It's really never made sense in the last few years to continue to have terrestrial OTA TV. Crazy you say? Not really, half the time people can't even receive the signals anyway without cable or satellite. We'd be better off just letting the satellite and cable companies deal with distribution and subsidize life line service for the people who cannot otherwise afford it. In so many markets cable penetration is 80-90% anyway.

Ka spot beam satellites allow essentially the entire US local channel markets to be transmitted over satellite. There are no dead zones. No areas where the antenna isn't strong enough. TV broadcasts take up a lot of valuable spectrum that could be used better. In addtion, TV broadcasts would be easier to obtain if delivered to consumers via unencrypted satellite -- not only that -- it costs a lot to power all those transmitters that not many people watch anyway..

I believe strongly in the value of local broadcasts, but our over the air mechanism for home delivery is dated at best and woefully inefficient at worst. Broadcasters and consumers should have better options for signal delivery. I wish the government would take some of that money their getting to make it happen.

You are correct!

Level 3, Qwest, and others have lots of unused fiber (much which may never be used) in conduits that they can light up if they see fit. Right now they may have 160 wavelengths on a pair of fibers, maybe 320 lambdas on the next gen of Infineras. Today the lambdas are OC-192s, tomorrow they will be OC-768s, and then 100G Ethernet. All on the same 2 fibers already in the ground.. And they have lots more than 2 fibers available to expand on.

Who in their right mind would try to compete with that? Their cost to attempt to run you out of buisiness is absurdly low.

And your GPS satellites got blasted out of orbit or a solar storm wipes out all of those satellite resources?

Your SONET networks and cell phone stuff are gonna need it. Your 8-VSB exiter may as well. Single Freq. Networks.

Where do you get an accurate reference from?

WWV? I haven't seen anything other than a GPS reference at any telco facility/cell site. If there ever is a loss of GPS, it's gonna be interesting.

I don't see Google, Microsoft, Facebook and the like laying fiber in the ground all across the country. In some cases, they are buying it. I suspect they are mostly buying lambdas and dedicated circuits *FROM* Tier 1 providers. However, instead of going over the Tier 1 providers IP network, they are buying an OC-12 directly to where their customers are.

Who would they possibly buy a point to point OC-12 from? Who has fiber in the ground and wavelength to spare? A tier 1 provider. Traffic is shifting, but not really AWAY from those who have the infrastructure to provide transit services.

Same companies, different product.

I have a Sidekick.

I still, a week later, can't get e-mail on it. My contacts were never lost, but the damn thing still doesn't work! I'm getting tired of waiting.

My contract is up in August and I'm going to find a phone that stores everything locally AND a new provider. I have learned my lesson.

And the max resolution on a dual link HD-SDI appears to be 1080p

HD-SDI never made it to the consumer market because it is expensive to handle and nobodys TV will decode it.

As for the rest of your comment:

"Single coax cable terminated with BNCs that can deliver 4k (four times the resolution of 1080p) or higher with 16 channels of audio, all uncompressed, at a length of over 100m"

No, what you are referring to is 3Gig, which is actually 2 HD-SDI cables and my experience has been that 300 feet out is sometimes a touchy place to be. 3gig on 1 cable = fiber

leitch / leitchadmin

Nah, nobody I know does that.. hehe..

Reasonable MSOs have restricted program routers and isolated adult islands. No comment about how I know this.

Malicious use of video router - inside job..
Malicious use of a CherryPicker - inside job..
Poor use of access controls - Ignorance

Assuming they already waterboarded the on-site operators... This wasn't some random Capt. Midnight hacker with an uplink available to him. This person had the ability to the control LAN via VPN and then had the passwords to make those changes.

This person was an operator or engineer at Comcast..

I have been working on the digital transition for a certain national TV provider for 4 years. We are DONE and ready to go all digital. In 1996, the drop dead date was set as 2006. It was extended to 2009. 13 years.

How much longer do we really need?

Those who aren't ready will get ready really quick. I'm happy to get them a kick in the pants.

And you can't watch Telemundo and TV Azteca without having seen lots of ads over the last year telling the viewer, in Spanish, changes are coming and you can get a coupon to cut the cost of the box.

It wasn't possible to miss it. I'm tired of excuses.

I can't speak for everyone, but --. I've been working on some facet of DTV for the better part of 10 years. My most recent project has been for a large cable/satellite TV provider to ensure they are transition ready. I can assure you, although there will likely be minor glitches in the 24-48 hours after the switch, I expect nearly everything to be operating normally on satellite and cable. (Even in cases where the broadcaster has changed channels, gone from UHF to VHF, or even changed transmitter locations.)

Over the Air: We're already on our second postponement. The spectrum has already been sold off, we are on borrowed time. Analog TV transmitters are on their last legs, they need to go away. I remember my first OTA 8-VSB receiver, was a DirecTV receiver, it was $700+ and worked poorly. Today, I am the proud owner of an Insignia brand $60 converter that I paid $20 for and will lock onto signals the original DirecTV receiver would never get. I got my coupon when it was initially offered, a little less than a year ago. (Early bird gets the worm) My locals have never looked so good with my $20 converter and $7 antenna.

I am so sick of seeing DTV transition soft-tests and PSAs about the pending transition that I can't wait for it to be over. It's not like you didn't have time to get your stuff in order.

Worst case scenario: On February 17th, you have to pay the full price for the box. $60 instead of $20, because you didn't pay attention. I got a parking ticket recently, I put money in the wrong meter. I was fined $30 because I failed to pay attention.

The boxes exist and are plentiful, if you didn't pay attention and get your free coupon when they had money for them - oh well. That isn't the fault of the Federal Government.

The answer is: if only it were that simple. Time Warner and Brighthouse are trying to get Viacom to maintain or increase only slightly because as soon as they pay more for Viacom - Disney, Fox, Turner, and Discovery will raise their rates. $0.25 turns into $4 really quickly.

Everyones stuggling and Viacom's solution is to charge more. I don't really blame them, but given the choice -- I'd like my cable a-la-carte -- minus Viacom channels. I don't watch them. Unfortunately, it would likely make the 10 channels I do watch on an a la carte basis basis nearly as expensive as the package.

I'd like a value combo meal, an ESPN, a Discovery, and hold the MTV.
Programmer: Would you like to add VH1 Classics for a dollar more?
Nevermind, I'll take the c-span special and live with it.

I mostly agree. It's really hard to beat a Guardian unit hooked up to natural gas in a sound reducing enclosure hooked up to an ATS and distribution panel. The Hondas are great as well, but the Guardian is a nice package for the average homeowner.

If you just need a small generator to ride out an eveing, buy an EU series Honda and keep it in the garage.