Broadcast television engineering related tech topics, rants and motorcycles!
While checking the Mobile DTV pavilion at the NAB convention in Las Vegas today I came across several mobile and portable devices showing off how well they can decode and display the new mobile DTV signals being broadcast. All save one…
Regardless of what some liberal arts students or free-love hippies may tell you, you don’t get something for nothing. Or, better yet, as the redoubtable Robert Heinlein coined, “TANSTAAFL” (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch). This simple truth frames the cold, hard realities about to face broadcasters after the current mobile DTV [...]
Not many people get inside Sutro Tower, so I consider myself pretty fortunate. My current employer doesn’t have transmit facilities or other interests at Sutro, so I was escorted through the gate and into the facility by a contract engineer, John Buckham, that our SF station has who also maintains a radio station there for [...]
Today I made the plunge and finally got off the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format fence and bought a PS3 system. There were several reasons for this; first I did NOT buy it because I love Blu-Ray. I like that it has multiple studio and vendor support as well as about 25GB storage per layer, but the hardware [...]
For the old…. err.. “seasoned” television viewer that doesn’t understand what a “Tivo” is and still tunes in to re-runs of Matlock (after adding more tin foil to the rabbit ears), a few items just popped up on my radar I thought I would forward to everyone. First is a website discussing the digital transition [...]
For several years I have been attending the NAB convention and this year I was asked to craft a report for my current employer: ION Media Networks. >General Observations: The last few years I have noticed a progressive thinning of broadcast television specific technology and a steady shift toward digital media primarily focusing on its [...]
I am a fond proponent and avid ‘flag waver’ of local broadcasting and free HDTV and I would be happy to answer questions on the subject for anyone to the best of my ability. It is fun to show friends and neighbors what HDTV looks and sounds like when I invite them into my home [...]
Here is a project I am justifiably proud of. Our corporate engineering management had determined that we were to use a Harris Flexicoder as the core of our HDTV encoding, but outside of that we were to determine what we needed to best integrate it into our facility. Initially, I was not pleased with the [...]
Prior to installing the coming DTV transmitters there had to be a manner in which to get the HD signal to the transmitter. Since we would ultimately have two high-power DTV transmitter sites and they are a considerable distance from the studios, the only practical solution would be to encode the HD signal at the [...]