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

  • From: Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 20:19:35 -0500

Craig Birkmaier wrote:
 
> 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.
 
Geez, Craig, your arguments are from all points of the compass rose, more so 
than TV transmitter sites.
 
First of all, if you want to devolve broadcast TV into a low-rent ad machine 
for neighborhood take-out pizza joints, you cannot do that with "most markets 
can be covered with 4-5 transmitters on existing buildings and towers." Those 
"4-5 transmitters" in SFN cannot create a hyperlocal broadcast system. Instead, 
ideally, the 4-5 tower SFN will emulate a big stick, hopefully providing more 
even power density in a small center city area. Oh yeah, like Berlin or Paris. 
And the same protection rules will apply as you need with big sticks. And the 
suburbs will be covered with a signal that's likely worse than what the big 
stick would have provided (depending on tower height and transmitter power).
 
Secondly, if you claim that an OTA broadcaster can't afford one or two 
low-budget multicast streams, such as cable systems have, then good luck with 
this hyperlocal nightmare. You think ads from your neighborhood will support 
OTA broadcasting worth watching?
 
Thirdly, there are communities between Balt and Wash, such as Laurel and 
Columbia MD for example, which must be served by both Wash and Balt stations. 
Because the residents in fact go to both markets daily, for work and for 
entertainment.
 
> 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.
 
All I can do is repeat what I said before. If you think otherwise, I can only 
conclude two possible scenarios. (1) The engineers told you something that you 
partially misunderstood, and filled in the rest with wishful thinking, or (2) 
You were speaking to business managers and not engineers.
 
The Euro SFNs are actual, working systems. The engineers that developed them 
are not total incompetents. The rules governing how these systems work are well 
enough understood, and they are documented, and I quoted the documents to you 
on more than one occasion.
 
> Broadcasters took the easy way out, depending
> on the generosity of regulators who gave them
> the spectrum and protected their largess.
 
See, I don't believe you. If you go in misunderstanding the issues, of course 
you can come to all sorts of negative conclusions. Change your going in 
assumptions to something closer to the truth, and most of your objections will 
vanish. It's very simple.
 
Bert
                                          
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