Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels

On a sunny day (Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:01:01 -0700) it happened Joerg
invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in <8bmjmfFeq1U1_at_mid.individual.net>:


Sorry to hear that, I did read they improved multipath, maybe not
enough.

It ain't good enough for multipath. Analog was better, way better.

Even PAL, that still gave a picture when it was almost 100% noise,
was sufficient perhaps to see what was 'going on', cannot compare in
quality to high bitrate DVB-T.

You should now about PLLs, Viterbi decoding, etc.
I do, but it seems the guys who developed and tested ATSC (or
shall I say didn't test enough?) may not
Politics played some role there I am sure. US had to use their
own system. OTOH they say the distances are bigger than in
Europe, making 8VSB a better choice. I have no experience with
that system, so I dunno if that is reality.

It probably has other reasons as well. For example, people really
want hi-def, meaning 1080 interlaced or progressive scan. And I
have to say, if the channel doesn't pixelate out on us and a hi-def
event like "Dancing with the Stars" airs the picture is truly
stunning.

I do not see the connection between 8VSB and hi-def you are making?

In the US we do not have free satellite :-(

Time to pack up and go Germany again :-)

I just watched starwars II, I have it on disc also, but it still
is a big show. My advice is to use a PC card and or PC as
receiver, both for terrestrial and satellite.

Nah. I just wired up this new Magnavox box. Like the one before it
has upconversion and all that.

A PC in the living room? Yuck. The most we ever do is connect one
to watch photos, a laptop, via a VGA cable tucked behind a cabinet.


I have a small box for DVB-T (terrestrial), it has an USB connection.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/haupppauge66.gif

I even installed a new kernel on the eeePC that can use it, so how
big is that? Of course the media centre PC is much bigger, But many
modern laptops have a HDMI output, would not be a problem, and you
would be able to tweak things in software. Add an other box, a 1TB
external harddisk. Does not look so bad.

Duration : 3h 7mn Bit rate mode
: Variable Bit rate : 3 586 Kbps Nominal
bit rate : 15.0 Mbps Width
: 720 pixels Height : 576 pixels

Hmm, we get a lot more resolution than that these days.

So do we, the same station is available in HD too, but I think it is
encrypted, look for 'ProSieben HD':
http://nl.kingofsat.net/find.php?question=prosieben&Submit=Zap

Now the fun part is, they finally bought HD capable scanners it
seems. So now at least the normal 720p is top resolution (it always
was low detail). And free. Unless you have 20/20 vision and a real
big screen you cannot see the difference anyways So that saves
money TV is far more advanced here, Sky will start broadcasting
in 3D HD shortly.

As you see it is much longer than the movie, because of the
commercials. Because I view about an hour timeshifted I just fast
forward the commercials, or more precisely just jump over those
in xine.

The PC as media server is cool,

Yeah, but you can do the same thing with a DVD recorder. Ok, time
shift must be longer than the total play time including
commercials. But that is never a problem because we watch one movie
in the evening and that's it.

TV recording and processing with a PC has way more possibilities.

"Joerg" <invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:8bm6dmF9dpU1_at_mid.individual.net...
Just curious: Why is it that "modern" TV/VCR/DVD devices only allow
auto-scan for DTV channels but no "add some later"?

Because not only are the end-users considered to be dumber today, but I
suspect a lot of the designers and engineering managers are as well!

There's at least a silver lining that it's generally easier to figure
out, e.g., which models *do* still assume you, the user, have at least a
half-dozen brain cells still functioning than it would have been 20+
years ago.

In article <8bm6dmF9dpU1_at_mid.individual.net>,
Joerg <invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote:

Just curious: Why is it that "modern" TV/VCR/DVD devices only allow
auto-scan for DTV channels but no "add some later"? As most of us know
DTV is unreliable, meaning sometimes channel 6-1 pixelates out,
sometimes 58-2 is gone. So upon setup it will only catch the ones that
are currently receivable, which in our case is never more than 80% of
digital channels. Changes all the time.

