seantorbett.com

Broadcast television engineering topics and rants.

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Category: Projects

New Site Location, New Site Look, New Site Smell.

6 August, 2008 (15:41) | Computers, Projects | No comments

I thought I had a good thing going for the past few years by having my websites hosted by 1AND1. Unfortunately, over the past month 1AND1 has been having serious reliability issues and my sites have been inaccessible for days(!) at a time. Calls to the tech help line were anything but helpful. [...]

Will The Popcorn Hour NMT Replace My XBMC?

13 June, 2008 (10:18) | Computers, Projects, TV | No comments

Not yet.  And after the latest debacle with the June 18th firmware, maybe not ever.  My old, original xbox softmodded to run XBMC is still more polished and faster than this little guy, despite the glowing reviews I read which led me to purchase the Popcorn Hour NMT in the first place.
As [...]

TV Engineering. This ain’t your dad’s Heathkit transmitter, baby!

8 January, 2008 (09:00) | Projects, TV | No comments

For those of you that recognize the ‘Heathkit’ reference you get a cookie. Well done.
Unlike the Heathkits of yore I”m using some nice, mostly modern test gear here and servicing a fairly modern transmitter (circa 1998). This is one of those occasions where broadcast engineers get to leave the desk, the whiny news department [...]

How I spent the Christmas Holiday - Modding My PS3

26 December, 2007 (12:59) | Computers, Fun, Hacks, Projects | No comments

One of the cool features of the PS3 is that it is a serious computing device and Sony provided the option to easily upgrade its hard drive as well as install an alternate OS. So I did both.
By far, the easiest HDD upgrade known to man (presently). Simply remove a panel and a [...]

Modding tech is like a lame drug deal

17 December, 2007 (15:14) | Fun, Hacks, Projects | No comments

I heard a story about a guy, not me mind you, that wanted to mod his PSP to a “homebrew” firmware which would allow him to run far more software than the lame games that were made solely for the platform. We’ll call this dashing and daring fellow “Mr. X” - kinda like Racer [...]

The best $600 router project for my $60.

15 July, 2007 (09:00) | Computers, Electronics, Fun, Hacks, Projects | No comments

I have heard of this custom, free firmware called DD-WRT for a while now, but I needed to purchase a compatible router that would accept the replacement software and the one that was recommended the most by others was the Linksys WRT54GL. It also was one of the most trivial to perform the upgrade.

Right [...]

KHOG RF Combiner

1 September, 2002 (17:00) | DTV, HDTV, Projects | No comments

Since a new tower had been erected in 1997 with HDTV in mind, it already featured a broadband RFS panel antenna used to broadcast the analog channel 29 and was capable of accommodating the future DTV channel on UHF 15. The trick after expanding the building and installing the HDTV transmitter was to combine the [...]

HDTV Transmitter Installation

1 September, 2002 (17:00) | DTV, HDTV, Projects | No comments

For this facility (KHOG) the gain of the antenna was considerable so that only about 10kW TPO would be needed to meet the maximized ERP level, so the choice of a solid-state Diamond transmitter from Harris was made. The benefits of this choice were that the multiple modules and power supplies allowed for considerable [...]

HDTV Encoding Rack Design

1 May, 2002 (17:00) | DTV, HDTV, Projects | No comments

Here is a project I am justifiably proud of. Our corporate engineering management had determined that we were to use a Harris Flexicoder as the core of our HDTV encoding, but outside of that we were to determine what we needed to best integrate it into our facility. Initially, I was not pleased with [...]

DTV Antenna Installation

1 March, 2002 (17:00) | DTV, HDTV, Projects | No comments

A few grainy images of the Andrew side-mounted antenna we ordered for the KHBS DTV transmitter in Poteau, Oklahoma (which serves the Fort Smith, Arkansas market).

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