Ron, Your comment is not quite correct "This will cause almost every ATSC receiver to display a black screen and no audio". The early receivers did not use the VCT information for programing. They only used the PAT/PMTs this was because most manufactures used their core code base from there DVB receiver product lines. The demand on the manufacturer for supporting the guide information and compliance to the ATSC table specification pushed forward and they started to process the MGT and VCT for program information. This is were I have seen the problem manifest it self into what you are seeing. The encoders are usually MPEG/DVB and do not have support for the full ATSC tables(PSIP). The broadcaster has some table generator to supply the PSIP and these two devices require the broadcaster to manually enter the program information into his table generator. The information being entered is the encoders descriptors, program numbers and PIDs. This is were most of the problems start. The tables are muxed together and the feed is transmitted. Then the broadcaster has a drone receiver to see that his signal is good. This is usually that really old receiver I told you about earlier, the one that only looks at the PAT and PMTs. Surprise every thing looks good. The other problem is if the broadcaster does a code update or worse the encoder crashes. The chances of the encoder coming backup with the same program numbers and pids is a 50/50 chance. This will now leave the system in a disparity between the PSIP and the encoder, as you are seeing. With all this being said, and the chances of changing the PMT-to-VCT duplication mistake in the ATSC spec. are never going to happen. The broadcasters need to push back on the vendors to prevent these disparity's from happening and remove the human error factor. I have seen a few way's to handle this problem, but all have there flaws. The one that I think is the best is at the multiplexer. The multiplexer has taken on additional roles of compliance protector and live monitor. It is also the last in the chain that can manage the PSIP. The configuration of the mux as the protector would be to lock down the PIDs and program numbers on the inputs from the encoders and block the PAT/PMTs from the table generator and have the multiplexer re-generate all the tables accordingly. Logic Innovations has a mux that can do this, and I am not sure if there are any others. Something to think about, Codejones On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 03:23 -0800, Ron Economos wrote: > Here's my favorite example of DTV apathy. I've > dumped the Transport Stream from KFSF-DT below. > KFSF-DT transmits from Sutro tower in San Francisco > with 150 kW ERP. It's a TeleFutura affiliate. > They have a great signal in Milpitas (tons better > than the analog channel) and their SD video quality > is really quite nice. > > As you can see, the TVCT PID's are mismatched fromRon > the PMT PID's. This will cause almost every ATSC > receiver to display a black screen and no audio. > It's been like this since January when they attempted > to meet the 0x30 and above PID requirement. > > I think it may be possible that this DTV station > has zero viewers. > > Ron > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.