AVS Official Topic - The FCC & Broadcast Spectrum - Page 77

I did see it originally, but had forgotten it. Now, in context, I'm clear on the concept...

Don't mind me - I'm just babbling.

Danged allergy medicine has got me all weirded out.

More evidence that mobile broadband is not the answer...

http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com....php?ref=fpblg

Anyone know how may OTA broadcast towers were offline because of Irene?

Sure!

Your article says that 2 TV and 10 radio stations were down. I would say that OTA as a whole continued to broadcast quite well!

Of course, a million cable customers are without service, but I guess you get what you pay for. I like how Genachowski didn't think that the cellular and cable disruptions were anything "major". I suppose not when only 2 TV stations and 10 radio stations on the entire east coast went down. Now THAT is a big deal and a reason to do away with broadcast media. Heck, the downed stations could have been low power or non-commercial for all we know. either way, there were plenty of other stations still up and running in the few areas where these stations went down.

Another reason to leave broadcasters to do their jobs and provide all of the services they currently provide. Leave OTA alone!

You know, I hate to admit it, but after Hurricane Rita hit the cell phones were up and running the next day... I had evacuated to Tyler, Texas and my best friend had gone to Houston to stay with relatives. She works in a chemical plant and had papers to get back into the area and went back the day after Rita hit to check on her home and others including mine. She called me as she got near her house and was in shock at all the trees that were destroyed (including one on my house), but the cells were working across the entire area. Of course, you have to realize, that in an area that has a population of around 350,000 to 400,000 in the three county area, there were only a few hundred police, fire, national guard, and relief workers at the time, so certainly the lines weren't jammed by any means. But I was astounded that the cell lines were working (on generators). Most people didn't get power back for 3 to 4 weeks. It took a couple of months to get power back to everyone who could have it restored safely. But the point is, the cells were working for the most part the next day. That was amazing to me...

About Genachowski's opinion, everyone knows what his opinions are like and they usually stink.

Many cell sites don't have generators, though. They depend on their big battery banks for backup, which usually can last several hours or so.

As for broadcasters, if one is down, there is usually another available. And, in a big emergency, stations cooperate with each other, so they can often get back on the air from another station's studios or transmitter.

If anyone is interested in back-up DTV transmitters, or even a full mobile transmitter facility with generator (similar to what the cell-phone companies roll in during a disaster), MediaFLO has their stuff for sale.

Just saw our new logos....no channel number included anyplace.
Now, I guess we can call ourselves "Channel 38", or "614-620 MHz" or just "TS3003".

Or, just go by our IP Address.

Most of our cell sites indeed did not have generators as a rule. They were brought in after the fact and set up once the winds died down enough. Again though, I was stunned that the sites withstood the onslaught of a high cat 2 hurricane in which the eye passed directly over our area. I guess the cell tower companies had the foresight to build the towers to withstand 120 MPH winds with higher gusts...

This occurred about a month after Katrina, so I guess the first responders learned some valuable lessons... For an earthquake as happened in the northeast without warning, it's a whole different ballgame.

And by he same token, I believe all of our major broadcast stations made it through. I do know that our ABC affiliate lost their mushroom field, and had to import ABC programming in from another station, but they were still on the air with local info about power outages, food, water, and ice distribution points, and relief efforts.

I'd love to see the NAB send out some spots, immediately, to gloat about how broadcasters stayed on and available.
But, how many stations would run them?

Breaking News on the Spectrum front:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is blocking AT&T's $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA, saying the acquisition of the No. 4 wireless carrier in the country by No. 2 AT&T would reduce competition and raise prices. "

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=1070&sid=17047569

Ah, yes... But I heard on the Wall Street This Morning radio show that ATT countered by saying they would bring 5000 jobs back to the US if they would approve the deal.

What they didn't say was how long they would keep those jobs here before moving them back overseas....

Oh, well now, you know they would lose money if they did that...

This is not good news to me and others with a poor GSM signal. I live right between two AT&T towers that are both over two miles away while there is a T-Mobile site about five blocks away. With my aluminum siding, you can imagine what kind of signal I get. It looks like it might be time to see if Straight Talk can at least send a T-Mobile sim for my wife's phone.

Let's see - you're WHINING because you live over 2 miles away from your cell carrier in a house with aluminum siding so you have "poor" reception ?

GIVE ME A BREAK !!!

I'm no closer than 5 miles from ANY wireless carrier, AND my house was built with foil covered sheathing (at least as good a RF blocker as your siding). I'll probably be among the last people in the USA still with some sort of wireline service because, frankly - wireless doesn't cut it in my house at all.

This kind of attitude is what will kill OTA..

Don't they make an outdoor antenna system that attaches to the outside of a building which is conected to another antenna inside for situations like this? It seems like a friend of mine looked at something like that to help her cell reception inside her shop (a metal steel building). Eventually Verizon improved the reception in the area, and it wasn't needed anymore. But it seems like I remember researching somthing like that...

Yes, they do make such things.

http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp...00663&more=yes

Well... There ya go.

