  Or maybe one of the 
>> big bridges, or the tall buildings downtown are producing the echo of those 
>> three towers while allowing direct path from some more distant towers that 
>> I'm receiving. When I do a circular sweep, I can find dozens of strong 
>> echoes that give me a few stations at a time, but only one angle where there 
>> are no towers located that gives me the most. I get 7 stations (plus a few 
>> subchannels), including one station I can't get on analog but minus one I 
>> used to watch the most on analog.  My remaining problem is that the echo 
>> pattern seems to shift with the weather and a couple stations drop out to 
>> the point they sometimes aren't watchable.
>>
>> Luckily, "The Daily Show" and "Arrested Development" are available 24x7 on 
>> my phone line to the Internet.
>>
>> Kilroy Hughes
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On 
>> Behalf Of Manfredi, Albert E
>> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 1:07 PM
>> To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [opendtv] Re: Sony Vaio home theater PC
>>
>> Kilroy Hughes wrote:
>>
>>> My biggest problem was getting a reliable ATSC signal because
>>> I'm near city center on a flat lake with line of sight to the
>>> transmitters (:-) go figure.  I went through several tuners and
>>> antennas until I found a combination that could handle the
>>> multipath for most of the stations with a single antenna position
>>> and gain ("5th gen" tuner cards beat out the built in DTV tuners
>>> I tried).  I still record dropouts and blocking every couple
>>> minutes when the rain gets bad ... about 160 days a year in
>>> Seattle.  I never watch live broadcast, so I'm not around to beat
>>> and swear at the antenna when it's happening and just have to
>>> delete shows when they are too messed up.
>> On a recent trip to Seattle, I finally went up the Space Needle. The
>> guide and elevator operator said it is 520' tall. So my first reaction
>> was, "Big deal. I bet I can see TV towers looming over it."
>>
>> And sure enough, after we got to the top, I scanned the horizon and
>> found three TV towers on a ridge, I think to the North of the Space
>> Needle, and considerably taller than it is. It seemed like DTV reception
>> in Seattle SHOULD be a piece of cake. How strange. Maybe they should use
>> Mount Rainier instead? I'd love to know exactly what makes reception
>> difficult when it should be easy. Is it one of those super long and
>> strong echoes, like they measured in the Bay Area?
>>
>> Bert
>>
>>
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