But you can't add, it does a complete new setup, upon which Murphy says
it'll miss a few channels it had detected on the previous run. That I
find a rather daft technical decision. Is it just me thinking that or is
the cleverness in electronics designs really taking a nose-dive?

Sorry for the rant, but I had to let it out.

Some tuners will let you punch in the real channel in analog mode. For
example, I can type "4 5 ENTER" (no dash makes it analog) and it will
hop to 44-1. I use the trick to get Sacto stations that won't show up
in a scan but are viewable at night.

I wish I could delete obsolete mappings.

On Sun, 01 Aug 2010 14:14:29 -0700, Joerg <invalid_at_invalid.invalid
wrote:

Just curious: Why is it that "modern" TV/VCR/DVD devices only allow
auto-scan for DTV channels but no "add some later"? As most of us know
DTV is unreliable, meaning sometimes channel 6-1 pixelates out,
sometimes 58-2 is gone. So upon setup it will only catch the ones that
are currently receivable, which in our case is never more than 80% of
digital channels. Changes all the time.

You seem to suffer from frequency selective fading, which is typical
in multipath conditions. This may eliminate the signal with sharp
notches (usually less than 1 MHz) and these notches are constantly
moving around the TV band when the propagation condition changes.
Thus, a few channels are suffering from multipath nulls during each
channel scan and hence, these are not stored.

The 8VSB modulation used in ATSC is not known for robustness in
multipath situations. The help the situation, an equalizer is used at
the receiver that tries to compensate for the amplitude and phase
errors created by the RF path. The equalizer needs a known training
signal so that the equalizer parameters can be set up correctly. There
have been claims that with 5th (or was it 6th or 7th generation
equalizers, the multipath performance is similar to COFDM DVB-T.

Apparently the 8VSB equalizer can somewhat track the slow RF-channel
parameter changes (starting the training session from previously known
good parameters), but during the initial channel scan, the equalizer
parameters are completely unknown for each new channel, the equalizer
is not capable of making any sense of some of the signals, even if the
amplitude is quite strong.

My guess is that if you connect a spectrum analyzer to your antenna
signal, it will show a comb filter like spectrum.

Diversity receivers are available in DVB-T countries mainly for in-car
receivers, but do you have diversity receivers for ATSC ?

Having two antenna towers at slightly different locations (at least
some wavelengths from each other) will have a different multipath
pattern. When one antenna and receiver drops out, the signal may be
good at the other antenna.

Even simple RF summing of two antenna signals at different locations
may help avoiding deep nulls.

Joel Koltner wrote:
There's at least a silver lining that it's generally easier to figure
out, e.g., which models *do* still assume you, the user, have at least a
half-dozen brain cells still functioning than it would have been 20+
years ago.
Some things are, because the manuals are often online. However, you are
pretty much stuck with what's available and with a lot of gear the
enclosures and names might look different but the innards are the same.

"Joerg" <invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:8bo8tlFnbvU1_at_mid.individual.net...
Joel Koltner wrote:
There's at least a silver lining that it's generally easier to figure
out, e.g., which models *do* still assume you, the user, have at least a
half-dozen brain cells still functioning than it would have been 20+
years ago.
Some things are, because the manuals are often online. However, you are
pretty much stuck with what's available and with a lot of gear the
enclosures and names might look different but the innards are the same.

I was thinking Amazon reviews and all the "dedicated to electronics"
review sites as well; sometimes they get incredibly detailed about what
little nuisances a product has and provide some comparisons with other
products available. It can even drive product development -- back in
the late '90s a lot of motherboards would have their ubiquitous dual-row
header connectors just wherever it was easiest for the PCB guy to place
them, but it really started improving after the review sites pointed out
just how annoying that was for "cable management" and these days it's
clearly something all the motherboard manufacturers think about with
each new board they release.

But you make a good point that a lot of the same "guts" with a different
housing -- and the other trend, where there are, e.g., 50 new TVs
released per year, but they're just slight "evolutions" of the previous
year's -- doesn't provide as much choice as one might first expect.

