Broadcast television engineering related tech topics, rants and outright pontifications.
Scott Adams wanted to make a topical comic about the recent iPhone 4G drama that’s been all the buzz recently and realized that his normal outlet (a newspaper) has a propagation delay of about a month. “I worried that the story would become stale before my comics would work through the pipeline.” His only option [...]
While checking the Mobile DTV pavilion at the NAB convention in Las Vegas today I came across several mobile and portable devices showing off how well they can decode and display the new mobile DTV signals being broadcast. All save one…
I was recently talking with a sales rep I deal with and we got on the topic of the aging TV engineering workforce. He told me a rather depressing story about a recent SBE chapter meeting in his area where one of the old timers started poking fun at a couple younger members who were [...]
It’s been about five years since I bought into Sirius satellite (paid) radio. At the time, like many initial customers, I was spending a lot of time in a company truck. For me it was driving from hilltop-to-hilltop working on transmitters or to various studios within “driving distance” and I quickly became fed up with [...]
A new article in Broadcasting & Cable highlights the American Cable Association’s attempt to sway the FCC via a December 11th letter by the ACA President Matt Polka (in addition to the regular lobbying of cable-related issues through their PAC) to eliminate “Must Carry” rules so that they can “offer Internet speeds as fast as [...]
I’ve been a business user of BlackBerry phones for a few years now and, although I won’t get into a rant about which phone is the best phone to buy, I will say that in having these devices foisted upon me by my oh-so-wise-and-indefatigable employers I have found them capable e-mail devices and decent phones, [...]
I’m sure I mentioned before that I really like gadgets and a few months back I bought an eeePC 1000HA for under $400. This is one of the very first Netbooks to have the Atom processor and a 160GB hard drive instead of the paltry 4GB flash drives in the early models. I really wasn’t [...]
Recently our congress has passed legislation to delay the DTV transition/analog shut-off yet again – this time to June 12th of 2009. For those that aren’t already aware this makes the 2nd time the date has been put off. The original date (created in 1997) for this to happen was December 31st, 2006, but in [...]
About a month ago I was selected to download MediaMall‘s PlayOn Media Server and try their beta version of software that bridges content from several Internet video provider sites to a TV. In reality it requires a few more components along with the software to make it work, such as a PC to run the [...]
Regardless of what some liberal arts students or free-love hippies may tell you, you don’t get something for nothing. Or, better yet, as the redoubtable Robert Heinlein coined, “TANSTAAFL” (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch). This simple truth frames the cold, hard realities about to face broadcasters after the current mobile DTV [...]