[opendtv] Re: The wilderness is becoming plain

John Shutt wrote:

> There is probably a 1% penetration of battery portable
> "watchman" type NTSC receivers, yet there is a large
> enough market to continue to sell these miniscule
> receivers to the public year after year.  I have
> always stated that if our digital signal, without
> modification, could be received portably and without
> subscription, then there would be a larger market for
> the service.

The biggest problem now, be it high quality digital audio or high
quality digital video, is that high data rate digital electronics draw
quite a bit of power. While it is possible to provide the juice, via
lap-top PC sort of ~2 hour rechargeable batteries, that's not exactly
the equivalent of analog receivers of this type.

This holds true for DAB, DVB-T, ATSC, and certainly also the Ibiquity
IBOC radios.

Largely for that reason, completely different digital standards are
being peddled for the small portable. The other reason is robustness of
the signal, and the way the digital cliff makes that more of a problem
than in analog.

I agree that we need a portable-friendly solution for regular digital
radio and regular DTT signals. Completely agree.

I think the robustness issue is not intractable, with ATSC or DVB-T.
Both will require enhanced equalizer strategies to make the high quality
stream, even 3+ b/s/Hz, robust enough for the small portable appliance.
But clearly, this is possible, since (for example) ATSC was shown to
work indoors, raliably, from DTT stations about 50 miles distant, or
maybe more than that.

I think the power issue is longer term, but will happen before too long.
A combination of much improved power management, smaller scale ICs and,
possibly, fuel cells (assuming they can be kept from exploding).

Bert
 
 
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