Even PAL, that still gave a picture when it was almost 100% noise,
was sufficient perhaps to see what was 'going on', cannot compare in
quality to high bitrate DVB-T.


I prefer to be able to see the news even when totally grainy versus what
happened yesterday night. About 80% of all digital channels pixelated
out, blue screen, and none of the channels with news was left. Time to
turn on grandpa's tube radio. Because those work.

I do not see the connection between 8VSB and hi-def you are making?


It seems the chosen standards over here were squeezed to the limits WRT
resolution. And obviously nobody really tested this under multipath.

For a visit, yes. Craving a nice Pilsener from tap, you can't get that
in the US. Gordon Biersch brew pubs come close but it still ain't the
real thing.

I have a small box for DVB-T (terrestrial), it has an USB connection.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/haupppauge66.gif


That picture is smaller than a passport photo :-)

How large is that box?

I even installed a new kernel on the eeePC that can use it, so how
big is that? Of course the media centre PC is much bigger, But many
modern laptops have a HDMI output, would not be a problem, and you
would be able to tweak things in software. Add an other box, a 1TB
external harddisk. Does not look so bad.


I can't imagine the eeePC to properly display a fast-changing 1080
hi-def image.

Encrypted doesn't do you any good. Our terrestrial HDTV isn't encrypted.

Unless you have 20/20 vision and a real
big screen you cannot see the difference anyways So that saves
money TV is far more advanced here, Sky will start broadcasting
in 3D HD shortly.


I definitely can see the difference between 720 and 1080. Not that
mankind really needs that but looks nice. However, I would prefer NTSC
over it any time because that always worked.

TV recording and processing with a PC has way more possibilities.


Yeah, but what if one doesn't need those? All we want is to record
something and watch it later. That's it.

The other was a review comment. Someone wrote that the copying from
tapes to DVD play does not work, that you can't do it with this unit.
Now here I was very certain that the guy just hadn't figured out how to
do it. I need this feature to transfer the occacional noise case on VHS
I get from clients (med ultrasound) to DVD, and from there onto a PC for
diagnosis. No, not a medical diagnosis

On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:53:44 -0700) it happened Joerg
invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in <8bo80bFhgiU1_at_mid.individual.net>:

Even PAL, that still gave a picture when it was almost 100% noise,
was sufficient perhaps to see what was 'going on', cannot compare in
quality to high bitrate DVB-T.

I prefer to be able to see the news even when totally grainy versus what
happened yesterday night. About 80% of all digital channels pixelated
out, blue screen, and none of the channels with news was left. Time to
turn on grandpa's tube radio. Because those work.

Well, the news is usually bad, x killed, disaster here, war there,
heat waves, bush fires, be glad it did not work:-)
Play some good music instead.

I have a small box for DVB-T (terrestrial), it has an USB connection.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/haupppauge66.gif

That picture is smaller than a passport photo :-)

How large is that box?

Oh, let me see, 14 x 14 x 3 cm.
But I was an early adaptor to DVB-T, the boxes these days are replaced by
^^^^^^^

... USB sticks:
http://www.alternate.nl/html/summaryListing.html?searchCriteria=DVB-T&cat1=074&cat2=289&cat3=000

I even installed a new kernel on the eeePC that can use it, so how
big is that? Of course the media centre PC is much bigger, But many
modern laptops have a HDMI output, would not be a problem, and you
would be able to tweak things in software. Add an other box, a 1TB
external harddisk. Does not look so bad.

I can't imagine the eeePC to properly display a fast-changing 1080
hi-def image.

But I do not use hi-def, it has no problem with 720 p, and a VGA output.


Encrypted doesn't do you any good. Our terrestrial HDTV isn't encrypted.

Right, do not pay for the advertising!

Unless you have 20/20 vision and a real
big screen you cannot see the difference anyways So that saves
money TV is far more advanced here, Sky will start broadcasting
in 3D HD shortly.

I definitely can see the difference between 720 and 1080. Not that
mankind really needs that but looks nice. However, I would prefer NTSC
over it any time because that always worked.

