I honestly never thought I'd have to type up an opinion piece on this, but I am really sick of reading the same whining over and over again on places like Radio-Info about how terrible digital TV is and how we should have stuck with analog. I made a nice post on Radio-Info about the subject, and I intend to recycle parts of it in this opinion piece.

In the coal mining industry, they don't try using a hand shovel to get to coal deposits half a mile below the surface of the Earth, then whine about how much easier life was when everything was powered by horses. They use the correct tool for the job and it works fine. The same is true with television. If you get a satellite box and chuck your dish randomly in the garage, it's not going to work. It's not a lousy satellite TV standard, it's that you've failed to set it up properly. If you try to use some crappy indoor antenna for television reception at a distance of more than a few miles, it's not going to work. It's not a lousy over-the-air TV standard, it's that you've failed to set it up properly.

There's a small but vocal group of people that absolutely refuses to use the proper tools for the job, then runs around complaining loudly about how it's everybody's problem but their own. Is our digital TV standard perfect? No. Are other standards in the world any better? That's a matter of debate, but I know someone in Chile who has the same issues with indoor antennas with ISDB-T that we have in the US, and ISDB-T is widely considered to be a superior standard. As with our standard, outdoor antennas work perfectly fine with ISDB-T.

The fact of the matter is that analog television never worked well indoors, people simply made due with whatever lousy signal they could get away with. I remember when my family moved to Virginia and around the age of 7 or 8 it was time to renovate the kitchen so all the kitchen items were moved, on a temporary basis, into what is the living room. The TV had a set of rabbit ears on it, since there is no roof antenna hookup in the living room. The reception on it was "viewable" but certainly not enjoyable. Three or four of the stations were regularly watchable, while some were filled with interference or noise. Today, every set in the house is hooked to the roof antenna, which provided pristine analog signals for most of the stations, and continues to provide reliable digital reception (with the exception of WBRA-3, of course).

I remembered in the course of typing my message on Radio-Info that Falcon_77 had done some signal testing with 10 dB attenuators prior to the transition. I dug up an image he sent me of KXLA-44 with 30 dB of attenuation: http://www.rabbitears.info/0104_H17M21_CH44.jpg Some people would call reception like that "watchable," but I think most of the world would not. I watched Star Trek on UPN for years on a signal that looked only slightly better than that, and hated every minute of it.

I am aware that some people live in apartments, but one does not need an outdoor antenna to have reliable reception, just an antenna of appropriate size and design located far enough from the set that the electronics inside don't interfere. Sticking some square piece of plastic that claims 9,000 dB of gain through a noisy and poorly made amplifier on top of your TV set in a random fashion is not going to cut it any more than randomly throwing a satellite dish on the ground in the yard will bring in reliable satellite reception. I use indoor antennas for testing purposes on a pretty regular basis and without many issues. At home, for instance, I can receive every station I see with the roof antenna except for WBRA-3. However, they are proper antennas with coax long enough that they can be placed away from interference sources.

What is true is that analog TV was horribly inefficient spectrally, and that is why TV all over the world is going digital, not just here. Japan just shut off their analog a few weeks ago, Europe is well on its way to being all digital in most countries by 2013, Mexico by 2015, and even parts of Africa are going digital with their TV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_TV_transition

To expand, analog television used a tiny bit of the 6 MHz each channel contained, and required adjacent channels be left open to avoid interference. In digital, more than 5 MHz out of the total 6 MHz is used, and through extensive filtering required of every digital channel, adjacent channels are used in almost every market. In addition, an analog signal allowed only one standard definition (SD) program per 6 MHz, while with digital we see offerings of high definition (HD) mixed with one or more SD programs, or in cases where there is no HD, large numbers of SD programs on a single channel. The benefits of digital transmission are huge in this area.

While I agree that not everything should go digital (see AM/FM radio), television was an area where digital transmission was a huge plus. While radio is used frequently while on the go, television is by and large used mostly while fixed, meaning more effort can go into the receive end toward fixing reception issues. The fact that some are unwilling to make the relatively small investment as compared to cable or satellite charges is unfortunate, but digital television is definitely worth what little bits of trouble come with getting it up and running.

Over on AVSForum, Ken English, who is an engineer at a television station in the western United States, posted an excellent response to Gary Shapiro's comments in this article on CNet. I sought his permission to do some editing on it and post it on RabbitEars, as I think he did an excellent job. I would like to thank him for granting me permission to repost this response.

Bear in mind that these comments are his own, and do not represent the views and opinions of his employer.

In an unexpected announcement, CBS today confirmed the coming launch of the "HD Screensaver" and "Boxcar TV" channels, launching soon on all its owned and operated stations.

The CBS official making the announcement noted the "huge, untapped market" looking for a 1080i screensaver for their HDTVs, and stated that he "look[s] forward to adding another [useless] subchannel" to the CBS O&O group. He also noted that the "Boxcar TV" channel, "will likely consist of a looping video of a boxcar being filled with cargo, intermixed with advertising."

