[opendtv] Re: White paper from CEA
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 08:37:59 -0400
At 7:25 AM -0500 11/1/05, Mark Schubin wrote:
>Tony Neece wrote:
>
>> <>How did 8VSB become so dominant within the ATS Committee? Especially if
>> COFDM was such a panacea, such a no-brainer? Was it simply a collective
>> pig-headed refusal to do a re-think and risk scrapping a lot of hard =
>> work
>> already done? Who had a big vested interest in 8VSB that early on?
>
>
>The ATSC did not select 8-VSB; the ATSC merely standardized the results
>of the Grand Alliance proponents. There was no proponent of COFDM on
>the Grand Alliance -- just VSB and QAM. And. at the time of final
>approval (I have been told), COFDM had no available HD-capable
>receivers; all of the Grand Alliance systems had been tested in the field.
The ATSC created a task force to look at COFDM. It was still early on
and they did not have anything to test. But they did understand the
issues of spectral efficiency and the huge advantage that COFDM has
in using SFNs to carefully control emission in each market. The final
report of the task force shot down COFDM on the basis of telco
tariffs. They estimated the operational cost of building SFNs using
telco land lines to distribute synchronous signals to each
transmission site. With this cost basis, COFDM was deemed to be
unattractive; too costly to implement.
Ironically, the demise of OTA broadcasting can be directly related to
the costs of delivering programming to distribution/transmission
sites. Between the '50s and the '70s, the broadcast networks paid the
telcos to operate a national network for video distribution; the
costs were enormous, which made it difficult for new networks to form
and compete. When satellite distribution provided a bypass technology
to the telcos, the entire landscape of television changed
fundamentally.
The arguments about the cost to deliver signals to SFNs turned out to
be grossly overstated. Just as any competent engineer could see that
the digital revolution was changing the fundamentals of TV
broadcasting, it was obvious that the telcos would not be able to
keep sustain the high tariffs for their private digital networks in
the face of competition and the huge investments in broadband.
Regards
Craig
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