[SBE] Proposed Analog Shutoff Extention

[Chris Spacone]

Carl,

 

I agree. It is time to put a great big cable around that stake in the ground
and simply move on toward the inevitable. The facts are pretty simple and
the reality is that there will always be some number of consumers that will
NEVER be ready NO MATTER WHAT. 

 

It is time to end the madness and move out of the dual (transmission,
electricity cost, equipment maintenance cost and on and on) nightmare and
into the clear light of the digital day.

 

Chris

 

From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Carl
Sundberg
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 10:18 AM
To: sbe member discussion mail list
Subject: [SBE] Proposed Analog Shutoff Extention

 

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 America what 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, OR 97402-6544 

 

Cell: 541 520-2867
Landline: 541 461-2324

 

 

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