Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels
in [Design]
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From: Michael A. Terrell on 10 Aug 2010 05:30 Paul Keinanen wrote: > > On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:28:58 -0700, Jim Thompson > ?To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon(a)On-My-Web-Site.com? wrote: > > ?On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 17:48:42 +0300, Paul Keinanen ?keinanen(a)sci.fi? > ?wrote: > > ??Are you really saying that some radio broadcasting companies in the US > ??are still using medium wave AM as their main distribution channel ?? > ? > ?Some? There are probably 10's of thousands of AM stations in the USA. > ?Your country is smaller than many/most of our states, so you don't > ?appreciate the need for "medium wave" to cover large areas. > > Alaska, Texas and California have a larger land area than Finland, as > expected. However, I did not expect Montana to be also slightly > larger. > > FM started here in the early 1950's and only a few people relied on AM > in the 1960's. In the 1990's medium wave AM was used to send news to > Finnish speaking emigrants in Sweden and to the Finnish speaking > minority in NE Russia. > > Since those days, only hobby based low power (0.1 kW) AM transmitters > have been used during some selected weekends, mainly to support > DX-listeners. > > To me, it is a surprise that medium wave AM is still actually used for > commercial broadcasting. Up to 50 KW AM transmitters are quite common. At one time WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio ran 500 KW on 700 KHz.
From: Michael A. Terrell on 10 Aug 2010 05:36 Paul Keinanen wrote: > > On Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:03:44 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell" > ?mike.terrell(a)earthlink.net? wrote: > > ? > ?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. > > Are you really saying that some radio broadcasting companies in the US > are still using medium wave AM as their main distribution channel ?? Not some. Most. Some stations run both services, some are strictly AM or FM. http://www.fybush.com/siteindex.html shows a few sites. http://hawkins.pair.com/ shows some other radio sites. You may be able to access the FCC website from outside the US, but I doubt it. It lists every radio & TV station in the US.
From: Michael A. Terrell on 10 Aug 2010 05:41 Jim Thompson wrote: > > That's pretty poor... Firefox claims _92_ "Radio Broadcast Companies" > in Mesa alone... which I doubt... maybe 30 active AM and FM that I can > think of. > > I have Sirius in the Q45, but I do web radio in my office...Roku > Soundbridge. Here are pictures of some of your local radio stations: http://www.fybush.com/site-010509.html http://www.fybush.com/sites/2005/site-051125.html http://www.fybush.com/sites/2009/site-090918.html
From: mike on 10 Aug 2010 05:49 Joerg wrote: > 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. > Particularly bothersome if you have to change the antenna direction to get some of the stations. No way to get them all, even if they're all good, but in different directions.
From: Michael A. Terrell on 10 Aug 2010 06:18
Joel Koltner wrote: > > Hi Joerg, > > Joerg wrote: > ? Yes, having landed a de-facto monopoly provides a plum position in the > ? marketplace no matter how small that monopoly is. > > True... the problem with iBiquity is that the FCC let them have the entire > market. At least with, e.g., Apple, while they get a cut of every (non-free) > app that ends up on a (non-jailbroken) iPhone, there are plenty of other GSM > phones out there. > > ? I vaguely remember one of the domestic car manufacturers offering it > ? (Polk i-something) but I also remember seeing a $500 price tag there. > > The car manufacturers have incredibly inflated ideas about how much radios > ought to cost -- even a simple AM/FM/CD player radio is often ?$200... $40 for the radio & $160 for three union members to install it. |