Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels

[Joerg]

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.

 

[Rich Webb]

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.

It depends entirely on how ... thoughtful? ... the firmware developers
were (or were allowed to be?). One of the converter boxes here (yup,
still have old analog CRTs) allows direct entry of the channel +
subchannel, either to view or to add. Another permits an "add new
channels" scan which only adds but won't delete existing ones if it
doesn't see them.

Other features are all over the map, as well. I did spring for a small,
modern LCD with ATSC tuner when one of the CRTs went poof. Yeah, it has
a super picture but it has an awful channel guide: only the current
program name and only for the current channel. And most of the time
(like, almost always) the displayed time of day and time of the program
are incorrect by hours -- with different offsets for different stations.
I'm guessing some programmer forgot his "#pragma packed" or something.

 

[Joerg]

I dunno what stuff you use, but here it is very possible to add a frequency
or station, or sat.

Mostly the Magnavox brand. Which is AFAIK essentially Philips. But it
all seems designed and built by Funai. The lastest box it even says it
bluntly in the manual, "add-on" only for analog TV channels. Which no
longer exist out here when using terrestrial.

That is both for satellite, terrestrial, both radio, TV, and data.
DTV is not 'unreliable', in fact is is very reliable, but it needs a minimal signal
strength for things to lock.

ATSC is unreliable. Ask any neighbor here who uses an antenna.

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

Did you ever put a decent yagi or some otehr good antenna on the roof?

Yep, top of the line ChannelMaster. The biggest honking one there is.
With mast amp, professional distribution and so on.

 

[Joerg]

It depends entirely on how ... thoughtful? ... the firmware developers
were (or were allowed to be?). One of the converter boxes here (yup,
still have old analog CRTs) allows direct entry of the channel +
subchannel, either to view or to add. Another permits an "add new
channels" scan which only adds but won't delete existing ones if it
doesn't see them.

I helped set up one LCD-TV that could add on DTV channels. The others
didn't :-(

Other features are all over the map, as well. I did spring for a small,
modern LCD with ATSC tuner when one of the CRTs went poof. Yeah, it has
a super picture but it has an awful channel guide: only the current
program name and only for the current channel. And most of the time
(like, almost always) the displayed time of day and time of the program
are incorrect by hours -- with different offsets for different stations.
I'm guessing some programmer forgot his "#pragma packed" or something.

What I am wondering is whether any of this stuff ever gets test-driven
in the field. In the areas I work in (med, aero, and similar) that is
mandatory and deficiencies like this would hit the fan almost instantly.

The sad thing is, I've even seen similar things happen with "modern" lab
equipment. Which is why I often recommend to my clients to shun new
stuff and look for a particular boat anchor at liquidations or auctions.
They don't make'em like that no more.

 

[Joerg]

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.

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.

Nice, should really work.

Only thing I can say about it is that I love satellite.
With many many free programs here in Europe I guess we are spoiled.

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

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.

The quality blew me aways this time, satellite, zero bit errors,.
There is a lot of soft for those PC cards that allow you to do many things commercial receivers
cannot do, tweak things.
Some written by me
There is a cute little program in Linux called 'mediainfo'.
I just ran it in that starwars recording:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6273528980 2010-08-01 23:20 Astra1_prosieben.20h13.1-8-2010-187m.ts
grml: /mnt/hdd4/video/satellite # mediainfo Astra1_prosieben.20h13.1-8-2010-187m.ts
General
Complete name : Astra1_prosieben.20h13.1-8-2010-187m.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
Format profile : No PAT/PMT
File size : 5.84 GiB
Duration : 3h 7mn
Overall bit rate : 4 473 Kbps

Video
ID : 511 (0x1FF)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings, Matrix : Default
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.

Display aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.346
Stream size : 4.68 GiB (80%)

Audio #1
ID : 512 (0x200)
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 2
Duration : 3h 7mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Video delay : -407ms
Stream size : 257 MiB (4%)

Audio #2
ID : 515 (0x203)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Duration : 3h 7mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Video delay : -377ms
Stream size : 514 MiB (9%)


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.

 

[Kevin McMurtrie]

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.

 

[Paul Keinanen]

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.

 

[Joerg]

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.

Time to pack up and go Germany again

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.

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

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

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.

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.

 

[Joerg]

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!

