FCC Accepting Prototype Submissions For TV Devices

Here is a good video from the Association For Maximum Service Television that shows what could happen to over the air digital TV when unlicensed devices are operating in the white spaces between channels.
»www.mstv.org/vid/static.wmv
Makes a case for the FCC denying use of white space by unlicensed devices.

Press Release:
»www.mstv.org/docs/pressr ··· 9.21.pdf
Report:
»www.mstv.org/docs/NAFreb ··· ttal.pdf

Oh Nooooooooss The sky is about to fall !

Gezzzz, try designing a tighter front end on the DTV tuners that actually reject adjacent channels. Duh !

NAB scare tactics... Again

Have you ever designed a mass market device? Manufactures are under tremendous cost pressure. Devices are designed to meet current rules/conditions with acceptable performance levels. It is not practical to add cost that does not translate to market advantage.

Adding a new emission source within these bands changes the rules. The onus should be on new players to demonstrate they do not result in unacceptable levels of interference.

A similar situation existed when DSL was introduced. Existing phone equipment was not designed to tolerate frequencies or power levels used by DSL. It is the DSL provider's responsibility to protect non-DSL devices from the new DSL signals.

/Tom

Lets see the V-chip was quoted as only costing less than $5 per set I believe. We got that shoved down our throats.

This is a non issue being called an issue by your friends and mine... The NAB protecting their turf again. Pure and simple.

Not sure I understand your example. I though the V-chip was mandated by the FCC. All manufactures have to include the stupid thing so there is no competitive advantage/disadvantage since all sets incur the added cost.

I don't disagree the NAB wants to protect its turf but if the interference problem is real it affects huge installed base of receivers. That is nothing like the V-chip. Inclusion of the V-chip had no effect on older TVs.

/tom

cool vid, would be better if Brooke Burke was on it explaining it for me.

Always the guy with the info and with proof to backup his claims. TCH IS THE MAN!

So what if there is interference. Why don't we let the infallible free market hash out a solution rather than government pronouncements from on high about who should be winners and losers. Why, in a deregulatory age, are we protecting exclusive use anyway?

If we are going to deregulate, let's deregulate. If we believe in the market, then the market will find a solution to the chaos that ensues.
You really don't have that much faith in the market do you? Just enough deregulation to reinforce incumbent power, not enough to actually unleash creative destruction.

The free market already has a solution, wired media delivery. Guess what? The interference only affects over-the-air broadcast, so there's one more reason to push IPTV and cable.

So let's see, 80 million TVs will go dark. Mine certainly will. A whole bunch of advertisers will not be happy.

Besides there's nothing good on anyway.

...and how do headends get their local signals? Yes, a lot of them (especially the satellite companies, and cable companies in larger markets) get them via fiber, but some still get them OTA.

-SC

Personally I like over-the-air delivery. We do not watch much TV other then PBS and live in a relatively rural area far off the road. I have no desire to pay the local Cableco to string cable 600 feet to our house and than pay forty or more dollars per month for the privilege of watching TV.

I agree IPTV is the long term solution but Wired and Wireless first mile Internet access performance needs to get a lot better.

/Tom

My post was meant to be half serious.

Btw my only tv is a 7" B&W portable for OTA, so I wasn't trying to be cavalier toward those receiving OTA.

Wow. I've never seen you take propaganda so unquestionably before.

MSTV is a lobbying arm for the local broadcasters. They've had this (free) spectrum to themselves and would like to keep it that way. They certainly don't want to let competing content providers use empty channels to provide WiMax service with unlicensed devices. The "engineering analysis" in their filings to the FCC is laughable, but they know the commissioners are all lawyers and figure they could snow them.

Remember adjacent channels are used on cable networks as standard practice. The FCC has well-researched rules about interference levels from adjacent channels, and are simply proposing to use the same ones for unlicensed devices.

And now here is the dirty little secret about low power unlicensed white space devices: there are already 100's of thousands of them operating in the USA. They are the wireless microphones you can by in any music store, and are used in PA and entertainment systems everywhere. Under the law, these are supposed to be licensed Part 74 Broadcast Auxiliary Stations, and only TV and motion picture producers withthe proper license are supposed to use them. But guess what? the manufacturers of these things brazenly sell them into the retail channel, where they know that Joe Consumer, e.g., the local garage band, the local church, etc. will get them, and these people have no clue that they're breaking the law by using them.

90+% of these devices are unlicensed and used without interference with TV broadcasts. Contrary to MSTV fear-mongering, the universe isn't ending as a result.

Bottom line, local TV broadcasting via high-power single-channel VHF/UHF transmitters is a dinosaur technology that very few of the population even uses. Many countries have bypassed it entirely, and just gone to broadcasting their national networks only via satellite (e.g., Free To Air (FTA) DBS), a much more efficient use of spectrum resources.

