AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 53

What about Mobile DTV?

Wouldn't broadcasters at least want to keep their stakes in Mobile DTV, even if HD delivery was via fiber grid? Or would you just give up on that, too, Ken?

In any case, it seems to me broadcasters would have an obligation to maintain at least one OTA stream, either M/H or 480i, if only to justify their access to the fiber grid. With transmitter costs divided 6 ways, or perhaps more if enough broadcasters opted for M/H streams instead of 480i streams, I don't think the burden would be that onerous.

One possible problem with the M/H standard, though, is that I think it only provides for 8 streams per 6 MHz channel maximum, and even that would sacrifice necessary error correction. (Which makes it sort of half-arsed, imo, rather like the original ATSC standard before it. ) So even to use mobile streams would require some 480i services to fill out the channel. But maybe the M/H standard could be upgraded so M/H streams could fill entire channels, which would further reduce bandwidth and transmitter costs.

Well, since I believe that the whole spectrum crisis is a hoax invented by the CTIA/CEA for the purpose of allowing the multichannel video industry to artificially maintain the advantage it has had in the analog era, I believe that we need to allow broadcasters to maintain HD, mobile, and multicasting in 8-VSB MPEG2 on all 294 MHz of broadcast spectrum for the foreseeable future.

Basically what joblo, and others like him, are advocating is artificially allowing the multichannel video industry to maintain their advantage over OTA. There is no need for it, and ultimately all consumers will be the big losers. If the wireless broadband industry were to never get another MHz of spectrum, they would figure out how to make it work. 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G, smaller cell sizes, femtocells, WiFi, etc. they would make it work. They just want the FCC to make it easy for them to continue to waste and hoard spectrum. The only reason I've even brought up the thought of broadcasting giving up spectrum is that the hoaxers have lots of money to buy politicians and bureaucrats.

It doesn't matter whether or not it's a hoax because UHF TV band spectrum is very valuable. At the very least the government will demand that the "empty boxcars" be filled. Something along the lines of 1 HD plus 1 SD or 1 HD plus MH or 5 SDs or 4 SDs plus MH or else the broadcaster has to share spectrum might be considered a reasonable definition of full. Unfortunately the government doesn't have to be reasonable.

Beyond that the government will either demand a much more efficient (and incompatible) broadcast standard than ATSC a lot sooner than most of us will be comfortable with or OTA HD will become history.

ALL 294 MHz? Seriously?

You think propagating unusable garbage on 54-88 MHz helps OTA's competitive position vis-a-vis cable/satellite/telco?

You don't think that the need for a huge low-band roof antenna drives people away from OTA and toward MVPDs? (You’re not by any chance an unmarried man, are you?)


I don’t think I’ve advocated anything so far beyond removing VHF-Lo. That, however, I would very definitely like to kill with extreme prejudice.

I do believe, however, that instead of taking pot shots at the technical ignorance of people like Blair Levin, as some here have done, it would be smarter to recognize that, politically, Levin is absolutely right.

Broadcasters should make an affirmative proposal to reduce their overall bandwidth, rather than digging in their heels and allowing themselves to be painted as obstructionists standing athwart progress.

In terms of the NPRM, it doesn’t matter whether the spectrum crisis is real or not. Politically, this train has left the station, and the best thing to do now is try to shift it to a track that doesn’t end at a brick wall.

Filling boxcars doesn’t recover spectrum.

The empty boxcar argument is simply a justification/rationalization.

Since the goal is to recover spectrum, neither appealing for more time to fill the boxcars, nor pointing out that, in fact, the boxcars are pretty full already in the most congested markets, are likely to be winning arguments.

Levin is only considered correct by easy spend liberals who see no problem with making a change that will render billions of dollars worth newly purchased equipment useless.

Really? It's not a problem to spend billions and billions of dollars for another new converter box campaign and the broadcasters will have no problems at all paying for the new equipment needed to change formats?

Why don't we just hand over the keys to the country to China right now?

Cellular phone service, cable and most power was knocked out over much of Japan today. People tuned into OTA TV broadcasts using smart phones with built in TV tuners!

If we leave a legacy SD stream in place, and only change the format for HD, we don't need another CECB program. The CECBs only receive SD, and the purpose of the subsidy was to maintain lifeline service, not high-end service.