Many engineers as well. Looks like even the design of a simple and
functioning POR/BOR is a challenge these days. I never understood what's
so complicated about that. Yesterday we had three power outages. After
every one of them our "modern" stereo starts to squeal. The DSP in there
goes lala and the only way to fix this is cut power again until it stops
doing that. Pathetic. Many engineers seem to think that hanging a
resistor and a cap to an /RST pin is fine. And many IC designers don't
seem to have the foggiest how it's done right.

Oh, and the new VCR still goes 12:00 blinky-blink after each power
outage. I have given up hope that they will ever figure out how to do
that right. It would be so easy but ...

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]

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.

 

[Joerg]

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.

I think they failed to achieve that level of performance. Yesterday
_all_ stations that carry evening news blue-screened. Meaning we could
not watch the news. I guess this is called progess.

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.

No, it showed nice bricks for each station but the sets can't decode
some of them.

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.

Sure, I could build 3-4 towers and provide a remote selector switch in
the living room. That would really be technological progress

 

[Joerg]

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.

One has to be careful with both online docs as well as reviews. Cases in
point: The official feature set listed 480p as the max DVD resolution
when playing back. This is wrong, you can set it to 720p, 1080i, and
some others. I almost knew it was wrong when ordering, just held my
fingers crossed that I would be right.

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

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.

And all have tha same circuit board

With image recording devices it's usually all from Funai these days.

 

[Joerg]

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.

[...]

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

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



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.

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.

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

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 ????

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

 

[Joerg]

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.

Out here the news is actualy not all that negative. But sometimes
boring. For example, I really don't need to know where Chelsey Clinton
got married.

[...]

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.

Yeah, but it works well enough by hand. I am also rather good in tuning
it out in my head, reading up on stuff during the news when the ads play.

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

Oh, Jan, we live in the 21st century. The times when such major events
were recorded in an analog format are long gone.

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.

It's the level of the nerd factor. A big honking PC in the living room
requires one almost not to be married. A small one is ok, but only if
freshly married or close to the 50th anniversary

 

[Joerg]

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?

It's still done. Half a year into my job I got a rude awakening just how
retro the medical world can be: We had a top notch VCR on an ultrasound
machine we designed in the 80's. Also a small or optionally large format
photo printer that would deliver images within very few seconds. Boss
came in. "Joerg, marketing said the doctors want Lenzar cameras on the
machine. Please develop an interface for that and talk to the ME about
mounting the darn thing." My jaw dropped and I stood there, in total
disbelief. Then rolled up the sleeves and did as told.

These are the "cameras" where you then have to trudge off and develop
the film, wash, and hang on a light board. It was almost as if Ferdinand
Porsche came into the lab and asked the guys to make sure a steam engine
can be fitted into the 911.

 

[Joerg]

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!

Nobody is going to buy new FM radios. That's why I predicted HD-radio to
fizzle, which it did.

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...

I think that whatever they do now, in hindsight, is going to be in vain.
It's too late, TV stations have shot themselves in the foot. Yeah, our
generation might let them force us onto sat or cable (well, except me
....) but when you talk to the next generation out here they just don't
care about DTV channels pixelating out. They watch all news content on
the Internet and all their movies come from Netflix. I believe TV
station managers either don't know what's coming at them or are hoping
to be retired when the financials start to tank.

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's what the Ch-13 chief engineer told me. Problem is, people in
high-rises all have cable anyhow. Thru-wall propagation is largely a
non-issue these days. I know only one person who uses rabbit ears.
Because he's rarely ever home.

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).

We simply watch less. So do neighbors. And here goes the ad revenue ...

 

[Joerg]

[...]

[...]

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.

Yeah, but it works well enough by hand. I am also rather good in
tuning it out in my head, reading up on stuff during the news when
the ads play.

Once I made the mistake to actually edit it out. Those are the
commercials I still remember, as I had to see them many times to get
start, and end, and audio, right in the editior

Very few ads remained in my gray cells. The only one I remember from the
six years I lived in NL is from Douwe Egberts "En dan is er koffie".

Cannot follow you here, BBC was recorded at 25 fps (tape) or 24 fps
(film). You play at 30 fps (or 60), so you have to interpolate frames
and add those at irregular intervals. I have some Linux soft for
that, it works, but the motion is not as smooth as at the original
speed I think. Do you think digital does not know about frame rate?
The problem we had here with LCD TVs (seems to go away with better
sets) was that many sets were HD compatible but displayed the 25 fps
material at 30 fps, causing horrible horizontal irregular jumping of
the picture.

