[TowerTalk] HD Over-the-air TV

[Rick Karlquist]

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.

In 1996 I borrowed a DVB encoder and receiver and tried to hack it
to send my own digital video.  There was a showstopper problem having
to do with the encryption.  Even if you wanted to send video in the
clear, you still needed authorization of the receiver.  To get the
passcodes, you had to pay a big licensing fee to the holder of the
encryption technology rights.  Is there a workaround for this?

Rick N6RK