Those are UK Freeview tuners. Which are cheaper specifically because they do not receive HD. The US went for HD from the start, which costs more initially, but it also means that we won't have to toss out a bunch of electronics all over again to maybe get HD by 2012, like will happen in the UK. Some of us have been getting HD for over four years now.
Sure, a lot of the programming is up-converted and window-boxed (new studio equipment isn't cheap and can only be manufactured so fast, not to mention the SD reruns), but most US digital TV stations are broadcasting only an HD signal. This means that even tuners with SD-only outputs still need to receive an HD signal and down-convert the output, which does affect the price a bit. And new TV sets are required to have the digital tuner as of a year ago, so this is only temporary, and in the long run will have a minimal effect on TV prices.
Also, these are the first wave of "converter box" tuners. Before this, all the tuner boxes had HD video outputs, and cost $175 and up... if you could find them in stock. Which you couldn't, either because they couldn't manufacture enough to meet the demand, or because the big box electronics stores would rather sell satellite TV and make a few bucks off of selling new subscriptions. Though to be fair, many satellite HD receiver boxes from the past few years also contain an ATSC digital terrestrial tuner, and many of those work without a satellite subscription.
Actually, they did ban the manufacture, import or interstate shipment of analog-only TV sets a little over a year ago, which was two years before the analog broadcasting cutoff. That doesn't mean that there weren't six months or more of analog-only TV sets in the warehouses. And this also applies to VCRs, DVRs, and any other device which has an NTSC tuner, but no ATSC tuner.
Also, this only applies to sets with a tuner. Tuner-less sets (aka "monitors") are exempt.
Goodwill and oter thrift stores (and maybe even pawn shops) better hope they don't get noticed for not putting the notice on the TVs themselves. I know that Goodwill has just been sticking up the notice in a random place on the wall or something. And right now thrift stores and pawn shops are probably the main place to find analog-only TV sets. But hey, as long as they have a video input, they're still useful for video games. And they will still work with an external tuner.
On the other hand, I've gotten two satellite tuners with ATSC at thrift stores for ten bucks each. One even had a broken analog NTSC tuner, which I found amusing. Unfortunately I wasted another ten bucks because I didn't realize that the DirecTV H10 and H20 require a satellite subscription to receive ATSC. Bargain hunters, stay away from those two models!
I'm not familiar with this "Get a First Life!" case, but it sounds to me like it could be a valid parody. In that case, the "Permit and Proceed" would be even more cool because it was the exact opposite of an asshole lawsuit for something you don't have the right to sue for in the first place.
Third, I would love so hear how taking pictures of a property devalues it.
I'd like to hear it too. Because apparently Google took pictures of MY house late last year, taking a picture of my old garage door with its missing window pane, and a big pile of leaves on the driveway. If they don't read my mind and update the picture the moment I think there's a problem with it, maybe I should sue?
Here in Texas, we have a much better solution for rural places like that: GATES. If there's a gate, or even just a cattle guard, it probably isn't a public road.
4) Is her computer even capable of producing/using a sustained 40Gbits of data? Plain old 66MHz/32-bit PCI can handle a couple of gigabits, but not 40. And even if her computer could handle it, the computer on the other end would have to be able to give that much speed as well. Once you get past a gigabit or so, the actual performance isn't likely to increase for a single computer on the end of the link. These kinds of speeds are (currently) only good for connecting networks, not computers.
(And crap, the comment box for idle.slashdot.org IS small... but at least it doesn't redirect you back when you change to slashdot.org in the address bar, and you can get the regular comment box.)
I'm not saying anything about an optimal solver, just that you can't have a maximum of 19 as long as there is a known case with a minimum of 20. And that solution is 16 years old.
ATSC allows the station to "lie" about what channel you are watching. It might still be named channel 5 in the PSIP (the station ID information), but that doesn't mean that it is broadcasting on the channel 5 frequency. Most 2-6 stations will be keeping their UHF channel. What gets done about the PSIP channel numbers after the cutoff remains to be seen, but tuners could get confused if the old channel gets reused by a new station, while the old channel number is still in the first station's PSIP. (are YOU confused yet?)
I'm sure that people will need to rescan their channels multiple times next February.
