On Mar 7, 2006, at 10:54 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
>
> Since anybody doing Digital ATV would be using a tower for their
> antenna,
> it's sort of tangentially on topic, but what's truly sad is that
> there is
> almost ZERO amateur DTV activity in the U.S. Just try and find a
> source
> for a amateur DTV exciter. What tiny amounts of DTV activity there
> are use
> an obsolete (but cheap) satellite TV receiver using a modulation
> incompatible with the format used in the U.S. for terrestrial
> broadcasts. So we have the interesting prospect over the next few
> years of
> every TV being sold with a digital receiver, a great potential
> resource for
> amateurs, but useless because there's no amateur 8VSB transmitter
> hardware
> out there.
>
> There WAS a source for DVB-T and DVB-S gear for experimenters and
> amateurs
> in Europe, but last I checked, they had gone away.
>
> Really too bad.. But hey, NTSC analog AM ATV will just be yet another
> archaic mode preserved by amateurs as an interesting hobby and
> curiosity.
>
I suspect that when analog TV receivers are no longer being made,
some sort of cheap DTV sources will become available for monitoring
and other closed-circuit applications in response to what would seem
to be an obvious demand.
I haven't put out the big bucks for a 62 in. plasma set yet, but have
been playing around with an EyeTV 500 box connected to my Mac Mini.
It give very sharp pictures on a 20 in monitor, at least. The local
(Seattle) ABC station doesn't come in at all, although the path
appears to be pretty much line-of-sight, give or take a few trees
(other stations both lower and higher in frequency on the same hill
come in fine). The chief engineer at the station thinks that
multipath may be the problem and suggested a bow-tie plus reflector
would be a better choice than the log periodic (V) plus yagi (U) RS
antenna I currently use and I'll probably try that.
Bob, N7XY
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