[SBE] Proposed Analog Shutoff Extention

[Carl Sundberg]

Hi All,
 
I don't know about the rest of the membership, but I think its time for the SBE to take a hardcore stand on the issue of extending the analog shutoff date. I don't know how it is for the rest of the TV engineers, but for me this entire signal duality thing has finally reached that point where I am screaming, "How about a break!"
 
I always thought 8VSB was a poorly designed and rushed standard. The FEC has always been too little. It's too hard to make a portable run for a long time on batteries and we didn't have a mobile standard until most of us had already bought our exciters and installed them. Unlike analog, where people could watch a lousy signal and adjust indoor antennas as needed or desired, 8VSB either works or it doesn't and it has huge multipath problems that make it difficult for many viewers to make it work at all. There are even a ton of problems in the market place that make reception difficult for the viewer. They have to guess what they need. Lots of people buy highly amplified antennas that make it difficult to use their converter box because they put too much signal into the front end or they have always had a lousy, ghosty picture from multipath but put up with it and now 8VSB is nearly an impossible signal to decode at their homes without a
 huge investment in antenna hardware.
 
Having said that, we bought the pig, cooked it, announced the meal time for years and now it's diner time. Putting off the meal will not improve the menu or the quality of the meal. 
 
All of us engineers have been putting in double time keeping ancient analog transmitters working while also trying to keep this new DTV stuff working with too few engineers, too little test gear and too few redundant proprietary mystery digital boxes to make our signal as reliable as the old analog viewers got used to.
 
We paid our nickel for the stall, told every body how much stink to expect and announced our intentions to drop the big one with a plethora of spots, crawls and public meetings so now I think its time to finally unload and let the chips fall where they may.
 
We're the people that have to make it work. None of this change was our idea. We've done our job and planned our budgets according to their plan. We've have even handled thousands of calls collectively from people who are not having a good experience. I think it's time for Congress to pick up the phone for a change. It was their legislation, not ours.
 
I vote that we give Americawhat it's government wanted and do it on the day it wanted it. Otherwise we should only keep the analogs on if Congress pays for it. To do it, we need funds to pay for engineering overtime, parts, utilities, tower rental extentions and replacement revenue for the additonal avails needed to keep on announcing this change.
 
Carl Sundberg
3318 Coraly Ave.
Eugene, OR97402-6544
 
Cell: 541 520-2867
Landline: 541 461-2324
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