[opendtv] Re: DTT tuner design (was Re: Demand for free DTV rising in Australia)
- From: Frank Eory <frank.eory@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:10:57 -0700
Dale Kelly wrote:
No one believes that
reception will be ubiquitous but it could be made better with very little
effort.
"Better" is a relative term. How many additional viewers does a
broadcaster pick up if the TOV in a multipath environment is reduced by
0.5 dB or 1 dB or some other number? What percentage of his audience is
watching OTA vs. the percentage that would be watching OTA if only they
could reliably receive his signal? How much is "receivability" worth to
a consumer buying a new TV set? How much is it worth as a product
differentiator to a CE manufacturer? How much is it worth to a chip
vendor placing his R&D bets on one product line vs. another?
The FCC mandated this system using certain performance expectations,
which should be met as part of the "deal".
Really? That was one of the biggest sources of argument we had in the
ATSC's RF Task Force -- "what are the requirements?" What assumptions
went into the OTA DTV planning factors -- I know you're familiar with
OET-69. How much margin does an OTA DTV link budget have and how does
that compare to other wireless systems (PCS cellular, DBS DTV, etc.?).
The "deal" encompassed a lot of things, some stated and some implied --
HDTV, forced migration to digital broadcasting, temporary free use of a
second 6 MHz channel, multicasting, etc. To the extent that
"receivability" was part of the deal, it was considered only at a
superficial level, with a lot of optimism, a lot of hand-waving and some
very politicized engineering.
On this eve of Independence Day, I have to wonder what our founders
would've thought about all this. They might have likened it to something
as foolish as their young Federal government mandating that all
newspapers be printed in the most fabulous of inks, on the highest
quality paper, and then delivered by a crippled Postal Service, using
horses that were too weak to reach many of their customers.
Happy Independence Day.
-- Frank
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