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Bit off topic ...

D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
We are heading back for the old days of band III TV in terms of ironwork
on the roof now. We had got it down to nice neat little 10 ele yagis
for the most part. Now, in order to receive the crap digital signals -
which let's remember are, according to Monkey on the TV adverts, going
to be dead easy to receive just by plugging into a set top box - you
need a 650 element triple reverse co-phased crossed dipole anti-ghost
log periodic about 6 foot long and with a bloody great cake-cooling
rack on the back ! Cost to install ? Oh, only about 180 quid ...

When analogue is switched off the power of the digital transmitters will
increase - you can't do this at the moment due to co-channel interference.
Then the same size aerial should suffice. Most of the population can
already get FreeView with their exisiting aerial - if they had good
analogue reception. But like many things digital it doesn't degrade
gracefully. There are some locations where some 'analogue' aerials aren't
suitable for the different frequency digital - but pretty rare.
I realise this doesn't help those in a poor signal area, though. But I'm
'OK Jack'. I can see the London transmitter out of the window in
this room. ;-)
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
The driving force is the sell off of much of the then released UHF
"airspace" - talk of intangibles, how many billions was that
"commodity" sold for ?.
So people can drive their cars watching films via the extra bandwidth to
their mobile phones - brilliant.

The TV UHF frequencies are pretty useless for mobile reception.
 
R

Ron(UK)

Jan 1, 1970
0
Dave said:
When analogue is switched off the power of the digital transmitters will
increase - you can't do this at the moment due to co-channel interference.
Then the same size aerial should suffice. Most of the population can
already get FreeView with their exisiting aerial - if they had good
analogue reception.


Lets hope so because at the moment although I get a great analogue
picture, freeview is less than satisfactory, I`m not that far from
Winter Hill.

Ron(UK)
 
Sorry if I stuff up the posting, I am still new to this.
Something that has been left out of this digital transmission is the
problems that occur in aus (I am not sure if it happens over there
or not) is that we get problems of dropouts, freezing, slicing of
the pic and the ocasional crashing of the stb which needs the full
reset job. The pic is always good, that is when you get a pic unlike
the old analogue which you would still get even tho it was rather
snowy but still a pic. The question really is who is benefitting out
of this and why we need to take a step back in technology.
Please let me know if I am incorrect in any of this in your country.
Ken.
--
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
Sorry if I stuff up the posting, I am still new to this.
Something that has been left out of this digital transmission is the
problems that occur in aus (I am not sure if it happens over there
or not) is that we get problems of dropouts, freezing, slicing of
the pic and the ocasional crashing of the stb which needs the full
reset job. The pic is always good, that is when you get a pic unlike
the old analogue which you would still get even tho it was rather
snowy but still a pic. The question really is who is benefitting out
of this and why we need to take a step back in technology.
Please let me know if I am incorrect in any of this in your country.

STBs vary enormously in quality - not surprising given their very low
price. If it crashes and requires a reset that's the box rather than the
system. Same often with freezing, etc.
 
N

N Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Justy said:
Sorry if I stuff up the posting, I am still new to this.
Something that has been left out of this digital transmission is the
problems that occur in aus (I am not sure if it happens over there
or not) is that we get problems of dropouts, freezing, slicing of
the pic and the ocasional crashing of the stb which needs the full
reset job. The pic is always good, that is when you get a pic unlike
the old analogue which you would still get even tho it was rather
snowy but still a pic. The question really is who is benefitting out
of this and why we need to take a step back in technology.
Please let me know if I am incorrect in any of this in your country.
Ken.
--
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I much preferred the poor analogue signal problems.
First the colour goes then snowy pic getting worse and worse along with the
sound and then lastly the sound disappears.
In my opinion the encoding/decoding for Freeview (UK) type digital
processing is the reverse of this. The sound is about the first thing to
disappear and of course it is total loss not distorted. I can follow a film
without a picture but not without sound, not being a viewer of "action "
films
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
I much preferred the poor analogue signal problems. First the colour
goes then snowy pic getting worse and worse along with the sound and
then lastly the sound disappears. In my opinion the encoding/decoding
for Freeview (UK) type digital processing is the reverse of this. The
sound is about the first thing to disappear and of course it is total
loss not distorted. I can follow a film without a picture but not
without sound, not being a viewer of "action " films

Strangely, NICAM digital stereo is the last thing to go on our analogue
system. Seems they had their priorities right in those days.
 
