[opendtv] Re: news: In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air

Tom;

Your experience matches mine.  I don't want to say that the strong
pronouncements of the "digital cliff" are off-base; they're just misleading,
and I suspect that is because they are talking to engineers that aren't able
to fully articulate the problem.

With analog, there is graceful degradation from strong to weak signal
levels.  With digital, there is an area with zero break ups (more than 5 or
so miles from the transmitter) and there is a zone where one can get no
signal.  The border between these two zones is a rather narrow one
geographically where there are breakups ranging from nettlesome to severe.
The latter leading to lockups of my computer.

This is unlike analog's gradual degradation, where all but the weakest
signal levels (pink noise) are usable, depending on how many other channels
are available, and how interested one is in consuming the content.

John Willkie



-----Mensaje original-----
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de Tom Barry
Enviado el: Monday, December 22, 2008 3:43 PM
Para: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Asunto: [opendtv] Re: news: In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air

That article once again explains the all-or-nothing digital cliff effect.

"Those who have their converter boxes have discovered the "cliff 
effect." If the over-the-air signal is not strong, the viewer does not 
receive a fuzzy picture as he might get with a weak analog signal; the 
viewer gets no picture at all because digital reception is all or nothing."

Everybody keeps telling me this but every place I've used HDTV in the 
last 8 years or so there was not really a static digital cliff on iffy 
channels.  Instead as the reception got worse there would be increasing 
frequency of video and audio break-up and drop-outs.  This  could 
eventually get to a point where the channel was no longer worth 
watching, even if it didn't go away entirely.

And I don't think I've ever had a channel with ZERO break-ups, at any 
address with any antenna or receiver.  So it somewhat annoys me we keep 
pretending the signal is either there or not, with nothing in between. 
That may be mostly true for any given moment but not over the course of 
an entire show.  The error correction span is just not long enough for 
that to be true (and of course cannot be).

- Tom


Craig Birkmaier wrote:
> In Move to Digital TV, Confusion Is in the Air
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/technology/22digital.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
> 
> 
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