This is what's cooking these days:

http://www.ikegami.com/br/products/hdtv/pdf/HDK77EX0401s.pdf

Most modern cameras can be switched so you can record in several native
frame rate standards:

http://www.ikegami.com/br/products/hdtv/hdtv_camera_frame1.html

I don't know how they do it but there is no interpolation at all. I
believe they record in US format because the participants are mostly
American, so it's for our market. The judges are one American, one
British and one (rather hot-blooded ...) Italian.

I think you still do not get the concept. I am not a fan of VDR, but
have a look at Klaus his website: http://www.tvdr.de/ It does not
have to be a 'big honking PC'. ...

It is pretty big. Anyhow, ours has the described features as well or
pretty close:

http://www.tvdr.de/software.htm

Except we have to swap out the disk after x hours. Ok, no big deal.

... My media centre PC is not in the
living room. There is no need for that, most modern TVs can access
files on the media server, via a menu (and ethernet). There are cheap
interface boxes available these days with HD output and ethernet
connection for any room you want. In fact, with all those standards
constantly changing, the best bet is to split everything up, monitor,
receiver, disks, DVD burner. At least something will be of use a bit
longer then the 2 to 5 years we now have between a system change, 3D
is here hoopla, we just had HD . Do you have your 3D set yet?

No, and no need to. Same with BlueRay. Since we are into older movies
and don't like games or scifi there would be no use for that here. We
rather spend that money at the Japanese restaurant, like today

 

[Joerg]

On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:08:20 -0700) it happened Joerg


Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:36:19 -0700) it happened
<[email protected]>:
[...]

[...]

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.

Yeah, but it works well enough by hand. I am also rather good in
tuning it out in my head, reading up on stuff during the news when
the ads play.
Once I made the mistake to actually edit it out. Those are the
commercials I still remember, as I had to see them many times to get
start, and end, and audio, right in the editior

Very few ads remained in my gray cells. The only one I remember from the
six years I lived in NL is from Douwe Egberts "En dan is er koffie".

I preferred the Cavendish myself ;-)

Well, that ad was for Douwe Egbert coffee

Some of the ads for smokes from Germany also stuck because they were
quite funny.

 

[Joerg]

It hasn't really fizzled. While it's certainly not setting the world on
fire, there does seem to be slow but steady growth. See, e.g.,
http://www.twice.com/article/455377-iBiquity_HD_Radio_Sales_More_Than_Double.php
. Shipping over a million radios per year should be enough to keep it
viable! I also see Crutchfield devoting a fair number of catalog pages
towards pushing it...

Still a drop in the bucket. Success to me would mean that modern
vehicles are equipped with it. But that isn't the case. We rented three
cars a couple weeks ago. A Chevy Cobalt, a Toyota Venza and a Ford
Mustang, all nearly brand-new. None had it. But you already mentioned a
core reason here:

I do find it a little disheartening that the FCC would license a
proprietary standard, though -- iBiquity owns the rights to the HD radio
standard; every single one of the ~3 million HD radios built out there
resulted in their receiving a royalty.

That's one of the reasons I think HD radio doesn't have a chance. It's
the same with home automation standards, except that there the whole
market doesn't come out of the hole.

Microsoft is releasing an upgraded, 64GB version of their MP3 player/HD
radio/widget, the Zune HD in August, and I have to believe they would
have dropped the HD radio chip in it is they didn't think it was
continuing to help their sales a bit, as a differentiator with
iTouch/iPhone devices. (The original Zune HD came out last September.)

Oh, and STMicroelectronics is still interested:
http://www.st.com/stonline/stappl/cms/press/news/year2010/t3044.htm .

Neither of the two chips is available at the major US distributors.
That's usually the sign of a dead-end, to me as a circuit designer it is
a big red flag. This one has a July 2009 date in the datasheet so not
exactly new:

http://www.st.com/stonline/products/literature/ds/14860.pdf

 

[Joerg]

Who needs HD content when, as in our Q45, you have AM, FM, multi-disk
CD, Tape and SAT all built-in ?

That's what I've asked myself the first time HD radio was announced. In
medical we call that "me, too" technology, and this one essentially came
too late.