J

jakdedert

Jan 1, 1970
0
N said:
I much preferred the poor analogue signal problems.
First the colour goes then snowy pic getting worse and worse along with the
sound and then lastly the sound disappears.
In my opinion the encoding/decoding for Freeview (UK) type digital
processing is the reverse of this. The sound is about the first thing to
disappear and of course it is total loss not distorted. I can follow a film
without a picture but not without sound, not being a viewer of "action "
films
My main issue with analog is not snow or signal strength, rather
multipath. Careful adjustment of the antenna (rabbit ears at the
moment) minimizes but does not eliminate that. Apparently that will go
away with digital?

jak
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron(UK) said:
Lets hope so because at the moment although I get a great analogue
picture, freeview is less than satisfactory, I`m not that far from Winter
Hill.

Ron(UK)

We can almost 'see' Sandy Heath from here, and the digital signals are
garbage. Also, in many parts of the country, the multiplexes are split from
one end of band IV to the other end of band V, and transmitters are often
not co-sited with their analogue counterparts, which virtually guarantees
that a special CAI approved wideband 'digital' aerial will be required
either to receive digital at all, or to suplement analogue reception.
Considering how cleverly conceived and executed the UHF analogue channel
allocation system was, I think that the digital mish-mash that we now have
is a travesty. I too have read that transmitter powers will go up when the
analogue goes off, but they've already been jacked up once to try to
overcome the shortcomings of the transmission system ( which it was never
going to suffer from in the first place as I recall ... ) and I don't trust
that once someone else has got their hands on the spectrum space, they will
allow much further increases as part of the deal they agree for buying it.
When the RA was in charge, that may well have been the case, but now it is
Ofcom, which is really just a government puppet department, I suspect that
the situation may turn out to be rather different. We have already seen some
pretty far reaching changes to amateur radio licensing, introduced by Ofcom,
which are completely financially and commercially motivated.

Arfa
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
jakdedert said:
My main issue with analog is not snow or signal strength, rather
multipath. Careful adjustment of the antenna (rabbit ears at the moment)
minimizes but does not eliminate that. Apparently that will go away with
digital?

jak

Don't believe that for one minute ! This was one of the trumpeted
'advantages' of the 'super robust' digital signal. Ha! I say. The signal is
nothing like as robust as they would have you believe, and multipath is just
as big a problem for it, as it is for analogue, except that when you get it
on analogue, you can at least keep watching. If multipath screws up a
digital signal, you're into freeze territory again. Many of the so called
'digital' aerials that you see here now are of the old JayBeam X-element
anti-ghost design. If you struggle with analogue now, I think that it's
unlikely that you will receive digital transmissions reliably.

Arfa
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
Justy said:
Sorry if I stuff up the posting, I am still new to this.
Something that has been left out of this digital transmission is the
problems that occur in aus (I am not sure if it happens over there
or not) is that we get problems of dropouts, freezing, slicing of
the pic and the ocasional crashing of the stb which needs the full
reset job. The pic is always good, that is when you get a pic unlike
the old analogue which you would still get even tho it was rather
snowy but still a pic. The question really is who is benefitting out
of this and why we need to take a step back in technology.
Please let me know if I am incorrect in any of this in your country.
Ken.
--

That's about the same here. For sure digital allows a greater choice of
stations within a given bandwidth, but that is a dubious advantage, given
the garbage that they transmit on many of them. The BBC have a whole suite
of quality stations now on digital, as do Discovery, but many of the others
are a waste of transmission resources. As far as stuffing up a thread goes,
there aren't any hard and fast rules as to how you post or reply, just a few
conventions that help with keeping the thread readable if it gets quite
long. It's normal to preserve the whole post, if you are replying with a
general comment, and to place your entry at the bottom, rather than the top
as you would when you reply to an e-mail, although some people prefer to
top-post in newsgroups. This can sometimes make a thread difficult to
follow, if several people do it, and on some newsgroups, you will get told
off in no uncertain terms, if you do top post. Most of the people on here
are pretty friendly though, and won't comment on top posting unless it
becomes a problem. If you are replying to a specific point in a particular
post in the thread, it's often convenient to just 'snip' out the bit that
you are replying to. Also, some people like to place their comments in
amongst the ones that they are replying to. For the most part, this works OK
too. Just follow a few threads for a couple of weeks, and you'll soon get
the hang of it. If you are using OE as your newsreader client, for example,
you can follow threads by placing a 'watch' on them (click under the goggles
symbol). You can set the watch colour in tools. Then, whenever there are new
posts to the thread, they will show up in bold in the watch colour.

