First digital-only TV station (in the USA)

[Bigglez]

Here's a news story about yesterday's ceremonial switch on of the first digital-only TV station:
http://tinyurl.com/5bez98

More about the station: http://tinyurl.com/643kt3

Follow up story (on second day of operation): http://tinyurl.com/6e9szm

Follow up story (counterpoint): http://tinyurl.com/6xyc4a

Comments Welcome!

[gm1mfn]

Well, reading those articles indicates a fair degree of chaos!! Did they have digital transmissions prior to the switchover so that users could have connected their boxes up, or was it just "Analogue OFF Digital ON"?

The first region in the UK to switch over was Whitehaven in Cumbria and it seemed to go very smoothly.

Just out of interest, how do you left-ponders connect your external boxes into the TV set? All receivers in the UK have at least one SCART connector and many have several.

[Bigglez]

Well, reading those articles indicates a fair degree of chaos!! Did they have digital transmissions prior to the switchover so that users could have connected their boxes up, or was it just "Analogue OFF Digital ON"?

Bear in mind that 85% of US households get either cable TV or direct broadcast
satellite. Both are subscription services and have been digital for several
years. The OTA-only (Over The Air) customers are often unable to afford the
subscription fees, and are more likely to have older equipment, "rabbit ears"
or sub-standard roof top aerials (antennae).

Digital service was offered in parallel with analogue by PBS (Public
Broadcast Service), about seven years ago. PBS was made independent
of its Federal commercial-free charter about twenty-years ago, and had
to adopt commercials and frequent pledge drives. More
here: http://tinyurl.com/6zvmmu

PBS tends to supply 'quality' over quantity and their members (viewers
that donate to the local stations financially, although OTA viewing
is free and also carried by cable and satellite as 'local' content) are
more aware of technical broadcast standards. Not to mention
programme content - BBC dramas, opera, intellectual dialog "chat shows".

Next February the bulk of the OTA analogue stations will go dark,
switching to DTV, and the spectrum will be reused.

This summer PSA (Public Service Announcements) have run on
commercial networks (the original 'alphabet channels' of ABC, CBS, and NBC),
and the Federal government is issuing $40 coupons to offset the
cost of STB (Set Top Box) adapters that retail for $40 - $80.

This is only the second widespread change to USA domestic
broadcasting since NTSC was ratified in 1953 (the other change
was introduction of MTS - Multi Television Sound - in 1984).

The first region in the UK to switch over was Whitehaven in Cumbria and it seemed to go very smoothly.

Interesting! Do you have a guestimate of how many UK viewers use
subscription TV services?

Just out of interest, how do you left-ponders connect your external boxes into the TV set? All receivers in the UK have at least one SCART connector and many have several.

SCART is unknown here. Older kit uses either RF modulation on low VHF
channels (ch 3 or ch 4), via coaxial 'F' Connectors. Or baseband analogue
video and audio over coax and 'RCA' pin jacks.

Most if not all digital kit (STBs, DVRs, DVD boxes) also have digital
ports. For audio it can be 48kHz PCM over fibre optics. The digital
stream uses HDMI connectors. More here: http://tinyurl.com/dmd8j

We live in a time of "standards obsolescence" - kit doesn't wear out
we just crave new features and have to upgrade. Nothing is built
for serviceability and a living wage as a bench or field tech would
be higher than replacement value of consumer goods.

Do UK households also have multiple IR (or RF) remote controls?
Seems that domestic TV for entertainment requires at least
three (STB, TV, Audio/signal routing hub).

Comments Welcome!

[gm1mfn]

Hi Peter,

There's some statistics for UK TV consumption in this document. It's over 15 years since I was directly involved in TV broadcasting and a lot of things have changed in that time. However in the 25 years that I did spend in TV studios, most of it was dedicated to developing the early digital and HDTV standards. We built the first fully digital studio in the UK at Thames TV studios in Teddington back in the mid-eighties and I did a lot of work on the now obsolete Eureka 1250 HDTV standard. The BBC is fairly heavily into HDTV now (1080i or 1080p ??) but it's confined to satellite and cable as there's a very limited bandwidth on the digital terrestrial services.

