[opendtv] Re: "It can't be done"

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 07:45:58 -0500

At 6:23 PM -0500 12/28/06, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
By the way, notice in the Qualcomm white paper that even with their mesh
of sticks, they have 15 Km wide dead zones in their Wash DC example.
Notice the 300 meter sticks and 50 KW ERP in their dense mesh. (Isn't
that what you recently called "earth scorcher"? Now you have a mesh of
these. Are you changing your tune?) The dead zone is what I said would
be a non-starter for FOTA TV nets. And I don't see anywhere in the white
paper that they intend for these networks to be FOTA. Or did I miss that
detail?

No Bert, I said that 50Kw at VHF frequencies is an Earth scorcher. At UHF frequencies this is relatively low power. I have in the past, however, suggested that even lower power levels can be used. I used the Qualcom white paper as an example. We are talking about very flexible tools here. We WOULD NOT use the same tools in every market, as each market is unique. There will be big sticks with high power levels where they are appropriate - especially out in the wide open spaces. And in other ares there may be a "denser mesh" of lower powered transmitters.

I'm not asking you, or anyone to design a cookie cutter solution. The solution is to design a new infrastructure that provides adequate signal levels in all areas where we want to establish service.

It CAN be done.



The French, the Dutch, the Germans, all seem to have come to the same
conclusion about using large area SFNs in FOTA TV networks. I guess they
all lack vision.

NO they have a completely different mandate, as these countries have always had NATIONAL TV services, not a mesh of local markets.

That being said, one thing that should be part of any analysis of a new broadcast infrastructure is how to create regions within which cost shifting can occur to build out the infrastructure, and how to define markets and sub-markets within these regions. I strongly suspect that we do not need more than 200 distinct TV markets to cover the U.S. But we may well end up with a larger number of sub-markets. It would seem logical to me that we would end up with some hybrid with major regional hubs, and a group of sub-markets related to this hub. In this configuration there would likely be regional channels that would be the same, and sub-channels that would be localized. But this is really for the marketplace to decide.

Regards
Craig


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