If you're having trouble at 20 miles, then your problem is multipath interference. Basically, reflections of the signal off of various objects in an urban area are delayed copies of the original signal. With an analog tuner, this results in ghosting. With a digital tuner, this results in being unable to decode the digital signal. Older ATSC tuners in particular are very bad about rejecting multipath interference.
Rotating your antenna will affect your signal quality. (I have to adjust my roof antenna every two or three months because winds knock it out of position and I lose CBS.) Installing an attenuator in the signal path may result in better reception. The worst thing you can do when you are that close to the transmitter is to use an amplified antenna. The amplifier may distort the signal in a way that reduces the signal quality.
Also, your tuner should have a signal "strength" display. This is usually in fact a signal quality display. Often 75% is the threshold below which there is not enough good data for the error correction to work. If it has an audible signal meter, turn up the TV volume to where you can hear it outside while adjusting the antenna, and set it to the most finicky channel.
It is a lot easier (especially with the new digital ATSC) to detect the presence of a carrier than to get a usable signal from the carrier. The white space devices will be able to detect a carrier at least as faint as -114dBm, which is very fringe indeed. It is also likely that your deep fringe antenna will be sufficiently directional so as to avoid the low-power signal, and that ATSC reception would not be affected by interference from a non-ATSC signal.
I would also expect that there would be a way to configure consumer devices to use a different channel. (non-consumer devices would almost certainly be located in positions where they can get better reception to identify used channels) If you are that far in the fringe, there are going to be a LOT of other unused frequencies.
Your "weak but still watchable televsion 5" will disappear in 11 months anyhow, before any of this can get implemented. And since channels 2-5 are generally bad for DTV, they will probably keep their new channel, which is almost certainly UHF.
And depending on lots of factors, including antenna direction and getting a relatively recent DTV tuner, your "weak but still watchable" signal might get replaced with a crystal-clear signal. (DTV actually has more problems within 10-20 miles of the transmitter than with distant reception.)
Because I was talking about the United States, and Finland is not in the United States? Also because I was talking about absolute possible maximums, and you're only talking about actual in-practice numbers?
Maybe I'm a few versions behind, but in the Quicktime control panel, select "updates" and uncheck the box to TURN THEM OFF if you don't want automatic updates!
Oops, I forgot about the "UHF taboo" limitations of channels n+14 and n+15 (and sometimes n-7), due to the way UHF tuners usually do IF. Apparently those are still a problem with ATSC, but less so than with NTSC.
Actually it's 37 UHF channels, because channel 37 is reserved for radio astronomy. And 2-13 are still available, but 2-6 are not very good for ATSC. So that leaves 44-49 channels.
However, unlike NTSC, ATSC tolerates broadcasting on adjacent channels (other than the gaps at 4-5, 6-7, and 13-14), and is more tolerant of distant stations on the same channel, so it uses the spectrum more efficiently. In the past, you could have no more than 35 channels in any given market, and now you can have at least 40.
I got a job offer in my inbox the other day from some moron recruiter. (Apparently he is incapable of understand that there is a "macro assembler" other than IBM 370, or that "I will not relocate" in all caps is just pretty formatting.)
Some company in Ohio wants to convert their "Macro Assembler" code (hopefully 370 and not 360!) to... COBOL! Yes, in 2008. Way to be 20 years behind the times, guys! Maybe in another 10-15 years you'll discover SQL and the internet.
Re:Maybe they wrote their server in 16K!!
on
Donkey Kong and Me
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· Score: 1
The first microcomputer I used that had a hard drive was back in the early '80s. It was used to process the data for a dental lab, ran CP/M on a TRS-80 Model II and had a 5MB SASI hard drive. That hard drive was so BIG for the day that it was formatted as four partitions!
My 8 megapixel camera makes 4 megabyte JPGs for each picture it takes.
After having read everything, here's what I have to say about this all:
First off, those of you who are screaming "TEHY SOTLE TEH ARTWORKZZZZ", this was probably repaired in Mexico by people who care more about not losing their job, probably a wonderfully good (for Mexico) couple of bucks an hour, than they do about some crappy Sharpie marker art on a case.