The launch is expected to make CBS first major market owner to launch dual 1080i with dual SD, with no stations at all currently utilizing dual 1080i alone or in conjunction with additional SD subchannels. CBS previously announced the addition of a subchannel to its owned and operated stations in New York and Los Angeles in the third quarter.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was pleased with the news. "I will not rest until the pristine HD picture quality Americans were promised for free as part of the digital transition is a distant memory, along with competition in the cell phone market," he said, making note of the recent announcement of a merger between AT&T and T-Mobile. "My high-paying job after leaving the FCC depends on it."

Estimates suggest that the new networks already rate higher than NBC's "Nonstop" subchannels, despite not yet being launched, but the picture quality of the "HD Screensaver" network is expected to be competitive with that of NBC Universal Sports.

Response to the announcement was mixed, A comment from an anonymous Fox employee was horrified. "We use our splicer technology to ensure the same picture is seen on all of our affiliate stations. Except, of course, the ones that bypass it."

An ABC employee who asked to remain anonymous told RabbitEars.Info, "I don't see why they don't simply simulcast the HD Screensaver channel in SD instead of launching that boxcar channel. We're doing it with Live Well and the benefits can't be counted." He later clarified, "that's because there aren't any."

An official with PBS affiliate WYIN took it one step further. "I don't see why they don't simulcast their main CBS channel in HD and SD in addition to all these subchannels. It's working just fine for us."

Frequent HDTV message board commenter Rammitinski's head exploded upon hearing the news. He was unable to give a comment.

But a staff member at Tribune-owned CW affiliate WPIX had only positive things to say about the news, comparing it to their own station. "The possibilities of extra subchannels are so endless that they cannot possibly be seen. People watching stations with those subchannels have their eyes get blurry with excitement. Our viewers certainly know all about that."

Sunshine Broadcasting, owner of WARP-CD in Tampa, also praised the move. "Nothing says high-quality local programming like subchannels. My station proves that."

Plans call for the CBS-network affiliates in the O&O group to launch these additional subchannels, with the CBS official noting that, "the demographic that watches CW is much too valuable. We do not wish to be indifferented to death if we make such a change to those stations."

When pressed about whether the launch of the "Boxcar TV" service in particular was a sarcastic response to Chairman Genachowski's "empty boxcars" comment, CBS officials snickered and said, "No, of course not. Wherever would you get such a ridiculous idea?" They later commented that the service, lacking things like sets, writers, and actors, would "be more cost-effective than actual programming," and based on the history of reality shows, "would likely win several timeslots."

The new subchannels are expected to launch some time shortly after the launch of the Dot2 network.

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone. =)

I wanted to give everyone a brief update on my undergraduate thesis.

Nontechnical Thesis

My nontechnical thesis is complete. I adjusted its scope from my proposed and very vague "analysis of FCC rules" to instead be a defense of broadcast television against the FCC's spectrum reclamation plans. I intend to post it online as soon as I turn it in either this evening or tomorrow. Here is my abstract, for anyone interested.

For more than 60 years, television has been available to the public via over the air broadcast service, but in recent years it has come under increasing pressure. With the demand for broadband Internet growing rapidly, many are pointing to broadcast's perceived 10% usage and saying that it is time to either reduce or end broadcast television and auction some or all of its spectrum off to companies in order to provide additional wireless broadband services. This paper aims to show how the broadcast service remains an important piece of our national emergency infrastructure and an important technical innovator on its own, as well as to demonstrate that the present plan proposed by the FCC for auctioning off some of the current broadcast spectrum is flawed and infeasible. This paper will show how statistics, such as the aforementioned 10% usage statistic, are misleading. In addition, it will attempt to rebut other claims used to argue against the continued licensing of spectrum to broadcasters in its current state.

So I hope that this paper is found to be interesting and helpful in some way to the industry.

Technical Thesis

This is the one that everyone was looking forward to; the project about the VHF antenna designs. Unfortunately, due to the arrangements of due dates (including the date of the FE exam) and the amount of time that my Microwaves class has been eating up, I'm so far behind that I am probably going to need to substitute my capstone project in place of my VHF antenna design project. My capstone project was the one I posted the video from in December; the device that lit up to indicate fuel mileage optimization. I will be meeting with my capstone professor this afternoon and the professor who was advising me on the VHF antenna project tomorrow, I hope, in order to make the arrangements for this substitution.

I really wanted to do my antenna testing project, but I simply feel my time is better spent preparing for the FE exam at this point. I already have the completed capstone project which will satisfy the technical thesis project requirement, so I feel I should make use of it rather than expending significant time now trying to perform a separate project. I still wish to do some testing of some of the antenna designs I have already built and maybe even some I haven't built yet, and if/when I do so, I will make sure to post regarding the results.

I hope everyone understands, and I apologize if you were looking forward to it. I hope my nontechnical thesis makes up for this planned change in my technical project.