If they are separate buildings each can have its own aerial?
If apartments all within the same building then yes - there's one quite close to here:-
--
* I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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On Nov 18, 1:25=A0pm, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote: > Per Samuel M. Goldwasser: >
I'm glad it's working out for you. One minor point. Digital and analog antennas are identical. The manufacturers simply changed the name on the box but all the dimensions of the elements are unchanged. I believe Winegard changed the boom color from blue to natural aluminum and changed the prefix letters of the model number to 'HD'.
G=B2
I'm glad it's working out for you. One minor point. Digital and analog antennas are identical. The manufacturers simply changed the name on the box but all the dimensions of the elements are unchanged. I believe Winegard changed the boom color from blue to natural aluminum and changed the prefix letters of the model number to 'HD'.
G²
In the UK at least, that isn't true. We are a (fairly) small island, with a relatively high population density by area, compared to the USA, so the analogue transmitter network was carefully designed to ensure that adjacent service areas were split well apart frequency-wise for the suite of programmes that they each carried. To take advantage of this clever bit of planning, and to gain maximum mutual interference immunity from it, original analogue UHF antennas, were channel grouped, and thus quite narrow-band in their response, compared to the overall 400 -ish MHz width of UHF bands IV &V.
However now, at most locations, the individual transmitter sites' digital multiplexes are spread from one end of the band to the other, so the antennas sold as 'digital' are broadband types to accommodate this - often being log periodics about three times the size of the original neat little single-group Yagis that were all that was needed for analogue reception.
Also, because the system in use here for DTTV, is nothing like as robust in terms of multipath immunity, as the authorities foisting this changeover on us, would have us believe, it is often necessary to employ an 'antighost' antenna of the type with " X " form directors on it, to achieve satisfactory (ha!) results.
Arfa
Some "small" stations carrying specialized material (eg, a community college station) or serving a small area, are exempt from the requirement to switch to digital.
Where are you lot living with all these problems? I'm in central Scotland and everyone round here who has changed to digital (meaning within a 30 mile radius, not just one street) has had a great picture. A few have had to buy a new aerial, but we knew we might need one. Everyone has got a better picture than on analogue.
-- http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com Your mouse has moved. Windows must be restarted for this change to take effect.
Well I'm in central England in the service area of the Sandy Heath main transmitter. I live on top of a hill at about 330 ft ASL, and within about
25 miles of the primary mast. The analogue signal from this transmitter is stonking in the extreme. It is a good example of the old 'piece of wet string' adage. Just about everyone in my village had a neat little 10 ele Yagi up to receive this transmitter. The low(er) power transmitter at Oxford some 40 odd miles away, which we all used for the alternate ITV service, required an 18 ele Yagi for a noise-free picture under all weather conditions.Now, as people in the village take up digital, they are having to have ludicrous great pieces of ironwork jammed up on their roofs, to reliably receive the Sandy Heath digital multiplexes, and I understand that the situation is similar in many other parts of the country. There is talk that when the analogue services finally cease, the digital transmitter powers will be increased, but for those that have shelled out 150 notes of their hard-earned now, that's going to be a bit horses and stable doors.
Given the many problems that have been reported with DTTV reception, along with the lack of bandwidth available, and the problems that is causing with implementing HD in a format that 'HD Ready' TV sets can use (especially since Ofcom / the government have reneged on the promise to make more of the existing UHF bands available for DTTV when all the analogue has ceased), I really can't see why anyone would choose the terrestrial Freeview option over the corresponding satellite option (FreeSat). As long as you can get a view of the Southern sky, you are pretty much guaranteed of receiving a perfect signal with a minimum amount of fuss and hardware, in all but the very worst thunderstorm conditions. Furthermore, with the oodles of bandwidth available, such things as HD, programme multi-starts, 1 hour delayed channels, fancy interactive services and so on, are a breeze for the broadcasters to provide.
Arfa
While I never actualy lived in the U.K., does anyone else remember the "squareial"?
Geoff.
-- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
Indeed. My next door neighbour still has one bolted on the wall ! Pointing sadly towards the floor now, I might add ...
It was made by STC down in Paignton, Devon, as I recall. BSkyB never really took off. It was rapidly killed by the more viewer - friendly Sky TV services. The Squarial was a neat antenna though. Much more so than the 80 and 60cm offset dishes which became the norm when sat tv really took off here.
Arfa
Satellite unfortunately seems to suffer from the same too low data rates that FreeView does. Some actually worse. And of course the hardware is much more expensive - for many a cheap FreeView box is all that's needed to convert an analogue set.
