FCC fines retailers over TV labeling

[Rich-n-Texas]

Because they want the OTA frequency spectrum back. I think the military is going to use it to brain-zap the Talibon in Afganistan so all our troops can get out of there.

[StevenSurprenant]

Because they want the OTA frequency spectrum back. I think the military is going to use it to brain-zap the Talibon in Afganistan so all our troops can get out of there.

VERY Funny!

Okay, it is clear to me now. Why didn't I think of that. It was right there in front of me all the time.

[hermanv]

I used to work for a company called Conrac making high performance video monitors for industry and government. Back in the late 1960's we made a set with 1215 scan lines and 35MHz video bandwidth. As you night guess the picture was stunning compared to the NTSC 525 scan lines and ~5 MHz bandwidth. The set was vacuum tube based, so the idea of a rush to a better technology is somewhat exaggerated.

The big problem is that for an analog signal doubling either the scan rate (like up to 1080i) or the bandwidth also doubles the radio frequency spectrum space required. For todays best HDTV signals (1080p) about 10 times the radio spectrum space would be needed if the signal was sent in straight analog format.

MPEG is a lossless compression algorithm that allows this 10 to 1 improvement to be sent digitally over a bandwidth very similar to the old NTSC TV signal bandwidth. Since TV signals are basically line of sight and since the HDTV signal in not compatible in any way with an old analog set, the entire spectrum was moved higher in frequency to some of the older UHF spectrum.

The channel 2 to 13 VHF spectrum is in high demand for portable, personal and government services. VHF (very high frequency) was a difficult technology in the early days of television. It's hardly difficult with todays devices and we would not describe it as very high frequency today. In fact small battery operated handheld devices are easily built for those frequencies today.

The mandatory switchover to digital TV was first planned for 2007 it was delayed to allow the industry and the consumer more time to prepare for the transition.

[pixelthis]

I used to work for a company called Conrac making high performance video monitors for industry and government. Back in the late 1960's we made a set with 1215 scan lines and 35MHz video bandwidth. As you night guess the picture was stunning compared to the NTSC 525 scan lines and ~5 MHz bandwidth. The set was vacuum tube based, so the idea of a rush to a better technology is somewhat exaggerated.

The big problem is that for an analog signal doubling either the scan rate (like up to 1080i) or the bandwidth also doubles the radio frequency spectrum space required. For todays best HDTV signals (1080p) about 10 times the radio spectrum space would be needed if the signal was sent in straight analog format.

MPEG is a lossless compression algorithm that allows this 10 to 1 improvement to be sent digitally over a bandwidth very similar to the old NTSC TV signal bandwidth. Since TV signals are basically line of sight and since the HDTV signal in not compatible in any way with an old analog set, the entire spectrum was moved higher in frequency to some of the older UHF spectrum.

The channel 2 to 13 VHF spectrum is in high demand for portable, personal and government services. VHF (very high frequency) was a difficult technology in the early days of television. It's hardly difficult with todays devices and we would not describe it as very high frequency today. In fact small battery operated handheld devices are easily built for those frequencies today.

The mandatory switchover to digital TV was first planned for 2007 it was delayed to allow the industry and the consumer more time to prepare for the transition.

Probably where the japanese got the idea for their HD system.
A lot of the sets I worked on in Electronics class still had tubes in some of the high power sections, so I can appreciate this feat.
But I beleive you misspoke, isnt MPEG a lossy codec?
Also we still have to send a signal via 1080i, which is then deinterlaced.
Which is probably the most efficent way to send 1080p right now