Arfa
 
D

Dave Plowman (News)

Jan 1, 1970
0
Considering how cleverly conceived and executed the UHF analogue channel
allocation system was, I think that the digital mish-mash that we now
have is a travesty.

It was until Ch5 came along. It really could only cope properly with four
channels. Not enough for today, I'm afraid.

In general I'm happy with digital. Of course there are some motion
artifact problems - accentuated by sometimes the recording and post
mechanisms and some TV set types. And fewer colours. But then analogue
wasn't perfect all year round with all 5 channels - and I'm in a good
reception area.
 
J

jakdedert

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa said:
Don't believe that for one minute ! This was one of the trumpeted
'advantages' of the 'super robust' digital signal. Ha! I say. The signal is
nothing like as robust as they would have you believe, and multipath is just
as big a problem for it, as it is for analogue, except that when you get it
on analogue, you can at least keep watching. If multipath screws up a
digital signal, you're into freeze territory again. Many of the so called
'digital' aerials that you see here now are of the old JayBeam X-element
anti-ghost design. If you struggle with analogue now, I think that it's
unlikely that you will receive digital transmissions reliably.

Arfa
I seem to remember, back in the early 80's, that you were supposed to be
able to spread peanut butter and jam on a CD and it would still play.

Then again, according the the science magazines of the 50's, we should
be flying to work in our personal flivvers today.....

jak
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
jakdedert said:
I seem to remember, back in the early 80's, that you were supposed to be
able to spread peanut butter and jam on a CD and it would still play.

Then again, according the the science magazines of the 50's, we should be
flying to work in our personal flivvers today.....

jak

We used to have a really good 'everyday science' programme here on TV called
"Tomorrows World", which sadly, has gone now ( I was even on it once ! ) I
can clearly remember that exact demo being done on both a vinyl record and a
CD. The presenter took one of each, that he had previously shown playing,
then smeared jam, and tipped the contents of an ash tray, on to each. Then
came the clever bit - he wiped them both off with a cloth ... Of course, the
vinyl no longer played ... But I bet it would have, if a little care was
taken over giving it a warm water and soap wash. The other one that I saw
demonstrated, was a CD with a quarter inch hole drilled in it, showing how
good the error correction systems are. Vinyl couldn't survive that and still
play !

I guess it looks like I'm a bit of a Luddite regarding digital stuff, on
this thread, but actually, I'm not. I think that for the most part, digital
equipment is really excellent, and that any shortcomings that a particular
item may have, are often well outweighed by the benefits. Digital cell for
instance. Can be a bit metallic sounding compared to an analogue landline,
but look how versatile and useful it is. CD. If you are an audiophile, some
content sounds a bit 'bright' or harsh, but just look at the advantages.
Likewise, DVD over tape, and computers and computer display technology, are
nothing short of 'magic', given their complexity. I even don't have a
problem with digital TV when it's done right - ie allowing sufficient
bandwidth to not have to compress the signal enough that high data rate
areas of the picture generate significant motion artifacts. There is of
course space to do this up on the sat bands, if you've got the money to
lease a high bandwidth transponder. I don't have a problem at all with
movies being received by my sat box, and displayed on my analogue CRT TV.
Where I do have a problem, is when the digital technology does not enhance
the experience, and where its shortcomings actually detract from the
experience rather than being 'neutral' or even masked. Current public
entertainment, and the display / reproduction technology for it, seems to
fall into this category. Digital radio, for instance, employs such high data
compression rates at some times of the day on some stations, that it's like
listening to a Dalek. LCD and plasma TVs generate all sorts of unwanted
artifacts, that become even worse if displaying a low data rate digital
channel. Which brings me right back to digital cinema projection, but
probably, 'nuff said now, as this was an OT thread that I started in the
first place ... d;~}

Arfa
 
A

Allodoxaphobia

Jan 1, 1970
0
..... The other one that I saw
demonstrated, was a CD with a quarter inch hole drilled in it,
showing how good the error correction systems are.

Yup! An everyday occurance, that! snurk.!.!.

Jonesy
 
B

Baron

Jan 1, 1970
0
Allodoxaphobia inscribed thus:
Yup! An everyday occurance, that! snurk.!.!.