I can think of at least three reasons why those wireless microphones don't cause much of an interference problem.

1) There are are only a few hundred thousands of them rather than millions.
2) It doesn't seem real likely that someone will be using one in the same house (or even next door) at the same time as someone is watching broadcast TV.
3) Such devices might add some snow to an analog picture but it's quite rare to lose both analog picture and sound completely.

I smell FUD... No offense to TCH. I'm ranting on the vid and the .pdf's, not TCH...

Nice touch with the old lady applying "percussive maintenance" to her brand-new state-of-the-art high-definition-digital television.

Kinda like the "old" days of vacuum tubes(I've done that myself...Tap! Tap! Tap! on the chassis-It worked on my Hallicrafters SX-62a! Just don't tap too hard! Does anyone remember "hand capacitance?")I'm not as techy as others in the forum and thread, but I can recognise propaganda when I see it. If the unlicensed and the licensed are to co-exist, ads should be produced to a point wherein both sides are evenly portrayed. This vid was not...

That vid, IMHO, is an abortion just waiting to happen and serves neither "Digital Television" nor the people who will be most affected by the transition/takeover; an organization wants to maintain the "status quo," so it can make the "industry" back down/do its bidding. "Power" and "Money" attract "Lex Luthor" types...

What are you so afraid of, MSTV? Lose revenue, much? Don't be afraid... There's lots of spectrum in there... Some is not even being used at this time/place(hint, hint!-ya greedy so-and-so's)...

Greedy! Greedy!

Lobby the FCC to make it regional... "The more the money-er,"...

If you dare.

I might be living under a rock... I do not remember MSTV, but I might have been "under the weather..." or my computer was broken at that time.

Cheers, all.

The video stated *Congress may subsidise digital to analog converters*, WHY?

It was added to the law when Congress ok'd the fade out of analog broadcasts for DTV. The reasoning was that poor people couldn't afford a converter to allow their old analog TVs to receive DTV and they couldn't afford DirecTV or cable either. So they added a $ billion or so to buy them converters.

What-a country, buy fat people more TV.

MSTV represents the television broadcast industry on technical issues before the Federal Communications Commission, Congress, the Executive Branch, and other relevant government agencies.

The Association for Maximum Service Television, Inc. (MSTV) is the leading technical trade association of the television broadcasting industry.

I'm not saying they are astroturfers and I'm not saying interference isn't a potential problem, but I would be more inclined to believe a test from an independent group.

Transmitting devices that use white spaces should be licensed to local areas because white spaces vary around the country. Move such a non-interfering device less than 100 miles and it may cause interference, The fee for such a license could be nominal because it's meant mainly to keep track of the local area and maximum power. For those who insist on breaking the terms of the license, enforcement could be funded through fines.

Does anybody know of where to find these devices? Has the idea been built yet?

You mean like Cingular's "lowest dropped calls" propaganda?

New conspiracy, FCC approves this for "consumer choice". OTA broadcasts become unreliable and unusable, people are forced to goto cable or sat.

Love to see a spectrum plot of what the guy was transmitting in the video clip. Either the digital front end of the Set top box is garbage and/or the noise box has way too much out of band energy.

The US chose a crappy standard for digital TV anyway. Multipath causes digital TV to be way too unstable and there is not enough FEC to combat the problem. Wideband digital transmissions that are not highly directional are a bad idea with the current modulation standard the US has in place!

Good example of interference generating devices that are widely used, you standard GSM telephone. Just take any handheld GSM phone, place it near a TV or any device with an audio amp, place a call to it from a land line and listen to the cadence of the GSM data burst!!

jfoj

I am used to hearing licensed vs unlicensed and thinking of stuff like "this music will only play on licensed devices that work with this DRM", or of discs only playing in licensed devices(like sony rootkit).

Is that a similar thing here?

Not a stupid question at all, there are many players in the game. Creative works are protected under copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The notion of license pertains to what use the author wishes to allow.

This thread is discussing the ability to transmit a radio signal without requiring a license from the FCC. In most cases in order to transmit one needs to obtain a license from the US FCC that controls what one is and is not allowed to do. Each country has an agency responsible for licensing transmitters.

There are some frequency bands specifically set aside that allow unlicensed used. The ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) band is one example. The IEEE WiFi specification makes use of this to allow retail purchase of wireless network gear that does not need to owner to obtain a license. The manufacture needs to comply with FCC rules and regulation but the purchaser does not need to obtain a license.

The unlicensed bands have proved to be a huge success and the FCC would like to expand market for these types of services. The debate is about potential negative effect of transmitting devices that meet FCC technical requirements will have on the existing licensed services, in this case TV broadcasters.

/Tom