[opendtv] Re: 20050926 Mark's Monday Memo
- From: "Allen Le Roy Limberg" <allimberg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2005 16:49:18 -0400
In 1999 a Samsung STB breadboard worked quite well in a law office close to
mine, catercorner from the Social Security office at the corner of M and New
Hampshire. The antenna was a Radio Shack indoor antenna with amplifier, and
a computer monitor was used for display. It was demoed to Craig Tanner and
Linn Claudy as I recall. PBS was broadcasting an art show in HDTV at the
time. If one interposed his body between the window and the antenna, you
could make the picture fail, presumably because signal strength was strongly
reduced. Reception was not line-of-sight, but a reflection from a building
that I believe had FCC offices in it.
Al Limberg
----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005 10:05 AM
Subject: [opendtv] Re: 20050926 Mark's Monday Memo
> At 11:16 AM +1200 9/28/05, Barry Wilkins wrote:
> >Well, go on John. Say it anyway. It's always fun. It kind of reminds me
of
> >the movie "Groundhog Day", where Bill Murray says"Well, what if there is
no
> >tomorrow? There wasn't one today" Accordingly, there appears to be no
> >reasonably priced properly performing ATSC receiver today...and tomorrow
> >never comes (so far).
>
> A reliable source in the Nation's capital informs me that he has one
> of these new ATSC STB's, and that it works fine (with a silver sensor
> antenna) in the urban canyons of DC, where lawyers ply the
> politicians with cash for political influence. So ten years after the
> standard was approved, it looks like it can be made to
> work...marginally. We will need to wait and see what these boxes will
> cost. Without a huge order subsidized by the U.S. treasury, it would
> appear that there is no incentive to bring these boxes to market.
>
> For the past few weekends I have been looking at the DTV ads from the
> usual local suspects: Sears, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Each has its
> own unique way of designating whether a set is HD ready or it
> includes an ATSC/Cable tuner. Best Buy calls the integrated sets DCR
> - Digital Cable Ready. Circuit City uses HDTV Monitor and HDTV
> integrated. Looking through all of these ads, the lowest price for
> an integrated set is still above $2,000. There are a few cheaper
> CRT-based sets available, but they are rarely advertised.
>
> The real question one must ask, is whether Joe Sixpack cares about
> any of this. To be certain, if NTSC is turned off, some people will
> be pissed. But the reality is that very few will bother to get a DTV
> set-top box and put up an antenna at any price, including a highly
> subsidized price.
>
> The real question we should be asking is when we will shut down TV
> broadcasting as we know it. Clearly the media - Fox news Channel
> included blew it badly with Katrina. All it takes today to make news
> is for somebody - anybody - to make a wild accusation, and the media
> will fall all over itself reporting these rumors as facts.
>
> The Police Chief of New Orleans resigned yesterday. Given the reality
> of how his organization mishandled the disaster, this seems just. But
> the media focus is on the fact that he spread lies and rumors, which
> the media then reported as news. Today in our local NYTimes paper
> there is story about all of the major misrepresentations of fact that
> the media - TV, radio, newspapers et al - spread after Katrina. I
> guess you could call this a "retraction;" one must question why it
> took a month to get the real facts out, and only then in an article
> buried on page six.
>
> Having lived through at least six hurricanes when I was growing up in
> South Florida in the '60s, I am forced to wonder how the hell we got
> through all of this without the assistance of the Federal Government.
> There were no billion dollar no-bid contracts from FEMA to help with
> clean-up. I got $2-3 an hour to help clean up the neighborhood.
> Within a day or two of the storm I would pile up huge mounds of
> debris - piles 10 feet wide and 3o feet long in front of each house.
> Like magic they would be gone in a day or two. LAst year after
> Francis I put a similar pile in front of my house in Gainesville. It
> too six weeks for the local government agencies to figure out how to
> clean it up, with assistance from FEMA.
>
> With all of those storms in the '60s - several were category 4
> storms, we never suffered any significant destruction of our homes.
> At worse I had to fix some fiberglass screens that were torn by
> flying debris. The only evacuations that took place were the folks
> with homes and apartments on the beach, who would come across the
> bridges and stay a mile away from the worst that the storms could
> dish out. I did see some cars that were sand blasted if left out near
> the beach. The reason that there was little property damage was the
> South Florida Building Code, developed in response to the
> devastations of the big storms in the '30s and '40s. Our house was
> concrete block with an 18" concrete header poured around the top with
> steel straps to hold down the roof trusses. The roof was concrete
> tiles; I think we lost two tiles in one storm when the sustained
> winds topped 160 MPH.
>
> After the intense cycle of storms in the '60s South Florida really
> started to explode, and the South Florida Building Code was abandoned
> because of the high construction costs. The destruction caused by
> Andrew came as no surprise - as the Wolf told the first two little
> pigs, I'll huff and I'll puff til I blow your house down.
>
> So many things have changed in the past fifty years. How the hell did
> we ever survive without big brother to lend a hand?
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
> Regards
> Craig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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