1) The kid was wrong to expect that one contracted arm of The Beast that is Microsoft would know the details about what another contracted arm of The Beast was doing. There's a reason they tell you to keep your faceplate and hard drive when you send it back in the coffin.
2) He enclosed a tl;dr whine letter in freaking ENGLISH. No habla Ingles, gringo. And even if they did know English, these repairs are probably so assembly-lined that they wouldn't have time to read it anyhow.
3) The cleaning was apparently part of standard procedure. And lots of things will clean off Sharpie markers, especially on a hard non-porous surface. Most people who work at offices know that you can clean Sharpie markers off of whiteboards by writing over it with a whiteboard marker. The guy probably started cleaning it, then freaked out when it streaked like crazy. At that point all he could do was finish the job. And for those who say "TEH MARKZZ ARE IN TEH WRONG PLACEZ", that's because the cleaning would have been done with big wide sweeps all over the sides. And one of the side-by-side comparison pictures was comparing the wrong sides.
4) Apparently it was worth less than $270 or whatever the price of an Arcade Edition is, or the kid would have bought one and put the other on the shelf. As someone said, if you get a football autographed, you don't play football with it, and you sure don't send it in to have the laces re-tightened. And the thing wasn't even covered by warranty (2 red lights, not 3 red lights), so it wouldn't have mattered if he swapped the case with another unit.
5) And he got a freaking Xbox 360 autographed? Something where common wisdom is that the failure rate is around 30%? He might as well have had his butt autographed. And it's not like he didn't know; at least two of the signings specifically mentioned the 360's crappiness.
So what to do about it? For those of you who scream "SUE SUE SUE!", this is why we can't have nice things. A lawsuit isn't going to get the art back. Here is what he should do:
1) Get a broken Xbox 360 off of ebay or craigslist. You can't tell me there aren't any.
2) Get said broken Xbox 360 signed. They probably know about this already at Bungie and Roosterteeth, so it shouldn't be too hard to get it re-signed by them.
3) LEAVE THE BROKEN XBOX 360 BROKEN. That way you wouldn't be tempted to play it and have it break and need repairs again.
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Those are UK Freeview tuners. Which are cheaper specifically because they do not receive HD. The US went for HD from the start, which costs more initially, but it also means that we won't have to toss out a bunch of electronics all over again to maybe get HD by 2012, like will happen in the UK. Some of us have been getting HD for over four years now.
Sure, a lot of the programming is up-converted and window-boxed (new studio equipment isn't cheap and can only be manufactured so fast, not to mention the SD reruns), but most US digital TV stations are broadcasting only an HD signal. This means that even tuners with SD-only outputs still need to receive an HD signal and down-convert the output, which does affect the price a bit. And new TV sets are required to have the digital tuner as of a year ago, so this is only temporary, and in the long run will have a minimal effect on TV prices.
Also, these are the first wave of "converter box" tuners. Before this, all the tuner boxes had HD video outputs, and cost $175 and up... if you could find them in stock. Which you couldn't, either because they couldn't manufacture enough to meet the demand, or because the big box electronics stores would rather sell satellite TV and make a few bucks off of selling new subscriptions. Though to be fair, many satellite HD receiver boxes from the past few years also contain an ATSC digital terrestrial tuner, and many of those work without a satellite subscription.
Actually, they did ban the manufacture, import or interstate shipment of analog-only TV sets a little over a year ago, which was two years before the analog broadcasting cutoff. That doesn't mean that there weren't six months or more of analog-only TV sets in the warehouses. And this also applies to VCRs, DVRs, and any other device which has an NTSC tuner, but no ATSC tuner.
Also, this only applies to sets with a tuner. Tuner-less sets (aka "monitors") are exempt.
Goodwill and oter thrift stores (and maybe even pawn shops) better hope they don't get noticed for not putting the notice on the TVs themselves. I know that Goodwill has just been sticking up the notice in a random place on the wall or something. And right now thrift stores and pawn shops are probably the main place to find analog-only TV sets. But hey, as long as they have a video input, they're still useful for video games. And they will still work with an external tuner.
On the other hand, I've gotten two satellite tuners with ATSC at thrift stores for ten bucks each. One even had a broken analog NTSC tuner, which I found amusing. Unfortunately I wasted another ten bucks because I didn't realize that the DirecTV H10 and H20 require a satellite subscription to receive ATSC. Bargain hunters, stay away from those two models!