The internet protocol has broadcasting, as well as multicasting. There are literally millions of different ways that the internet can handle what you are talking about.


On the contrary, I have a fairly extensive background in networking.


I don't think you understand what we already have today. Do you realize that on youtube, there is literally six years worth of video uploaded every single day? And several times more of that is viewed every single day. And that is just one website run by one company.

Also, not only are broadband speeds ever increasing, but the internet protocol provides a rather elaborate means of broadcasting and multicasting content.

If you pay attention to the recent demographics, people are starting to move away from traditional broadcast TV and more towards on-demand content. One way or another, traditional television will go the way of the newspaper. Sure it'll be there in some form, but most people will move on.

To take this to a personal level, downloading television shows or movies is totally useless to me as I need closed caption (or sub-titles as the case may be) to understand all the dialog. I know of no site tha provides this service. I know that neither Netflix nor Blockbuster do. And it's not gonna happen without somebody making them do it.

So, until that happens (if it does), the internet can NEVER take the place of broadcast television.

Sure it can. Speech to text technology is still rapidly advancing. Sure it won't happen today, maybe not in a few years from now, but it eventually will happen.

AlphaWolf,

you are pretty sure of the abilities of the internet. OK, lets take youtube...

Let's say that there are roughly 60 million Americans between the ages of 12 and 24. this covers all teenagers and college students. It may seem like ALL of the people in this demographic are youtube, netflix and hulu fanatics. this would not be true. In the home, roughly 75% of these people have access to internet and fewer than 1/2 of them have access to decent high speed internet capable of high definition streaming. Of the roughly 30 million in this group, my guess would be that fewer than half of them are really "into" this kind of media and I would hope it would be MUCH less. Most of the kids that I know are more interested in athletics than watching TV and movies online. But, just for the sake of arguement...lets say that all of the kids in the group stream 2.7 hours per day (the average that US citizens watch TV on average per day). We stream Netflix at our house. My connection is 60+ Mbps and we experience stoppages and inabilities to use Netflix from time to time. Seldomly do I see a Youtube video that is truly television quality.

OK, so that is my experience with blazing fast internet at a time where less than 9% of the population (more likely 2-3%) are viewing video in this way. What will happen OTA, cable and satellite are taken over by internet services? Can the internet...or more specifically, can WIRELESS internet services provide 30-40 times more on-demand programming at a television quality bandwidth? I would estimate that we would need roughly 200X as much bandwidth as we do now, simply for video. Then, there is radio...better than the horrible MP3 type audio we normally see. Then there is telephony and texting. Then there is data such as websites. Then there is cloud computing. Then there is online data storage and backups.

This is simply extreme stupidity. We are talking about wireless spectrum that needs to be capable of THOUSANDS of times more bandwidth than we currently have and a system capable of keeping everything safe, secure and correctly routed.

Again, a national wired broadband and OTA radio and TV allow current wireless to work effectively and take much of the future load away from wireless. This is a better idea.

Just my opinion.

As I said, until that happens...

That is more a symptom of netflix not being a perfect service, than it is a bandwidth issue.


While I can't speak for you, I see them all the time, especially as 1080p cameras are gaining wider usage.


You should realize that you are working on the assumption that technology will never improve.

Back in the late 80's, if I had told you that we could receive 500 channels from a single non-moving dish, you would have said: "This is simply extreme stupidity! We would need thousands of times the bandwidth!"

1992 comes along, and we get MPEG-2 compression and more bandwidth in the form of Ku-band spectrum which renders C-band obsolete, along with a dish that is only a fraction of the size.

If I would have told you in 1992, that we could have 500 channels of 2 megapixel resolution, with 5.1 channel discrete surround sound, without a moving dish, you would have said: "This is simply extreme stupidity! We would need thousands of times the bandwidth!"

Along comes 2004, and we have MPEG-4 and ac-3 compression along with increased bandwidth provided by ka-band spectrum

As a networking guy myself, I can tell you something about an existing trend. In the 90's, it was common practice to have 3 networks within a single building. One for telephone communication, one for data, and one for video. Today in new offices, we have one single converged network that handles all 3. Your computer, your phone, and your video conferences and security cameras all connect to the same wire (divided only by what we call vlans.) Even more interesting is that back in those times, 2Mbit links in large offices were common. Today links with literally thousands of times that bandwidth are common.

This has spread to some degree to the home as well. Yesterday we had 14.4k dialup, today we have broadband connections that have thousands of times the bandwidth. Soon, it will spread worldwide.

That's why right now, I am telling you, that in ten to twenty years from now, all communication will be over a single network. But, you will insist that:


Wireless will be used for last mile communication, as well as other situations where running wireline is just impractical.

I understand where you guys are coming from though, you have an old technology you've trusted for years, and you are doing your best to keep it alive. But just as every obsolete technology before it has gone, there will soon become a point where it is no longer necessary.