It all depends on the bitrate if it is worth it, even with good vision!
If they cram many channels in the same bandwidth, you get
motion blur, pixellation as you call it, loss of detail, all that.
And also the source material counts, garbage in garbage out.

TV recording and processing with a PC has way more possibilities.

Yeah, but what if one doesn't need those? All we want is to record
something and watch it later. That's it.

Now first you say that you cannot add single channels, then I say on a PCI card in the PC
you can do anything you want, then you say you do not need extra features ????

Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
In article <8bm6dmF9d...@mid.individual.net>,
 Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:

Just curious: Why is it that "modern" TV/VCR/DVD devices only allow
auto-scan for DTV channels but no "add some later"? As most of us know
DTV is unreliable, meaning sometimes channel 6-1 pixelates out,
sometimes 58-2 is gone. So upon setup it will only catch the ones that
are currently receivable, which in our case is never more than 80% of
digital channels. Changes all the time.

But you can't add, it does a complete new setup, upon which Murphy says
it'll miss a few channels it had detected on the previous run. That I
find a rather daft technical decision. Is it just me thinking that or is
the cleverness in electronics designs really taking a nose-dive?

Sorry for the rant, but I had to let it out.

Some tuners will let you punch in the real channel in analog mode.  For
example, I can type "4 5 ENTER" (no dash makes it analog) and it will
hop to 44-1.  I use the trick to get Sacto stations that won't show up
in a scan but are viewable at night.

With most gear that doesn't work because 44-1 could actually be near the
old Ch 35 or soemwhere else. Stations gave up their precious VHF
channel. HUGE mistake.

I wish I could delete obsolete mappings.

Most gear actually lets you do that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I griped about the new USA Television system many months ago.
The FCC has a web site where you can see all of the
"dead spots" under the new system.

The new system is apparently LINE OF SIGHT
and is bothered by trees or dips in terrain.

In Cedar Rapids where I live, (pop 100K) there is
a big dead spot smack dab in the middle of the
most densely populated area of town!

If you check other cities on the FCC site you
can see that such dead spots occur inside of
many other densely populated metro areas.

A system so vulnerable to rolling hills
or trees is downright stupid.

It is as if the CABLE or SAT DISH companies
helped design the new USA TV Broadcast standard.

I can put an antenna WAY up on a mast and
STILL have trouble because of trees, terrain
or directionality.

WHO designed this new USA TV standard
and why did the FCC not catch the considerable
problems BEFORE committing us to it?

Well, the news is usually bad, x killed, disaster here, war there,
heat waves, bush fires, be glad it did not work:-)
Play some good music instead.


But one needs to know the bad news as well.

[...]

I have a small box for DVB-T (terrestrial), it has an USB connection.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/haupppauge66.gif

That picture is smaller than a passport photo :-)

How large is that box?

Oh, let me see, 14 x 14 x 3 cm.
But I was an early adaptor to DVB-T, the boxes these days are replaced by
^^^^^^^

Hopefully not

... USB sticks:
http://www.alternate.nl/html/summaryListing.html?searchCriteria=DVB-T&cat1=074&cat2=289&cat3=000


Out here they look the same but ATSC and less expensive
http://www.iunitek.com/iunitek/index.cfm?fuseaction=shop.dspSpecs&part=11224920

Right, do not pay for the advertising!


No, we fast forward through it. One box even has an advertising FFW
button that hops it 30sec at a time.

And also the source material counts, garbage in garbage out.


Dancing with the Stars from BBC is super material, you really see a
difference.

I want the regular stuff to work right, my wife will not want a nerd box
in the living room

On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:36:19 -0700) it happened Joerg
invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in <8booi7FqgtU1_at_mid.individual.net>:

Well, the news is usually bad, x killed, disaster here, war there,
heat waves, bush fires, be glad it did not work:-)
Play some good music instead.

But one needs to know the bad news as well.

I am not sure actually, this is bit philosophical,
but why should I know it?
Today I though: Perhaps because it makes you feel better as it is far away,
keeps people quiet, they think they are in an OK place.
Politically motivated bad news?
Of course a large part of the news is taken up by what politicians play.
They are media maniacs that love any problem to get themselves in front of the camera,
even if they have nothing useful to add.