I'd say you're in a minority if you have a strong analogue signal but poor DTTV one - they usually come from the same transmitter. And the power will be increased after the analogue services are removed - because the band is so crowded that's not possible at the moment.
--
*Most people have more than the average number of legs*
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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I do indeed. And the D-MAC system they used could be quite superb in its day. It certainly pointed to the future - punters simply don't care about technical quality enough to pay a premium for it.
--
*Microsoft broke Volkswagen\'s record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk...
As far as I understand it Dave, the digital multiplexes are not broadcast in tandem with the analogue services using the same transmitter hardware. The DTTV service is also not necessarily broadcast from antennas on the same mast as the analogue ones, or indeed, even from the same physical site, which has led to some transmissions in some areas, being quite an amount off-beam from where the existing analogue antenna is pointing. Couple this with the fact that the broadcast frequency of many of the multiplexes will be outside the designed bandwidth of the (channel grouped) analogue antenna, and the lower broadcast powers employed, then with a little understanding of UHF propagation, it's easy to see how DTTV signals received on an existing antenna that provides a good analogue performance, can be marginal at least. I don't have a problem with understanding that the existing analogue antenna may not be suitable for receiving DTTV. What I do find irksome is the way that the general public is being led to believe that DTTV is superior in every way to analogue, and that the transition will be painless. In many cases, this just ain't so. It's all very well saying that when the analogue service closes, the output powers of the DTTV transmitters can be upped to the point where the field strength becomes enough for a fundamentally unsuitable antenna to work ok (possibly), but the only folk that is going to benefit, are those that have hung on to the bitter end.
As far as data rates go, that is more a matter of economics than technical restrictions, with the satellite service. If you are going to run a minority channel like "The Vegetarian Cooking for Eastern Bloc Plumbers Channel", then you are not going to need it to have a high data rate. There's not going to be a lot of movement on the screen, and it doesn't matter too much if the slice of tomato is rendered in a limited range of shades of red, so you can rent a low data rate transponder quite cheaply. If, however, you are going to show high quality content of many different genres, then you have to use a high data rate, with a correspondingly higher rental price tag on the transponder. On the other hand, on DTTV, the bandwidth is just not there to allow everyone to have high data rates. With only a few premium-content channels using a high data rate, the bandwidth availability rapidly starts to run out. Now that the post - analogue allocation has been even further restricted as Gordon and co rub their hands at the prospect of the cell-phone operators queing up to part with cash for chunks of the UHF band, I can't see how the bandwidth issue can ever be resolved, to improve the Freeview service beyond what it is now, which is a technically superior service, trying to operate in a technically inadequate environment.
As to your point about the cost of the hardware, far from the expense of going satellite being prohibitive when compared with Freeview, they are now about the same on the surface, and the FreeSat service may actually work out cheaper in the end. A 'not too bad' Freeview box will cost you around £30 - £40. Yes, I know that Tesco do some for 15 quid, but they are pretty poor little things. But then you potentially need to add another £150 to the cost of the box, to have a digital antenna supplied and erected. On the other hand, Screwfix sent me an e-mail flyer just yesterday, advertising a complete kit - dish, LNB, wall bracket, pole, receiver, remote control, cables etc, for just £49.99. And made (supplied) by Labgear, who are a respected company in the TV antenna equipment business.
Now how can DTTV, with its limited performance and potential for expansion, even begin to compete with that ?
Arfa
So no different from when the mainstream channels were added to UHF - or later CH5. All of these changes could necessitate a new aerial.
I don't know anyone who believed that. At the very least you'd have to buy a STB. So not painless. As regards being 'superior' it very much depends on your priorities. It certainly gives a much wider choice of stations than is possible with analogue. Actual picture quality can be better in some ways, worse in others. So in the end it's down to personal choice whether you prefer it or not. The way some talk you'd think analogue was always perfect. Rarely was anywhere I visited. Even in this high signal strength part of London my CH5 is often poor. BBC2 in some weather conditions.
Well if you've decided to change before you're forced to there must be something you like about FreeView...
Err, poor picture quality on a channel you don't watch may not bother you. But it might those who do watch it. The higher data rates tend to go to subscription channels.
I'm not sure there will be phone operators queuing up to buy bandwidth. The last sell off was a bit of a fiasco.
You're not comparing apples with apples. A decent wideband UHF aerial doesn't cost anywhere near 150 quid - it's the installation that does. And a dish can cost more to install.
I have HD satellite as well as FreeView - but for watching ordinary channels use FreeView. My hardware for that is more user friendly.