I've lived through the technology changes...I started in the very early 80's on an apple II and a Radio Shack TRS-80. I witnessed and embraced the birth of the CD, the DVD and now BluRay. I had surround sound before nearly anyone else around...and that dates way back to Quad in 1973!

Spectrum is finite. Sure, better ways of compressing data will become mainstream. However...I do not see MP3 compression as a good thing. I will not see any lossy compression as a good thing.

We as a society are accepting less and less. We are accepting inferior products in order to have more. We are regressing. I blame it on a generation that has no idea what really good picture and sound is. they are perfectly happy to throw away 90% of the music in order to get 5,000 songs on their ipod. They have no idea how good a recording can sound nor do they understand how good video can look. 1080p is not everything. Color depth, proper calibration, frame rate etc. can really change a good picture into a poor picture, but most of the new generation do not understand (or don't really care) to know this.

We only have so much spectrum. Using the spectrum in a way that allows everyone to download and watch full length movies on their 4" cell phone screen is NOT in the best interest of the public, even if the majority wants this technology. The most reliable way to get mass information to the general public quickly and efficiently is not via the internet. It is not via individual texts or phone calls. It is via OTA, where a single source transmission can reach every person within range of the transmitting tower.

I love technology and I have no doubt that data transfer rates will increase exponentially in the coming years and decades. I do not think that the current state is the best we can get. What I do see is that OTA is vital to the continued success of our emergency broadcast system. It is also the only barrier to a world where the end consumer pays huge amounts of money simply to watch or listen to their favorite team or their favorite sitcom. Free TV and radio provide a valuable service to many millions of people in the USA, and taking their spectrum for future technologies is simply going to provide the pipeline that pay service providers are looking for so that they can corner the market and force each American into paying for their product.

If the technological future is so bright, then why can't these telecoms create new technologies that utilize the huge amounts of spectrum that they already own? They sould be re-inveinting the wheel with their own technology, not looking to steal old technology for their own use. They are simply trying to destroy their competition, take their spectrum, and force non-customers to pay them for what is now a free service (to the end customer).

Again, explain to me why, if data transmission is going to get so much more efficient, why they can't make do with the spectrum that they already have and are, at this time, failing to fully utilize?

So in your opinion, 480i lossless would be better than 1080p lossy? Is laserdisc (lossless) superior to blu-ray (lossy) then?


It has nothing to do with generation. Some people choose to pay attention to it, where others do not. Although I am probably what you consider to be this newer generation, from what I understand 8 track had inferior sound quality to vinyl yet it still became popular anyways. Then CD's, which were less convenient than cassette tapes, eventually replaced them due to superior sound quality.

MP3's are popular simply due to convenience. Personally, I choose flac, or 24/192 dts where available.


So you believe it is up to you to tell the majority what is best for them?


But it soon will be.


And what happens when this younger generation simply no longer chooses to tune in? What good is your emergency broadcast system in that case?


The day will come when internet connectivity is so widely available that it becomes affordable to anybody. When that day comes, there will be no one media company to corner any market.


I never said they can't do that, all I am saying is that OTA won't be around forever. In fact, viewership is already in decline for both OTA and cable/satellite TV. You'd be lying to yourself if you believed otherwise.

I remember when a 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation had a line about television dying out in the 2040s and thought that was insane. Now looking back on it, the timing does sound about right. Aside from continuous live news and sports, everything else on television is non-time specific content. The future of content will depend on who controls the "dumb pipe".

Local (network) television only survives in its current state because of regulations like ownership limits and network non-duplication, retrans consent/reverse compensation, many people not knowing/caring enough to know how to use a DVR to skip commercials, and DirecTV and Dish Network being barred from just retransmitting the New York and Los Angeles feeds to everyone (with federal politicians wanting their constituents to be able to watch their re-election ads). If you don't control the dumb pipe, you only need one middleman, not two, to distribute your content.

Canada is much further down that road than us right now too: ownership is much more consolidated both horizontally (CTV, Global, Citytv own all but one or two affiliates) and vertically (each network listed is co/owned by a cable or satellite company). Instead of having their own set of affiliates, many second tier Canadian markets simply have repeaters of major city stations. It was considered a viable proposal that instead of having a digital transition, OTA could simply be shut off and cable and satellite subsidized for low-income or rural people.

Unfortunately, the question here is when, not if, the 1940s based local TV model is supplanted. But cable and satellite channels face similar pressures too (and are protected by bundling) so who knows?

It will be a sad day if the internet becomes the only form of media there is. I don't think it will happen unless the goverment forces it to happen. The majority of the public doesn't want to type dubya dubya dubya dot address dot com just to watch a freaking tv show! A great many people would rather pick up a real paper book, magazine, or newspaper instead of having to use a battery powered device to read anything. Most people would rather place phone calls by dialing 1+area code+number, not by typing dubya duyba dubya dot area code and number dot com. If this is indeed the future, then the internet will turn out to be Skynet!

I am beginning to wonder if the Apostle John's original manuscript of the book of Revelation said that the Mark of the Beast (Antichrist) is "www" and early scribes miscopied it as "666"!