Recent Comments:
Bush 15.4-inch HD-ready TV aims low, fails {Engadget}
Apr 28th 2007 8:50PM It would not be legal in the US because it is has an UHF/VHF tuner and is NTSC compatible. If it was a monitor it would be legal. Since it has a tuner it must have an ATSC tuner as well.
Dell: we're going Linux, and it's all because of you {Engadget}
Mar 30th 2007 12:51AM And it will be my first of many and I will talk to my friends. Wonderful news.
It may come to pass that the few will be many.
Where are the portable ATSC TVs? {Engadget HD}
Dec 13th 2006 9:21PM The US digital TV modulation is the worst in the world. That is why we have little choice as to digital TV receivers of any kind.
Most of the receivers available today exist only because the FCC has mandated them. Even the company that owns the Royalty rights to 8-VSB, LG Industries of S. Korea, does not see fit to make an STB receiver for the retail US market.
LG does see fit to make a COFDM based receiver for Australia, a market of only 19 million people. 150 other firms do also. Funny since LG has no advantage in Australia because they have to pay royalties for DVB-T COFDM modulation there.
You should ask LG why the US is such a disaster mode with our over the air digital TV transition. They must have at least a clue.
The best modulation in the world on the other hand is DMB-TH whose royalty rights are owned by an American company, Legend Silicon. At least 150 companies are already making prototypes for the Chinese market where DMB-TH has been adopted. Expect to see and hear a lot about it in 2008 around the Olympics being held in China.
So why is it that a country like Australia has the choice of 180 different over the air digital receivers? Why does China have the best modulation by far?
Because the US has a corrupt political process that allowed firms to influence our choice of digital TV modulation.
We have the worst digital TV modulation in the world by a wide wide margin.
China rolls its own digital television standard {Engadget}
Sep 9th 2006 11:09AM S. Korea did not choose T-DMB as its digital TV modulation. They choose 8-VSB just like the US did. They are using T-DMB, COFDM based, in one MHz wide DAB spectrum for mobile video.
This new Chinese standard, DMB-T/H, is based on TD-OFDM and could be the closest thing to a world standard since China represents a good bit of it. It works, out of the box, for both mobile and fixed receivers and is probably the best digital TV modulation yet.
Expect to see a lot of it at the coming Olympics.
China rolls its own digital television standard {Engadget}
Sep 9th 2006 1:00AM The pretty building in the picture above is the CCTV building in Beijing still under construction I believe. Tricky to build, they may never get it done.
Digital Television, Part I: Making Sense of it all {Engadget}
Jan 30th 2006 4:49PM A couple of problems with your article.
DVB-T can use MPEG-4. France will use DVB-T and MPEG-4 for HDTV and a subscription service. Anyone implementing DVB-T from here on in will use MPEG-4.
DVB-T does not require more power than 8-VSB for the same reception quality. 8-VSB reception is BAD a mile from the transmitter, 2 miles, 3 miles you name it.
I would allow ANY 8-VSB advocate to pick any spot in the coverage area of a broadcaster where they can get reception of 8-VSB and at the same power level using the same broadcast antenna we will drive around that spot receiving DVB-T mobile.
Drop the "8-VSB requires less power" BS.
The big bucks that are expected from auctions of spectrum in the US, Channels 52 thru 59 may not bring in all that much. Three channels have already been auctioned, 54, 55 and 59. Qualcomm bought 55 and paid all of maybe $36 million for it nationwide except for the West Coast which they had to buy from Aloha for an undisclosed amount but Aloha only gave the US Treasury maybe $4.5 million for that.
At that rate ALL these channels will bring in less than ONE BILLION $$. Or NOT enough to pay for those JUNK converter boxes that Congress will give away.
And those JUNK converter boxes will go to those mose affected by analog turnoff, inner city residents who can't afford cable or satellite. The inner cities is also exactly where thise JUNK converter boxes will not work worth ****.
Congress expected a backlash from analog turnoff because these people couldn't afford a converter box. But they have no idea the fury that these JUNK converter boxes will unleash when the recipients find that they don't work. And these folks can't afford to fiddle with rooftop antennas and the cost of installation EVEN IF THEY COULD install a rooftop antenna which they CAN'T in most cases.