We also shouldn't think in terms of upgrading the whole country at once again. Most countries have taken more gradual approaches to digital conversion, I think. Canada, for instance, is only requiring conversion in the larger markets this summer. Smaller Canadian markets can continue analog indefinitely, at least for now.

So perhaps we could devise a new HD standard for fast track deployment in the largest, most congested markets, but allow the rest of the country to continue MPEG2/8VSB for considerably longer.

Or maybe we could replace OTA HD with FTTP in the most congested markets only. A nationwide fiber proposal is almost surely a political non-starter at this point, but the largest markets already have extensive fiber nets, so an FTTP plan for the largest markets only might be workable, if we leave at least an SD OTA service for the fringe areas.

Nowhere in my post did I mention any more time for filling boxcars. I did imply that broadcasters who aren't using their full 6 MHz efficiently will be required to share and that does recover some spectrum. To keep my post short I didn't mention what I think will happen to most LDs in major markets (except for a few considered necessary translators) and that will recover more spectrum.

Completely agree about the low VHF albatross around the neck of the NAB. Finally I did mention that it will either come down to a more efficient broadcast standard than ATSC (an affirmative) sooner rather than later or the elimination of OTA HD.

How about eliminating 50 worthless channels on Pay TV that are full of reality shows and use that spectrum.

It's interesting how Pay TV providers have no problems supplying dozens of channels that extremely low percentages of people actually watch. I guess that they are "filling their boxcars", probably to win the "we offer the most channels" war. They are willing to provide this programming for uber-small percentages of people, and still they claim that OTA should disappear because less than 10% (their claim, really closer to 15% and rising) of people get their TV via the airwaves.

Go figure.

I wonder how the cellular system is holding up in Northern Japan right now?
Anyone heard anything?

Wouldn't it look kinda "evil" if we all gave up our broadcast-capable streams of full quality DTV, and replaced them with M/H? It takes even more bandwidth, due to the extra error-correction needed for mobile use.

What the hell?....
Are you saying that your tax dollars are paying for the commercial OTA broadcast stations, and that they have some kind of obligation to you because you pay taxes?
Or, did I just read it wrong?

A post of mine yesterday:

Cellular phone service, cable and most power was knocked out over much of Japan today. People tuned into OTA TV broadcasts using smart phones with built in TV tuners!

You sure are quick to throw the best quality OTA HD under the bus. Nobody who has an HDTV and uses an antenna for OTA capture of HD signals wants to see OTA go back to SD, and very few want to see more than 1 additional SD subchannel.

I can speak from experience. I live between Green Bay and Wausau, Wisconsin. I receive both DMAs. Signal strength from all channels is the same...97-100%, and reception quality is NEVER an issue. What is an issue are picture quality.

In Green Bay, we have 7 broadcasters. ABC and PBS have 2 additional sub-channels each. CBS, Fox, CW, MyNetwork and until very recently, NBC have no additional subs (NBC just added a single sub).

On the other hand, in Wausau, There are 4 broadcasters, ABC, CBS, Fox and PBS that all carry 2 sub-channels. NBC for this DMA is 92 miles from me. I receive it 99% of the time. It has a single sub-channel. I don't really consider it part of the Wausau stations because it is a long way from Wausau.

ABC looks the same in both markets...lots of digital artifacts on quick moving scenes. In Wausau, all of the major networks have the same digital motion artifacts in HD. In Green Bay, I do not have the motion artifacts problems on the stations with no sub-channels.

I am a sports fan and this is VERY easy to see, and very annoying. Watching sports on the channels that have sub-channels attached is about the same quality (or even worse) as watching ESPN on cable. A single HD OTA channel is vastly superior.

What I really get amused with is that I clearly remember 3 years ago (a year before the transition was final) when the government was touting HD and how incredible it was. Now that the switch has occured and the citizens have spent their money, NOW it is time to force lesser quality down their throats in the name of progress. This is not progress, it is simple greed by Pay TV resellers, who want to force their competition out.

How are cable, satellite and cellular doing in Japan today? I know that they were not functioning yesterday, but that broadcast TV was up and running in full HD. In fact, I saw clips of broadcasters wearing helmets for protection as they sat on their sets doing the HD nightly news.