I'm not familiar with this "Get a First Life!" case, but it sounds to me like it could be a valid parody. In that case, the "Permit and Proceed" would be even more cool because it was the exact opposite of an asshole lawsuit for something you don't have the right to sue for in the first place.
I'd like to hear it too. Because apparently Google took pictures of MY house late last year, taking a picture of my old garage door with its missing window pane, and a big pile of leaves on the driveway. If they don't read my mind and update the picture the moment I think there's a problem with it, maybe I should sue?
Here in Texas, we have a much better solution for rural places like that: GATES. If there's a gate, or even just a cattle guard, it probably isn't a public road.
4) Is her computer even capable of producing/using a sustained 40Gbits of data? Plain old 66MHz/32-bit PCI can handle a couple of gigabits, but not 40. And even if her computer could handle it, the computer on the other end would have to be able to give that much speed as well. Once you get past a gigabit or so, the actual performance isn't likely to increase for a single computer on the end of the link. These kinds of speeds are (currently) only good for connecting networks, not computers.
(And crap, the comment box for idle.slashdot.org IS small... but at least it doesn't redirect you back when you change to slashdot.org in the address bar, and you can get the regular comment box.)
I'm not saying anything about an optimal solver, just that you can't have a maximum of 19 as long as there is a known case with a minimum of 20. And that solution is 16 years old.
Great. You can start by reducing Superflip to 19 moves.
ATSC allows the station to "lie" about what channel you are watching. It might still be named channel 5 in the PSIP (the station ID information), but that doesn't mean that it is broadcasting on the channel 5 frequency. Most 2-6 stations will be keeping their UHF channel. What gets done about the PSIP channel numbers after the cutoff remains to be seen, but tuners could get confused if the old channel gets reused by a new station, while the old channel number is still in the first station's PSIP. (are YOU confused yet?)
I'm sure that people will need to rescan their channels multiple times next February.
If you're having trouble at 20 miles, then your problem is multipath interference. Basically, reflections of the signal off of various objects in an urban area are delayed copies of the original signal. With an analog tuner, this results in ghosting. With a digital tuner, this results in being unable to decode the digital signal. Older ATSC tuners in particular are very bad about rejecting multipath interference.
Rotating your antenna will affect your signal quality. (I have to adjust my roof antenna every two or three months because winds knock it out of position and I lose CBS.) Installing an attenuator in the signal path may result in better reception. The worst thing you can do when you are that close to the transmitter is to use an amplified antenna. The amplifier may distort the signal in a way that reduces the signal quality.
Also, your tuner should have a signal "strength" display. This is usually in fact a signal quality display. Often 75% is the threshold below which there is not enough good data for the error correction to work. If it has an audible signal meter, turn up the TV volume to where you can hear it outside while adjusting the antenna, and set it to the most finicky channel.
It is a lot easier (especially with the new digital ATSC) to detect the presence of a carrier than to get a usable signal from the carrier. The white space devices will be able to detect a carrier at least as faint as -114dBm, which is very fringe indeed. It is also likely that your deep fringe antenna will be sufficiently directional so as to avoid the low-power signal, and that ATSC reception would not be affected by interference from a non-ATSC signal.
I would also expect that there would be a way to configure consumer devices to use a different channel. (non-consumer devices would almost certainly be located in positions where they can get better reception to identify used channels) If you are that far in the fringe, there are going to be a LOT of other unused frequencies.
Woah.
Woah.
Your "weak but still watchable televsion 5" will disappear in 11 months anyhow, before any of this can get implemented. And since channels 2-5 are generally bad for DTV, they will probably keep their new channel, which is almost certainly UHF.
And depending on lots of factors, including antenna direction and getting a relatively recent DTV tuner, your "weak but still watchable" signal might get replaced with a crystal-clear signal. (DTV actually has more problems within 10-20 miles of the transmitter than with distant reception.)
Or you might be trying to get a merit badge in nuclear physics.
Not to a Geiger counter.
It could CATch mice.
Because I was talking about the United States, and Finland is not in the United States? Also because I was talking about absolute possible maximums, and you're only talking about actual in-practice numbers?