[...]


Right, do not pay for the advertising!

No, we fast forward through it. One box even has an advertising FFW
button that hops it 30sec at a time.

Good,.
There exists soft with scene change detection too, IIRC.

And also the source material counts, garbage in garbage out.

Dancing with the Stars from BBC is super material, you really see a
difference.

Now I am confused.
If it was from BBC, then it must have been original 25 fps .
that reminds me of dropped frames and fast pulldown, big problem with motion in
a 30 fps country.
Here the movies just play 25 fps, no dropped frames, but they are slightly shorter
(original film was 24).
The pitch of the audio is higher too.
http://www.24p.com/conversion.htm

I want the regular stuff to work right, my wife will not want a nerd box
in the living room ;-)


Na ja, these days everybody needs to be a nerd, to use even you cellphone
or laptop, or GPS, or TV, or camera, or whatever.
Washing machine too.

Maybe one day this will go away, and a robot will do those thing,
like programming all those gadgets,
But I am sure that will create problems of its own.

"Joerg" <invalid_at_invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:8boe6kFp58U1_at_mid.individual.net...
The other was a review comment. Someone wrote that the copying from
tapes to DVD play does not work, that you can't do it with this unit.
Now here I was very certain that the guy just hadn't figured out how to
do it. I need this feature to transfer the occacional noise case on VHS
I get from clients (med ultrasound) to DVD, and from there onto a PC for
diagnosis. No, not a medical diagnosis :-)

They just call you, "Dr. Noise." :-)

How old is the ultrasound equipment that still records to VHS? I'd
think they'd have upgraded to DVDs in the past handful of years, and at
least had an S-VHS option before that?

On Aug 2, 11:11 am, Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Kevin McMurtrie wrote:
In article <8bm6dmF9d...@mid.individual.net>,
Joerg <inva...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
Just curious: Why is it that "modern" TV/VCR/DVD devices only allow
auto-scan for DTV channels but no "add some later"? As most of us know
DTV is unreliable, meaning sometimes channel 6-1 pixelates out,
sometimes 58-2 is gone. So upon setup it will only catch the ones that
are currently receivable, which in our case is never more than 80% of
digital channels. Changes all the time.
But you can't add, it does a complete new setup, upon which Murphy says
it'll miss a few channels it had detected on the previous run. That I
find a rather daft technical decision. Is it just me thinking that or is
the cleverness in electronics designs really taking a nose-dive?
Sorry for the rant, but I had to let it out.
Some tuners will let you punch in the real channel in analog mode. For
example, I can type "4 5 ENTER" (no dash makes it analog) and it will
hop to 44-1. I use the trick to get Sacto stations that won't show up
in a scan but are viewable at night.
With most gear that doesn't work because 44-1 could actually be near the
old Ch 35 or soemwhere else. Stations gave up their precious VHF
channel. HUGE mistake.

I wish I could delete obsolete mappings.
Most gear actually lets you do that.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Actually, DTV performance on VHF isn't that great.
And TV-6 is a notoriously bad channel.

There's work afoot at the FCC right now to take TV-6 (and maybe even
TV-5) and reallocate it to the FM band.
Something I highly support doing!

Also at the FCC last week, there was a Public Notice (or Rulemaking)
on ILLR standards.
ILLR is an acronym for Individual Location Longley-Rice, the point
being, the FCC is seeking comments on the use of that model to better
predict DTV coverage.
I'm not as involved in that anymore, but I did glance at the Notice
and there were some really good gems in there.
Including a few links on Land Use Land Cover databases, etc...

But don't just automatically think VHF has great distance propagation
so it MUST be good for DTV.
Turns out, the propagation through walls is pretty bad (ray-tracing,
etc..), I think the sweet spot for OTA-DTV would be in the low-20's.

That said, I have DirecTV even though the market I'm in has more that
the average number of DTV sources (situated between two big markets).