Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels
in [Design]
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From: Paul Keinanen on 7 Aug 2010 17:41 On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:18:01 -0700, "JosephKK"<quiettechblue(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >On Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:08:11 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> >wrote: >>Besides, the mast won't help. If I had four masts half a mile apart, >>maybe. Yesterday the usual happened, none of the news channels made into >>into this area, they all pixelated out shortly before 10:00pm. Meaning >>lots of people in a middle-class neighborhood haven't seen any of the >>ads, meaning ... This is a typical flat (broadband) fading case caused by varying refractive index. >Kind of wierd to have AM/PM type fading in VHF and UHF bands. Never heard of AM/PM fading, what is that ? >The >multiple antennas would point in very different directions. Not >single channel path diversity but per channel group separated antennas >pointed at the best signal (usually right at the transmit antenna but >not always). While a few meters or some hundred MHz might be sufficient diversity distance against frequency selective multipath problems, in order to combat flat fading, the separation would have to be tens or hundreds kilometers.
From: JosephKK on 7 Aug 2010 18:56 On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 11:52:42 -0700, "Joel Koltner" <zapwireDASHgroups(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >I would have loved to have had movies and a *large*, randomly accessible music >collection as I do today... Now i gotta ask, how many albums/CDs or tracks is your large randomly accessable (presumably on hard disk) music collection?
From: JosephKK on 8 Aug 2010 01:18 On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:36:25 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >krw(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: >> On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:30:00 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >> >>> krw(a)att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz wrote: >>>> On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:22:12 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >>>> >>> [...] >>> >>>> <snip> >>>> >>>>> I found that 56k connections only work very locally. When I did data >>>>> transfers across the pond a couple decades ago the most I could reliably >>>>> work at was 4800bd, sometimes 1200bd was required. >>>> That makes no sense. The connection rate only depends on your "last mile". >>> >>> This was in the days of point to point data transfer. Modules specs, >>> manuscripts, et cetera. Some of those connections went over "singing >>> wires" where the last mile could actually be more like 30 miles. You've >>> seen them, where the wires basically keep the poles from falling over. >>> Add in a crackling transatlantic connection with no SNR to write home about. >> >> How did you get a cross-pond analog line at a time when there were 56K modems? >> > >It wasn't a 56k modem. It was a 9600bd modem and later a 14.4k. But even >at that the connection would immediately error out unless I forced it to >start at 4800bd. It wouldn't have been any different with a 56k modem >unless it couldn't ratchet down to 2400 and 1200 (then you wouldn't be >able to connect). You can't beat Shannons theorem, when the channel is >weak there is nothing you can do except throttling down. > >It depended a bit on the country. Germany-US would often hold 4800 >through the whole session, but no more. For Germany-Canada it was >sometimes better to start even lower so it wouldn't cut out on me. Same >to Korea and places like that. But every reduction by a factor of two >meant a doubling of the costs of the call. Also, it was really important >to have a speaker run at least for the first 1/4 of the transmission. >That is because phone costs per minute were high back then and sometimes >it was smarter to cut it all loose after 5min and start over. Some >connections would gradually deteriorate for some reason and then you had >to try until you got one that didn't. After so many transmissions you >could almost predict whether a connection would stick or not. > >We also split stuff up so partial reads would be useful and someone >could piece it back together at the other end. Sometimes when I hear >kids bemoan that the 5Mb/sec broadband at their parents' house is >sluggish I wish they could experience that old modem stuff just once. > >If you had a >100k file and it wasn't super urgent it was cheaper to >spool it onto a floppy and airmail it. Oldsters remember when bandwidth was expensive, like i "dimed up" and downloaded the the packet drivers for early Ethernet cards from Clarkson Uni to the Lost Angles area ar 2400 baud over a few nights, cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data volume. Just about 20 years difference.
From: Michael A. Terrell on 8 Aug 2010 05:03 Joerg wrote: > > 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. How about this news? A well known AM radio station lost all three towers a few days ago. It was a well know country music station, with its Wheeling Jamboree. <http://www.wtrf.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=83934> <http://www.bing.com/search?q=%2bWWVA+tower+collapse&FORM=RCRE>
From: Michael A. Terrell on 8 Aug 2010 05:07
Jan Panteltje wrote: > > On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:08:20 -0700) it happened Joerg > <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in <8botupFq9aU1(a)mid.individual.net>: > > >Jan Panteltje wrote: > >> On a sunny day (Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:36:19 -0700) it happened Joerg > >> <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in <8booi7FqgtU1(a)mid.individual.net>: > >> > >>>> 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. > >> > >> 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. > > Exactly, before that it was the life of Paris Hilton IIRC. > > > >>> [...] > >>> > >> > >>>> 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 editor :-) Buy one of these if you really want to edit video: http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/powermate/ It saved me most of a week to edit a one hour industrial video a few weeks ago. I programed it to work with AVS4U. |