"Switching that to compiled code won't get you much of a speedup."

Holy crap, is it bad that I've read so much about systemD feature creep that I initially read that word as "compileD" (as in a built-in compiler)? And worse, I attempted to go to Google to make sure I wasn't crazy?

I meant "average" and not "RMS" in my second sentence. Wish I could edit...

Analog power was measured as peak power while digital power is measured as average power. If you measured analog power in average, that 100 kW would become about 25 kW (less than the 45 kW ceiling). A similar difference arises between 316 kW becoming about 80 kW (less than the 160 kW ceiling). On UHF, the power difference is 5000 kW for analog versus about 1250 kW for digital, slightly more than the 1000 kW ceiling, but only by about 1 dB.

On top of that, about 50 dB SNR was needed for a clear picture with an analog signal, while a digital signal requires only 16 dB for a perfect decode. So the difference in required SNR is more than 30 dB, but the power change, even if it actually was 5000 kW to 1000 kW, is only 7 dB.

Analog power was measured as peak power while digital power is measured as average power. If you measured analog power in RMS, that 100 kW would become about 25 kW (less than the 45 kW ceiling). A similar difference arises between 316 kW becoming about 80 kW (less than the 160 kW ceiling). On UHF, the power difference is 5000 kW for analog versus about 1250 kW for digital, slightly more than the 1000 kW ceiling, but only by about 1 dB.

On top of that, about 50 dB SNR was needed for a clear picture with an analog signal, while a digital signal requires only 16 dB for a perfect decode. So the difference in required SNR is more than 30 dB, but the power change, even if it actually was 5000 kW to 1000 kW, is only 7 dB.

Comments filed on the same day are listed in alphabetical order. They're sorted in order by date (not time) and then by name.

Comments filed on the same day are listed in alphabetical order. They're sorted in order by date (not time) and then by name.

FCC rules only allow for stations in the DMA to be provided, but the stations and DMAs are actually assigned by Nielsen. Don't ask me, I think it's stupid too. In certain, select cases, the FCC has overridden Nielsen and assigned certain stations to other markets, for example where a station can't compete in the market it's located in due to poor coverage of that market, but as a general rule, it's up to Nielsen who is assigned where.

So are you in New Hampshire but in the Portland or Burlington DMA then? The law was changed not too long ago to require the carriage of statewide PBS networks for all customers in a state, but if they don't carry a good news or affairs type program, that doesn't really help. And, of course, NHPTV is now run out of the WGBH studios anyway.

Sounds like you're in that part of southern Vermont that's part of the Boston market. Am I in the right ballpark?

In your case, you're right. There was a time, probably in or before the 1970's, when people either invested in huge antennas to get what they could get or invested in CATV, but those people watched Boston, and thus that area is now considered to be in the Boston DMA. In fact, that area used to have a full-power repeater station, WRLP-32, which rebroadcasted the signal of WWLP-22 in Springfield, MA. But everyone watched Boston, they made no money on it, and they shut it down in 1978. And so now it's almost impossible to get more than one or two stations in that area. (I think WEKW in Keene, NH might be doable for PBS without too huge an investment, depending on specific location, but that's basically it.)

Many other rural areas do still have translators, like rural Utah and much of the west. Even in urban areas, I've spoken with plenty of people who either don't know OTA TV exists anymore, or who assume it won't work for them, and in large part it's because of buying crap equipment that's sold at Walmart.

(For the record, the FCC does not assign the DMAs, private company Nielsen does. There are many people, myself included, who hate this and wish it was done differently. I need to write a white paper about the market ranking and assignment system I use on my website, and then see if I can get the FCC to adopt it.)

Very large parts? There are definitely areas that don't, particularly in Alaska, but I would argue that more than 99% of the population has access to OTA HD signals. But, those people have to invest in the right equipment to do so and not expect to plug in an antenna that would be outperformed by a paper clip and still get good reception. (Misinformation from the Walmarts of the world is responsible for a lot of that.)

Disclaimer: I work for the FCC on matters of OTA digital TV signal propagation and interference. I also run a website about OTA TV.

If you're that close and over flat terrain, you likely don't need something 25 feet up. You probably just need something in the attic or, possibly, attached to the side of the house, and the FCC overrides local government laws and HOA requirements for those. Search for "OTARD" on your favorite search engine. Feel free to contact me via the contact info on my website if you want more information on that or on local station availability or antenna recommendations.

MPEG-2 is compressed by definition; an uncompressed HD picture is something like 1 Gbps. Confetti, for example, looks awful no matter what the source, because it's hard to compress.

The only reason MPEG-4 isn't supported in ATSC is because it didn't exist when the standard was written! MPEG-4 is actually now in ATSC, but is not a required part, so no receivers support it and no broadcasters use it except in rare corner cases.

And it's only 18.2 Mbps if there are no other services on the OTA channel; some stations in smaller markets now cram 3 HD services into the 19.393 Mbps channel, which is an average of about 6 Mbps per video channel when you take into account audio and overhead. Most other stations run at least one SD channel in addition to the HD channel, many run more than one. Others are doing Mobile DTV which eats into the bandwidth available. The bitrate of a single HD feed averaged across all OTA stations in the US and Canada is something in the neighborhood of 13 Mbps in MPEG-2.

Obligatory disclaimer: I used to work for a broadcast TV company heading up our broadcast TV engineering projects. I now work for the FCC on over-the-air digital TV matters. In my spare time, I run digital TV website RabbitEars.Info.

When spectrum is unlicensed, it can be used for both commercial and non-commercial uses. My ISP operates its end-user links on 900 MHz unlicensed spectrum, but its backhauls are on highly-directional 2.4 GHz unlicensed links. That, of course, does not mean that 2.4 GHz cannot also be used for wifi in the home, or that 900 MHz cannot also be used for cordless phones. (In fact, I had to replace one of my cordless phones when I got my Internet connection because the two would interfere badly. If the phone was on the exact same frequency as the Internet, it'd knock the Internet out, but if it was merely adjacent, I would hear modem sounds on the phone.)