--
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Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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No. No different. But the coming of UHF 625 was not 'sold' to the general public in the same way as the digital service has been - that is with marketing hype in a misleading way. With UHF 625, the potential benefits over VHF 405 were enormous. There was the increase in resolution for a start. Vastly improved FM sound. No displayed pulse interference due to the opposite sense vision modulation sytem that was employed. Improved picture stability from flywheel sync. The much smaller aerial. New channels that were worth having. And of course, colour, a quantum leap forward, and a real benefit that was worth having.
I don't know anyone who has an understanding of electronics and propagation that believed it, but much of ordinary Joe public does, because that's the way it has been sold. People believe everything that they see on TV, and when you couple that with slick marketing, as has been the case here, that's doubly true.
Analogue was certainly never always perfect, but for 363 days of the year, mine is as close to perfect as I would ever want it to be. I don't have anything against digital TV transmission per se. I have a Sky system and a subscription, and again, for 363 days a year, it's as perfect as I would want it to be. With nothing but open space between me and the transmission source, with no such thing as multipath and 20 miles of rain or fog or snow or whatever in the way, it can't really be anything else. CH5 isn't even worth discussing in this context. It was a misconceived concept technically, shoehorned in where it just didn't belong. By putting it on a channel that was internationally accepted as being for VCR outputs, they were guaranteed to cause interference to previous legitimate users of the frequency, from day 1. The reason it is so piss poor on analogue, is because of the very low transmitter powers that had to be run with it, to avoid mutal interference between abutting transmitter service areas, due to the whole concept screwing with carefully planned frequency allocations and offsets, that had worked fine, for years.
People are changing because they are being frightened into doing it now by the marketing hype both on the TV adverts, and at the points of sale barns such as Comet and so on. People also believe all the nonsense about all the new channels that they will be able to receive. Trouble is, the free ones are mostly crap. Be honest. How often do you trawl through the hundreds of channels on Sky, only to struggle to find something worth watching ? All these free channels seem like a huge incentive at first look, but are actually, for the most part, nothing of the sort. Would you propose that people wait until the day that their analogue service is switched off, to see if the (proposed) transmitter power increases allow their existing aerial to function for Freeview ?
?????? Are you going out of your way to be obtuse, Dave ? You seem to have completely missed the point of what I was saying. I did use the word "need". If you have transmissions that are largely static pictures, produced under studio lighting, for a small audience (implying that you are a small broadcaster) then the quality of the picture won't suffer from making use of a low data rate, and as long as your service only appeals to a small number of viewers, it's not going to attract a lot of investment and revenue from advertisers. So a low data rate (ie cheaper to rent) transponder will satisfy the requirements on all fronts for 99% of the time. The point is that at sat frequencies, the bandwidth is available to allow minority channels to have whatever data rate they choose to afford. On the terrestrial UHF bands, the space is simply not available, nor ever could be.
Well, the government must know something that we don't then, otherwise, they wouldn't have reneged on the originally agreed plan to make more of the UHF band available to DTTV after the analogue switch off, for the purposes of facilitating HD transmissions using the existing compression systems. They must think that they've got people waiting in the wings to buy that space.
Of course a wideband aerial doesn't cost 150 quid, but neither does it cost a tenner. And I did say "supplied *and erected* ". Most of the aerials sold for this purpose, are either long-boom "X" form Yagis, or log periodics, neither of which are cheap. Setting aside installation, you would still struggle to buy an aerial, mounting hardware, cable, and receiver, for the
50 quid that Screwfix are asking for a ready to run FreeSat sytem. On the installation front, installing a sat dish is actually easier for the average DIYer than putting up a DTTV aerial, which in most cases, will have to be positioned on a pole, on a roof, clear of the ridge line. A sat dish can be mounted in most cases on a wall, or even at ground level, and with a compass and a bit of patience, is no more difficult to line up, than a Yagi.A FreeSat STB is no easier or harder to use than a Freeview one, and the manufacturers are now catching on to the advantages of a sat based system over a terrestrial one, and are starting to ship sets which have a FreeSat receiver built in.
Arfa
However it took them until January 1985 to drop 405 line TV, starting 625 line TV in 1964. That was IMHO an awfully long "compatability period".
As for the channels being worth having, that's a debate beyond the subject of this discussion. :-)
It was also not that big a sale, in those days, there was only one channel and TV sets were so expensive that not every household had one. Since they were licensed, and licenses were very carefully checked (remember Monty Python's Cat Detector Van?) TV's were not a commodity item as they are today.
BTW, do they still throw people in jail for owning unlicensed TV's?
Geoff.
-- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
I don't have Sky and never will. Because of who owns it. I do regularly use some of the 'minority' FreeView ones - 5US, Dave and ITV3, mainly.
It's up to them. If they are happy with the existing analogue service, why not?