Also facepalm.gif.
Maybe I'm a few versions behind, but in the Quicktime control panel, select "updates" and uncheck the box to TURN THEM OFF if you don't want automatic updates!
I assume you meant "sold or leased", because the EV1 was never sold. That is why GM was able to junk every last one of them.
Oops, I forgot about the "UHF taboo" limitations of channels n+14 and n+15 (and sometimes n-7), due to the way UHF tuners usually do IF. Apparently those are still a problem with ATSC, but less so than with NTSC.
Actually it's 37 UHF channels, because channel 37 is reserved for radio astronomy. And 2-13 are still available, but 2-6 are not very good for ATSC. So that leaves 44-49 channels.
However, unlike NTSC, ATSC tolerates broadcasting on adjacent channels (other than the gaps at 4-5, 6-7, and 13-14), and is more tolerant of distant stations on the same channel, so it uses the spectrum more efficiently. In the past, you could have no more than 35 channels in any given market, and now you can have at least 40.
I got a job offer in my inbox the other day from some moron recruiter. (Apparently he is incapable of understand that there is a "macro assembler" other than IBM 370, or that "I will not relocate" in all caps is just pretty formatting.)
Some company in Ohio wants to convert their "Macro Assembler" code (hopefully 370 and not 360!) to... COBOL! Yes, in 2008. Way to be 20 years behind the times, guys! Maybe in another 10-15 years you'll discover SQL and the internet.
The first microcomputer I used that had a hard drive was back in the early '80s. It was used to process the data for a dental lab, ran CP/M on a TRS-80 Model II and had a 5MB SASI hard drive. That hard drive was so BIG for the day that it was formatted as four partitions!
My 8 megapixel camera makes 4 megabyte JPGs for each picture it takes.
So you mean those guys making caffeinated soap were on to something after all?
After having read everything, here's what I have to say about this all:
First off, those of you who are screaming "TEHY SOTLE TEH ARTWORKZZZZ", this was probably repaired in Mexico by people who care more about not losing their job, probably a wonderfully good (for Mexico) couple of bucks an hour, than they do about some crappy Sharpie marker art on a case.
1) The kid was wrong to expect that one contracted arm of The Beast that is Microsoft would know the details about what another contracted arm of The Beast was doing. There's a reason they tell you to keep your faceplate and hard drive when you send it back in the coffin.
2) He enclosed a tl;dr whine letter in freaking ENGLISH. No habla Ingles, gringo. And even if they did know English, these repairs are probably so assembly-lined that they wouldn't have time to read it anyhow.
3) The cleaning was apparently part of standard procedure. And lots of things will clean off Sharpie markers, especially on a hard non-porous surface. Most people who work at offices know that you can clean Sharpie markers off of whiteboards by writing over it with a whiteboard marker. The guy probably started cleaning it, then freaked out when it streaked like crazy. At that point all he could do was finish the job. And for those who say "TEH MARKZZ ARE IN TEH WRONG PLACEZ", that's because the cleaning would have been done with big wide sweeps all over the sides. And one of the side-by-side comparison pictures was comparing the wrong sides.
4) Apparently it was worth less than $270 or whatever the price of an Arcade Edition is, or the kid would have bought one and put the other on the shelf. As someone said, if you get a football autographed, you don't play football with it, and you sure don't send it in to have the laces re-tightened. And the thing wasn't even covered by warranty (2 red lights, not 3 red lights), so it wouldn't have mattered if he swapped the case with another unit.
5) And he got a freaking Xbox 360 autographed? Something where common wisdom is that the failure rate is around 30%? He might as well have had his butt autographed. And it's not like he didn't know; at least two of the signings specifically mentioned the 360's crappiness.
So what to do about it? For those of you who scream "SUE SUE SUE!", this is why we can't have nice things. A lawsuit isn't going to get the art back. Here is what he should do:
1) Get a broken Xbox 360 off of ebay or craigslist. You can't tell me there aren't any.
2) Get said broken Xbox 360 signed. They probably know about this already at Bungie and Roosterteeth, so it shouldn't be too hard to get it re-signed by them.
3) LEAVE THE BROKEN XBOX 360 BROKEN. That way you wouldn't be tempted to play it and have it break and need repairs again.