Also if you have the old style "mortgage" loans (as I do), once you hit 50, the loans are forgiven - and you qualify for deferment if you make less than £X per year. I've always made under £X per year so always had a deferment... at this rate come 50 I'll be having the writeoff. Not my plan... but still...

If the FCC standard chosen actually worked for VHF then that would be true. Low VHF (i.e. between channels 2 and 6 inclusive) is actually not very good for the 8-VSB modulation method. The complaints I hear are from TV DX reception enthusiasts and they're talking about their LOCAL stations... TV DX enthusiasts are more than likely to have decent receiving equipment and antenna installations, and they're having problems with the low-VHF signals. High VHF is better but is still more susceptible to interference compared to a UHF signal.

The main advantage to ATSC is its power requirements - i.e. more bang for the watt.

DVB-T has a nice capability that ATSC doesn't and that is its design to use different modulation techniques - QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM. This allows a broadcaster to choose between a more robust signal with a lower bitrate, or a higher bitrate with more programming but a more sensitive signal. Also DVB-T can support single-frequency networks, which ATSC cannot. However DVB-T has been improved and there's DVB-T2, along with Mpeg4 will allow for 3 HD channels to be broadcast on a 8Mhz TV frequency.

There's another way to keep the meetings secret and stay within the 15 minute criteria. At our workplace we have to schedule meetings ahead of time far in advance but often because of the nature of our work they can get cancelled at little or no notice. Our way around that is to schedule for more than one day the same meeting, and the first time we get to meet is the 'meeting', the rest are then just cancelled.

So all the DHS needs to do is schedule lots and lots of meetings, give the required 15 days notice, and hey if the meeting gets cancelled then so be it. But then because of the scheduling and the publication of these meetings - it's in the public record that they're meeting - they're just *always* in meetings, that happen to be always closed.

Mark.