[opendtv] Re: News: TV Braces for the Apple Tablet

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 17:41:35 -0500

At 3:50 PM -0600 2/2/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
What is done efficiently with spectrum reuse is the creation of the huge number of two-way point-to-point mobile links to the wired infrastructure. Get it? This is **NOT** needed for wide area TV broadcast!!
Who says we need WIDE AREA TV broadcast? What we need is more granularity so that we can better meet the demands of communities and even neighborhoods. the large markets of the N.E. corridor are made up of hundreds of communities in each market. Cable systems are gearing up to serve individual neighborhoods. Does that family pizza parlor down the street from you really need to reach everyone from Baltimore to Alexandria?
You have frequently waved arms to this effect, yes, but never has the arm waving gone into any of the necessary detail. Just saying something DOES NOT make it reality, Craig. This is supposed to be science, not religion.
I was not waving my arms. I was telling you about real world tests conducted by engineers working for a major network in New York City. This is not religion Bert, it it fact.
The very simple fact is, if you cover a standard US-size TV market with your 4-5 transmitters, this will happen:
1. You will NOT reduce the protection requirements for those frequencies iun adjacent markets.
You are wrong. With proper transmitter masking you can tightly control market coverage and reuse the same frequency in the adjacent market, just as the cellular carriers do.
2. You will NOT achieve consistent coverage, avoiding interference zones, unless:
Correct. You will improve coverage and reduce dead zones. And you can use gap fillers as well.
a. The towers are each quite tall and close together, each one being a big stick by any definition (e.g. Rome, Berlin), or
We are not talking about Rome or Berlin. We are talking about the U.S. and matching the transmission infrastructure to the requirements of each market, taking into consideration the terrain, population distribution and potential interference with adjacent markets. There is no universal approach for all markets - that's why we have the current mess. Broadcasters took the easy way out, depending on the generosity of regulators who gave them the spectrum and protected their largess. 70 years ago the big sticks made sense; that is no longer the case.
The NAB and MSTV may well be correct that broadcasters cannot afford to build a distributed transmission infrastructure. They cannot even afford to operate what they have without subsidies from subscriber fees. If they actually had to pay to use the spectrum they would close up shop in a heartbeat - once again spectrum fees are in the new budget, as they have been in every presidential budget for more than a decade. Maybe it is time for Congress to stop protecting the the broadcasters, who will pull in at least 2 billion in political advertising ths year.
b. One big stick, and the rest much smaller sticks to fill in dead zones (e.g. Paris, Sydney).
This is a legitimate approach for geographically isolated markets, As I said, it depends on the market requirements. 


Regards
Craig


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