Both analogies make their point. However, as typical with analogies, they cannot exactly replicate the situation they are to mimic. The analogy of the change in the automobile wheel standard is a good one. However, the analogy could be taken further. I would like to point out a few things: 1. The Michelin system was (arguably) superior. As to whether it should have been adopted or not could be debated. 2. The standard for the tire has been changed many times. As cars became faster and highways allowed faster speeds, the tire and the rim developed and standards changed. The same could be said for other specifications such as load and traction ratings. 3. The beauty about our road system is that it has become better and better, yet allows both a Ford Model A wheel and the Michelin TRX to use it! Please don't read any more into the analogy than is right there in the words. I don't intend for every intricate detail of the highway system to match our data delivery systems by any means. Dan "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfred To i@xxxxxxxxxx> <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent by: cc opendtv-bounce@fr eelists.org Subject [opendtv] Re: Video compression artifacts and MPEG noise reduction 06/16/2008 11:15 AM Please respond to opendtv@freelists .org Kon Wilms wrote: > Let's also abandon cars and bring back the horse and > buggy while we're at it. Wrong analogy, but there actually is a very close car-related analogy. In the mid 1970s, Michelin introduced a tire with ellyptical cross-section, called the TRX. The goal was to create high pressure, low aspect ratio tires, without introducing too much ride harshness. This was to provide better directional stability and fuel economy. Stresses were supposed to be better distributed throughout the sidewall. Because the cross section was ellyptical, standard wheel rims could not be used. The surfcaes of the rim that mate to the tire were not parallel, as they are in normal wheels. So while they were at it, Michelin introduced a wheel rim with metric dimensions. TRX tires were specified all-metric. Such as, 220/55-390. Great. So in order to benefit from this innovation, everyone would have to change tires AND rims. Instead what happened was that other tire companies managed to change their sidewall designs in such a way as to offer high pressure, very low aspect ratios (soon even less than the 65 and 55 ratios of TRX tires), without having to use a different standard of rim design. If you can get away with it, it's usually better to extend the existing standard. If you can do it, it's far easier to tweak MPEG-2 than to introduce a new codec, for existing, deployed broadcast applications. Bert ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.