> Dale Kelly wrote: > > Nothing akin to this system exists in the U.S. and > > suggesting that broadcasters construct one from scratch > > at this late date, though a noble idea, seems is a bit > > Quixotic. Bert answered: > Although even with the US approach to OTA broadcasting, there are plenty > of examples of broadcasters sharing a tower. And I still think that it's > not completely unreasonable to expect OTA broadcasters to pay attention > to each other's program offerings, and try to create an attractive OTA > network. Yes, the sharing of towers in the U.S. is not uncommon but it is clearly not the norm. However, the sharing of an antenna by individual broadcasters is unusual and the sharing of a single antenna by an entire market* is extremely rare, if done at all. You will note that in the UK system, all stations share a single antenna and therefore have virtually the same pattern. That is doable when a system has only five or so channels, all are in the same band (UHF in this instance) and are selected for single antenna compatibility (frequency and power output). There are many impediments to implementing such a scheme in most U.S. markets, i.e., split V/U channel assignments, many channels that can not be collocated and/or require different patterns to protect other channel assignments. For a Freeview type service to be viable, participating stations must be generally collocated and must provide similar coverage. Under current conditions this might be done in some markets but would be difficult (and very costly) or impossible in others. That being said, I agree with your suggestion that it is a worthy effort now that an adequate receiver design seems to be available and assuming that the service could actually obtain an attractive programming package. Which has so far not been available to USDTV and will which be guarded carefully by current multi channel service providers * - The LA market now has a seven station common UHF DTV antenna on Mt. Wilson which and was cleverly designed by Merrill Weiss to accommodate stations requiring different ERPs and/or different antenna patterns. It shares a new tower with our LA station and is currently operational, however I don't know how well it performs relative to design but knowing Merrill, I assume all is well. It is clearly a very expensive design but is a relative bargain when shared by seven stations. The LA market has about 20 stations, with ~16 located on MT. Wilson and seems a potential for a Freeview type of service, if it includes sufficient Spanish programming content or, perhaps even mostly Spanish content... Dale The Dale who will no longer chide Craig for his verbosity! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.