Obama team urges delay in digital TV transition

[EchoWars]

Originally Posted by zenith2134

EchoWars, with all due respect, that is true, but it will be pretty impossible to use the ATSC system on batteries...you would likely need a generator to use TV in that case, whereas the old LCD 'watchmen' type TVs would pick up analog fine (albeit a bit snowy, but usable...)

Your post is a non-sequitur to me. Emergency? No AC power? Grab the damn portable radio. TV isn't the only source for information in a crisis.

[zenith2134]

HA! Never said it was. I hate TV as much as the next guy. When I patch up a set after repairs, I put it aside and it rarely gets used. Idiotbox=Unnecessary. Emergency? Radios are fine!

[bgadow]

Originally Posted by EchoWars

Your post is a non-sequitur to me. Emergency? No AC power? Grab the damn portable radio. TV isn't the only source for information in a crisis.

As has been mentioned before, not an option in many cases. Locally there have been blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, 10-car pile-ups on the highway, floods...turn on the radio and listen to the music because none of the local stations have a real news department and many are fully automated so that there is nobody to read a special announcement. Last year I had a tornado (a very small tornado) come right down the street where I work. I had no idea it might happen-there were 2 radios on in the shop and neither said a word, before or after. The guy who works down the street in a warehouse (which was nearly blown down by the twister) had gone home. Why? His wife was home watching the local news, yep, on good old analog, and called to warn him.

Different, perhaps, in the city where there are news/talk stations and such. The old-style community broadcasters are gone for the most part.

[peverett]

The problem with commercial radio stations is that they do not broadcast emergency weather information anymore-at least around here(TX). With all of the equipment(dual doppler radar, hail detectors, etc.) purchased by the TV stations, TV has taken over the weather information role.

Of course you can buy the specialized weather radios(I have one), but this is still not near the information that can be gleaned from a TV weather warning.

[wa2ise]

Some parts of the country get tornadoes, and you really would like to see live radar maps of your region on TV. Many DTV stations have sub-channels that display weather info. Portable DTV sets would be good to have, and there's a proposed mobile TV add on to the ATSC standard just released. Severe weather info would be an excellent use for that mobile TV. This mobile TV standard is designed with more rugged error correction and reception under lousy conditions.

[peverett]

We have a station here that broadcasts weather on a subchannel. The problem is RECEIVING the information during bad weather. It has been my experience to date that I receive a frozen picture and no sound on all DTV channels during fairly strong thundersorms. This is while analog, although somewhat snowy, continues right along. It is a weakness in the DTV technology, not what is being broadcast.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by peverett

We have a station here that broadcasts weather on a subchannel. The problem is RECEIVING the information during bad weather.

Hopefully, this (Mobile/handheld TV) below will be a solution:

http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/72382

Probably for small handheld displays like those on fancy cell phones. If it works, the reception would be more robust than regular ATSC set top boxes, and hopefully future full size DTV sets could use this new mobile/ handheld signal as a fallback if full HD reception goes bad. Assuming the program is a simulcast of the regular HD program.

"Central to the M/H system are additions to the physical layer of the ATSC transmission
system that are easily decodable under high Doppler rate conditions. Extra training sequences
and forward error correction (FEC) are added to assist reception of the enhanced stream(s).
Consideration has also been given to the many system details that make such a signal compatible
with legacy ATSC receivers, particularly audio decoder buffer constraints; but also such
constraints as MPEG transport packet header standards, requirements for legacy PSIP carriage,
etc. These changes do not alter the emitted spectral characteristics."

-- page 12 of http://www.atsc.org/standards/cs_doc...1-ATSC-M-H.pdf

[peverett]

Sounds like it won't hurt. I wonder why this was not done in the first place.

I would only expect standard definition(good enough for weather info) in the condtions they describe, not High def.