SCART is the most common external interface in Europe, as it has both composite & RGB capability. However, it's limited in its format capabilities (4:3 or 16:9) and HDMI is coming into favour now, so the newer boxes have both. An RF modulator was widely used in VCR's and is still fitted in many boxes, but rarely used nowadays. Many of the more recent TV's, PVR's & DVD players have a multi function remote that can control several devices. However in our household, SWMBO has a problem with that and prefers a separate remote for each machine.

In our house, with a high gain antenna, we can receive digital broadcasts from the Black Hill transmitter which is 40 miles away and have done so for over three years. Our analogue signal doesn't get switched off until 2011 and when it does all of the current digital services will change channels and have their ERP levels increased. The motivation being the same as the US, in that the UK government will sell off the bandwidth that has become unused.

[Bigglez]

There's some statistics for UK TV consumption in this document. It's over 15 years since I was directly involved in TV broadcasting and a lot of things have changed in that time. However in the 25 years that I did spend in TV studios, most of it was dedicated to developing the early digital and HDTV standards.

Thanks for the pointer to those stats - very interesting. As you might guess I'm in the 85%
of TV households with digital satellite TV service, so we're not directly affected by next February's
analogue turn off. The spectrum re-purpose issue is of greater concern and I'm only now
trying to wrap my head around the 'white space' issue and that of WSD (White Space Device)
technology. Does any of this responate with you (or the UK in general)?

While you were active with studio space and HDTV standards I was designing the last generation
of video and audio routers for Grass Valley Group. We made the frames (crates) digital
ready and had two sets of cards for either wideband analogue or SDI formats.

We can take this topic off-line if you feel we're straying beyond BATC interests. On the other
hand, we may have more 'lurkers' than posters - it's hard to tell as I'm still a novice on this forum.

Comments Welcome!

[gm1mfn]

Hi Peter,

There doesn't seem to be very much activity here so we won't be taking up too much bandwidth. Anyway, its vaguely BATC related so let's stay until the mods throw us out.

Sorry about the delay in replying, I've been rather busy with installing a new heating system as the ancient oil boiler finally died a while ago and with today's hike in the oil price I'm glad I didn't replace it.

How long were you with Grass Valley? Many years ago, I knew Peter Symes (ex BBC and Pye TVT) who emigrated to join Grass Valley around 1980. Of course, that may well be before your time there. I left broadcasting in 1993 when there was a great upheaval in Independent Television and thousands of full-time employees all around the UK were made redundant. Many of them were able to secure freelance positions doing the same jobs, but a lot of the engineering staff were lost to the industry. I was lucky to get a job working for Motorola (now morphed into ON Semiconductor and Freescale) where I was an applications engineer for the now defunct CDi system. We did a lot of work in conjunction with Philips and Sony on CDi and I did use a lot of my studio experience there as I produced several special CDi discs for marketing purposes on top of the applications which involved visiting many potential customers all over Europe. However, CDi was always fated as a standard CD couldn't hold a complete movie and DVDs were just around the corner.

Once Motorola realised that CDi was a dead duck, they transferred our efforts to the design of a chipset for set-top boxes with embedded Coldfire processors. It was fascinating work, but just a little too late as the market had already been captured by the various manufacturers of dedicated MPEG decoders.

To jump back a few years, I'm afraid that my knowledge of the SDI format is limited as we worked purely in the CCIR656 parallel domain and the only contact I had with serial digital video was the Thomson CSF 8B/9B serial interface, which was a little erratic in those days. It must have been around 1988 when we built the first completely digital TV studio at Thames TV in Teddington Studios. A lot of the kit was home-brewed including parallel regenerators and DAs etc. The video mixer was a one-off built by Mike Cox (the previous BATC president), Dave Bryant and Brian ??? (who's second name escapes me just now) at the Hanworth factory. We did purchase a pair of Sony digital video recorders which were the first prototypes and only had parallel interfaces and had great fun with demonstrating multi-generation tape copying (up to around 60 I think) to the production staff who were used to operating with VTRs that could only do two or three generations at best. I even got my picture in a Barry Fox article in Electronic Times as the vision operator!

Is there anyone else out there who has some memories of the early days of the digital TV studios?