Jonesy

Yes ! But what a con ! Since the CD plays from the centre out to the
edge, if you only have one or two tracks, you can stick as many holes
as you like in the disk, as long as they don't go through an actual
track !!
 
B

Baron

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ron(UK) inscribed thus:
Lets hope so because at the moment although I get a great analogue
picture, freeview is less than satisfactory, I`m not that far from
Winter Hill.

Ron(UK)

Isn't there a greater implication to switching off analog TV, at least
in the UK !

How about Since its digital, every receiver will have its own digital
ID at some point in time ! Then when they tie the TV Licence to your
digital ID, Oops... No TV ! Someone forgot to pay their licence
fee !

Thats just for starters ! I can think of other uses for social
control of the masses. What I frightening thought !
 
B

b

Jan 1, 1970
0
That's about the same here. For sure digital allows a greater choice of
stations within a given bandwidth, but that is a dubious advantage, given
the garbage that they transmit on many of them. The BBC have a whole suite
of quality stations now on digital, as do Discovery, but many of the others
are a waste of transmission resources.

This point about the privatisation and sellling off of the airwaves
with multiple digital stations in mind is indeed true. I didn't
mention it earlier for brevity's sake, but since we're on the
subject... ;-)

I don't want to be too pessimistic - of course, there will be access
to many decent new programmes from overseas - but we need to be
realistic. Paradoxically, despite the greater number of channels, I
think UK TV will become even less diverse and representative of the
society it purports to serve.

I did some work in this area many moons ago and was once at a
conference where it was revealed from empirical evidence that since
the 1990 Broadcasting Act , and the birth of countless new channels
since then (including satellite, cable etc) non-news factual
programming had gone DOWN by over 70%- and the largest increase in
programming was repeats of old nature films. So much for greater
choice!

And the reason? We're becoming less informed simply because these
channels in private hands (usually transnational organisations and big
business consortia) based not on a public service commitment but
sheer profiteering, buy in cheap US material at a fraction of the cost
of the domestic stuff. This unfair competition undercuts local
production and influence , limits the scope of the content and hence
gives rise to new forms of 'cultural imperialism' - all ironically
dressed up as 'choice'.

Monopolies like that of Rupert Murdoch, who has a personal fiefdom
involving media in almost every country, (with an extreme right wing
bias to boot) must be rubbing their hands together as they dream of
increasing their stranglehold on the media. As others so far in this
thread have pointed out, the 'digital revolution' is in their
interests not ours!

just my tuppence worth.
-b
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
Baron said:
Allodoxaphobia inscribed thus:


Yes ! But what a con ! Since the CD plays from the centre out to the
edge, if you only have one or two tracks, you can stick as many holes
as you like in the disk, as long as they don't go through an actual
track !!

No, no con, and obviously, not a real world "everyday occurence". You really
can drill a hole right through a part of the disc that's carrying data. It
was supposed to be a graphic representation of how much missing data could
be tolerated by the error correction systems. I happen to think that it is a
rather good demo at that ...

Arfa
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
b said:
This point about the privatisation and sellling off of the airwaves
with multiple digital stations in mind is indeed true. I didn't
mention it earlier for brevity's sake, but since we're on the
subject... ;-)

I don't want to be too pessimistic - of course, there will be access
to many decent new programmes from overseas - but we need to be
realistic. Paradoxically, despite the greater number of channels, I
think UK TV will become even less diverse and representative of the
society it purports to serve.

I did some work in this area many moons ago and was once at a
conference where it was revealed from empirical evidence that since
the 1990 Broadcasting Act , and the birth of countless new channels
since then (including satellite, cable etc) non-news factual
programming had gone DOWN by over 70%- and the largest increase in
programming was repeats of old nature films. So much for greater
choice!

And the reason? We're becoming less informed simply because these
channels in private hands (usually transnational organisations and big
business consortia) based not on a public service commitment but
sheer profiteering, buy in cheap US material at a fraction of the cost
of the domestic stuff. This unfair competition undercuts local
production and influence , limits the scope of the content and hence
gives rise to new forms of 'cultural imperialism' - all ironically
dressed up as 'choice'.

Monopolies like that of Rupert Murdoch, who has a personal fiefdom
involving media in almost every country, (with an extreme right wing
bias to boot) must be rubbing their hands together as they dream of
increasing their stranglehold on the media. As others so far in this
thread have pointed out, the 'digital revolution' is in their
interests not ours!

just my tuppence worth.
-b

Nicely put, and pretty much all agreed with ...

Arfa
 
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