Then again Joblo, you can assure us that there ARE other mediums that work in emergencies, including your local cable newscasts and your cable that never goes down. Even with backup batteries and generators, I would bet that your cable would be out if it was in the hard hit areas of Japan. Broadcast TV is alive and well there.

What spectrum? Cable is a closed system using bandwidth that can (and is) used for other services OTA. And many systems provide Internet service along with the PayTV. (More content to compete with the OTA broadcasters they are required to offer rebroadcast.)

Satellite uses 500MHz per orbital location ... with reuse at other satellite slots. Depending on which band of satellite spacing can be as close as 2 degrees on reuse. (DBS uses wider spaced satellites of higher power ... which allows smaller dishes to be used.) Satellite Internet is know for long lag times.

What PayTV elimination would free up OTA spectrum (other than point to point links between headends)?

I experimented with receiving the M/H signals being transmitted in the nearby Chicago market. The stations do not have the extra error correction turned on ... I could receive the normal signals while in motion easier than the M/H channels.

I'd like to see more stations put up a decent quality HD signal and a M/H signal. The biggest flaw with converting from ATSC (in my opinion) was the loss of the mobile/portable market.

Er, if you were using the Mobile DTV Viewer software, that software has not implemented the additional error correction. That doesn't mean the stations aren't transmitting it.

- Trip

Ah ... I read that the other way around the last time I was told.

Still seems strange the normal HD signal was more watchable than the M/H.

I thought that M/H actually created another channel, with extra error correction. We have been told we have to repack a boxcar in order to broadcast it (eliminate our weather channel).

It does. But the Mobile DTV Viewer software, which uses existing computer-based receivers, is capable of extracting the video out of the M/H stream.

- Trip

When the public is providing valuable spectrum that could be sold for other purposes, that's the same as paying tax dollars.

So hell YES! Broadcasters have an obligation to the public.

(Haven't we covered this before?)

Well, thanks to WNVC here, I was able to see NHK World for most of the day yesterday, so I would say satellite must have been functioning.

It was interesting, though, that they apparently decided not to maintain English service except during the hourly newscasts. During the rest of the hour we apparently had a picture from a domestic Japanese feed mixed with audio emergency announcements about expected conditions in various localities repeating continuously in different languages.

Ok, here's another idea for you (and others) to ponder:

What if instead of decreasing bandwidth allocation, we actually increased it slightly?

Specifically, what if we let broadcasters in all but the most congested markets keep a full 6-MHz UHF channel to program as they see fit, but reduced the coverage of those channels drastically by reusing the same frequencies even in adjacent markets, at distances as close as, say, 75 miles?

And what if we also gave every broadcaster a slice of a VHF multiplex channel - enough for one 480i SD stream, NOT mobile - with much wider contour protection, to serve the DMA fringe?

So people in center of the DMAs, where most of the population lives, would have their full service as now, but people in border areas, where many people actually lost channels in the transition, would at least get their full SD service back?

Or, to look at it another way, which would you rather have: compressed HD from both markets, which is where the FCC's current proposal will lead, or full HD from one market, but SD only from the other(s)?

The bottom line for them is creating more commercial ad space. Like making a meatloaf. All about stretching and filling.

If they can claim "more channels", that might be a marketing plus, but since when were they actually ever totally honest about that, anyway?

As an aside, for anyone who's interested, I know that (at least) Comcast, U-Verse and Dish have put the "TV Japan" channel in-the-clear.

Broadcasters have been serving the public for decades. And, they have been paying with (cash) fees, as well as public service.

TV (47 CFR part 73) VHF Commercial
Markets 1-10 $77,575
Markets 11-25 $60,550
Markets 26-50 $37,575
Markets 51-100 $22,950
Remaining Markets $5,950
Construction Permits $5,950
TV (47 CFR part 73) UHF Commercial
Markets 1-10 $24,250
Markets 11-25 $21,525
Markets 26-50 $13,350
Markets 51-100 $7,600
Remaining Markets $1,950
Construction Permits $1,950
Satellite Television Stations (All Markets) $1,275
Construction Permits - Satellite Television Stations $650

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_publi...CC-10-51A1.pdf