--
*I must always remember that I\'m unique, just like everyone else. *
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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That doesn't make sense. How on earth can you be getting a poor digital signal? They must have a much lower power on that transmitter than they do up here. Mind you we all have 16 element aerials.
I've not heard of that. What is the problem? I thought 720p would work on ANY hd tv. And 1080i (and 1080p from Blueray) would be scaled down by the set.
On this point, they should not have called it HD ready. There should be two names - "Full HD", and "Semi HD". "HD ready" makes the uneducated think they are getting the best that they can, especially when the salesman lies. I thought we had laws like false advertising in this day and age?
Agreed. Terrestrial TV is pointless.
-- http://www.petersparrots.com http://www.insanevideoclips.com http://www.petersphotos.com The priest in a small Irish village loved the cock and ten hens he kept in the hen house behind the church. But one Saturday night the cock went missing! The priest knew that cock fights happened in the village so he started to question his parishioners in church the next morning. During Mass, he asked the congregation, "Has anybody got a cock?" All the men stood up. "No, no," he said, "that wasn\'t what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock?" All the women stood up. "No, no," he said, "that wasn\'t what I meant. Has anybody seen a cock that doesn\'t belong to them?" Half the women stood up. "No, no," he said, "that wasn\'t what I meant. Has anybody seen MY cock?" All the nuns, three altar boys, two priests and a goat stood up.
They never have done. They might for repeated refusal to pay any fine for not owning a licence where needed - but that's no different from failing to pay any sort of fine imposed by a court.
--
*I have a degree in liberal arts -- do you want fries with that
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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It makes perfect sense when the Sandy Heath analogue transmitter is one of the 'main stations' with an ERP of 1MW. I forget what the digital transmitter output power is, but its only in the kW range. I seem to recall something like 20kW, expected to rise tenfold to 200kW after analogue switch off. I could be a bit off there, but it's about right ball park. Doubtless, the info is on the 'net somewhere, if you want to look it up. Also, the Sandy Heath mast is very tall, but the entire top is taken up with the UHF analogue antennas, so presumably, the digital antennas, are some distance down, even assuming that Sandy is one of the masts where the digital is co-sited.
It's not about progressive or interlaced scanning or resolution. It's about the compression and modulation schemes used to get the signals to you. The original plan was to release additional wedges of the UHF broadcast TV band to DTTV use, when analogue ceased. This additional space would have allowed mpeg-2 compression to be used, as is the case with existing digital services. However, as that space is now not going to be given over, an alternative in the form of mpeg-4 is going to have to be used. So when the manufacturers designed-in mpeg-2 decoders in the honest belief that the future terrestrial HD services would employ this compression scheme, and then called their sets "HD Ready", they weren't lying or trying to mislead. Take a look at
which might explain it better. It's a complex situation and seems to be changing almost by the week. Take a look at the links above, especially the last one, to see how the FreeSat service is superior to Freeview.
Arfa
>Here's another link that's worth taking a look at. It goes a long way towards explaining why the digital signals from Sandy are poor, and why the CH5 analogue signal is *piss* poor ...
Arfa
MPEG-2 is a hard and fast standard, having been finalized for DVD players. MPEG-4 does not enjoy such standardization, there are at least 3 variations.
The most commonly used one is the "divx" standard, which is rarely used. Most divx content is really produced with one of the free "compatible" programs, and played with other free compatible programs. The program which creates the file is set to use the divx identifier, so programs playing them think they are real divx files which they are not.
Then there are the H.264 files which are still "MPEG-4" but different.
Microsoft has their own MPEG-4 standard, which is not 100% compatible with the others, but since it is patented by them and requires a license fee, you can expect that the only thing that will reliably play it will be Windows Media Player and the X-Box line.
From what I have infered from reading Tele-Satellite Magazine, most if not all of the satellite receivers use the free decoding engine and not the licensed one. It works very well at higher bit rates, but H.264 works better at the lower ones. It's not as much a problem as you would think, the free decoder programs will decode both.
As for satellite TV, the usual way of doing things has become an implementation (sometimes off the shelf) of the free decoders and hardware decoding using one of the open standard card interfaces.
Here, it is unfortunate because less than honest dealers sell receivers that "do not require you to pay the high cost of pay TV", they include the decrypting software in the receiver and then download new keys over the Internet.
The dealers must hate me because I get asked about them on the average of once a week, and I explain that they are buying a system dependent upon piracy.
One person I met spent several thousand dollars on such a system, and while I've never met him, when a mutal friend told me about it, I explained exactly what was happening and why. I don't know what he did, but from what my friend said, his friend would probably have not have bought it.
Geoff.
-- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM
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