There is going to be all hell to pay come 2009. And the rest of the world by then will be basking in very successful DTV transitions including the Chinese Olympics using DVB-T or DMB-T.
Digital Television, Part II: Global status {Engadget}
Jan 30th 2006 4:02PM Forgot to include the video
http://www.viacel.com/bob.wmv
Digital Television, Part II: Global status {Engadget}
Jan 30th 2006 3:59PM DVB-H was developed mainly to handle the power problem inherent in having a cell phone with a small battery receive DTV. DVB-T can be used for mobile and portable delivery and works very well but draws more power.
As batteries improve and fuel cells become available I think DVB-T, ISDB-T and the possible Chinese standard, DMB-T will become dominant for fixed, portable and mobile reception. The question is when will the US, Canada and Mexico smell the coffee and switch to the world standard DVB-T or even DMB-T. The fact that Mexico and Canada have delayed any real action on implementing 8-VSB says to me that they are not all that excited about the disasterous US standard. I expect them to bolt from 8-VSB.
Brazil, again, has rejected 8-VSB and will choose between ISDB-T and DVB-T. Since they have been rational in the past I expect them to go with DVB-T.
Here is a video of DVB-T mobile reception in New York from one transmitter at 400 ft and one kW. We were using 3 inch and 12 inch omni antennas. No SFN, no additional on channel repeaters, just one small transmitter. One, back of seat, is a diversity receiver with two antennas. It is capable of handling six. The other two are single omni antennas.
My note to the FCC re HDTV {Blog Maverick}
May 27th 2004 10:43PM Both these will fail and the Chinese will flood the market with $40 HD-DVD players using VP6 compression which only charges the Chinese $2 one time on the player and nothing per disk.
My note to the FCC re HDTV {Blog Maverick}
May 23rd 2004 3:18PM Mike suggest that the problem is broadccasters who are not broadcasting digitally yet. That is emphatically not the problem. The problem is that consumers are not buying into OTA digital reception. The US has less than ONE% penetration after SEVEN years. Berlin,Japan, Italy and England have from ten to twenty times the penetration after only MONTHS or at best a little over a year. The reasons that consumers are not buying in are... NO ONE IS SELLING OTA receivers to them!!! NO ONE IS SELLING OTA receivers to them because few dealers and few manufacturers beleive there is a market. There is no market because the receivers cost a lot and they don't work well. Customers are reluctant because of word of mouth about the need, the cost and the unknown HASSLE factor associattd with the use of antennas. It makes emminent sense to just wait for most consumers till the HD proposition on cable or satellite and the cost of the HD monitor makes sense with their pocket book and that is what the small percentage of consumers who know very much about the subject in the first place is doing. NOT so in Berlin where 95% of consumers are hooked up to cable or satellite. In Berlin the OTA DTV proposition is simple. Thirty free channels for the price of an OTA receiver which is as low as $85. Then they can decide whether they want to cancel cable or satellite or keep free OTA and stay with cable or satellite. No worries about antennas in the coverage area and the coverage area is expanding this month to many more areas of Germany. That is low cost plug and play receivers with little or NO hassle factor and decent content. Japan and Italy are even hotter countries than Berlin and England. Japan offers HDTV in ONLY THREE cities and ONLY since last December and yet they have sold a MILLION HD recevers of which 92% are in monitors (integrated). And would you beleive it NO MANDATE. Again there is NO hassle factor, it just works. Dealers do not want to sell a product that brings customers back for refunds and that has to be resold as open box specials. YES the whole OTA HDTV debacle was generated by broadcasters to hold onto spectrum or hold spectrum off the market as long as possible so as to keep the current cash cow, NTSC, going for as long as possible with as little competition as possible. So far they are succedding. The US Congress and the FCC do their bidding in all its detail. A broadcaster litterally laughed at me when I suggested that FCC Media director Ken Ferree's suggestion of 2009 was a possibility. 2020 was the nearest possibility this broadaster suggested. 2020 would represent 23 years of DTV transition or almost half the life span of NTSC. Compare 23 years to the NINE months it took Berlin.
