Note that the WinTV-D card downconverts HDTV signals to standard definition. Hauppauge also makes a WinTV-HD that does display HD. (I have a WinTV-D, and I must say that standard-definition digital is a huge improvement over analog - IMHO far more of an improvement than HD digital is over SD digital.)
The WinTV-D will (probably) not work with HDTV over cable. They use different modulation protocols. Not sure about the WinTV-HD but I doubt it, you'll probably need the converter from the cable company to receive HD that way. There are other makes of digital tuner card on the market, it's possible some support cable.
If you're reasonably close to the local broadcast towers you stand a good chance of receiving their HD signals with a standard antenna. Whether it has to be aimed depends on the local terrain. AVS Forum has a section devoted to local off-air reception. You can look up the locations of your local towers on my website - feel free to email the address at the bottom of that page for more info.
The tests showing ruinous interference and used in the ARRL's formal comments to the FCC were conducted in July and August of this year. At least one of the technologies/companies that still seeks general deployment obviously hasn't licked the interference problem.
I have to grant you #10, multi-day outages of telephone service seem routine out here 30 miles from Nashville... while the electricity is rarely out for more than a few minutes. What the utilities *should* do (and a report last week which I can no longer find showed one who had) is use their existing right-of-way to run fiber.
It is interesting to note that a proposal for a new amateur radio band at 136KHz (available in many other countries) was denied by the FCC earlier this year. The Commission felt amateurs would be unable to make effective use of the band because of excessive interference from existing power-line communications at the lower frequencies. They also feared that amateur transmissions in this band would interfere with the power companies' low-frequency communications.
Yet now, the utilities feel they can use shortwave spectrum, where the lines "leak" RF even more effectively, without causing - and receiving - ruinous interference? I guess in a country full of lobbyists this makes sense...
The amateur service is not the only one affected, though we're certainly yelling the loudest. CB radio, 27MHz cordless and wireless devices, and a variety of commercial and military communications also continue to use shortwave spectrum.
Some forms of BPL are rumored to use frequencies as high as 80MHz - this would wipe out over-the-air reception of all three major TV networks at my location. Not to mention the local fire department.
I am not completely convinced the utilities actually want to provide broadband data communications. There have always been occasional problems with defective power distribution equipment causing severe interference to shortwave, but lately FCC enforcement action(here too) seems to be increasingly necessary to get stuff fixed.
I have to wonder whether what they really want is to get Part 15 regulations relaxed so they don't have to fix these problems anymore?
(there's a good technical discussion of the whole issue here.)
My concern is over what criteria will be used to flag a program as non-recordable. Will they only flag major movies and sporting events? Or will the regular sitcom and drama series be flagged as well?
(I work second shift. The only programs that are on TV while I'm home are infomercials, preachers, soaps, and Sesame Street. If I'm unable to record prime-time TV for viewing later, I might as well not have a TV. My situation is obviously by no means unique.)
The scheme used may well end up obsoleting existing ATSC receiving equipment. Studios are concerned about something called the "analog hole" - you can't record off the digital output, but there's no way to pass the Broadcast Flag to the analog outputs of the decoder. (well, there is, but existing analog recorders will ignore it) You could just record in analog - with the development of new equipment, even in high-definition analog.
Plugging the "analog hole" would require ensuring the ATSC decoder has no analog outputs. Any external connection between your decoder and your display would have to be digital, so as to preserve the Flag.
On the other hand, I have to agree with the poster who suggested obsoleting all existing decoders would probably kill the DTV transition. This will not be an easily-resolved issue.
(or will it? Just enact the a "TV Studio Protection Act" which makes it a federal felony to connect a VCR to a DTV decoder...)
Officially, KZND is a TV station, not a radio station! Ironically, it's a low-power TV station - supporters managed to get that service approved over objections. As with LPFM, most outlets are indeed national religious organizations, but there are some excellent and interesting LPTVs.
From a technical standpoint, TV sound is essentially the same thing as FM radio. (in fact, if you live in some other city that has a regular TV station on channel 6, you can hear the TV sound on 87.75 FM. Some TV stations even promote the fact.) Really the only difference is lower "peak deviation" - this means the TV sound is low in volume when listened to on a radio.
What got KZND in trouble was they were only broadcasting sound - they weren't operating the visual transmitter. My understanding is that they've begun transmitting a community-events slate or something like that on the picture transmitter, and the case is closed.
Arguably your signal can interfere with signals coming from outside the state. Imagine, for example, a 10-watt unlicensed station in Benton Harbor on 101.5 FM. This station's signal is way too weak to cause any interference to listeners in Indiana, or any other state except Michigan.
However, licensed station WNSN in South Bend, Indiana covers Benton Harbor. This station might have been able to sell advertising to Benton Harbor businesses - but it can't, because your station is clobbering WNSN's signal.
You are, in fact, interfering with interstate commerce.
It becomes somewhat less clear-cut when you consider a station in, say, Mount Pleasant where nobody can receive out-of-state stations. Who defines how far into the state out-of-state signals can be heard? (with my antenna and receiver, I could regularly hear out-of-state stations from the center of every state except Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii...)
In some ways, this is a case of government not keeping up with reality. On the other hand, it's also a case of the FM station owners enjoying signal reach that the law never entitled them to.
True enough, on both counts.
The definition of "protected contour" was set at a time when FM receivers were MUCH worse than they are today. On any decent radio (the car radios on which most listening happens) a 50dBu signal provides reliable service, but stations are only protected from interference to the 60dBu contour.
One comment suggested that FM stations increase power at night - not true. All FM stations are licensed for the same power at all times. Many AM stations change power at night. (though they usually reduce it, not increase) Certain atmospheric phenomona do cause FM signals to cover greater distances, and these phenomona do usually work better at night.
The cited 104.7 station was not in Spokane. KEEH has changed frequency to 104.9. (in any case I doubt their signal would make it across the mountains) I would bet the 104.7 was in Wenatchee. 104.9 could have been in Vancouver, Canada.
The Boston stations 0.4MHz apart are not officially in Boston - officially, there are only 12 FM stations in Boston. For example, 92.5 is officially in Haverhill while 92.9 is considered Brookline.
In this particular case I believe 92.5 is a "grandfathered" short-spaced assignment, originally authorized at much lower power and not attempting to cover Boston.
There are some (many!) "rimshotting" stations officially in outlying towns and attempting to cover large cities from the fringes. As two examples, WQZQ ("102.5 The Party") and WBUZ ("102-9 The Buzz") here in Nashville. WQZQ is officially in Dickson, with a transmitter 49km west of Nashville. WBUZ is officially in LaVergne, with a transmitter 44km southeast of Nashville. Both stations deliver a 70dBu "city-grade" signal across Nashville but only a 55dBu signal at each other's transmitter sites.
Someone mentioned stations being 0.2MHz apart. Actually, channels are 0.2MHz apart - adjacent channels cannot be used in the same area.
I have no idea what "0.5MHz bleed" is. The term appears neither in the FCC regulations nor in broadcast engineering texts. Some receivers cannot separate stations 0.4MHz apart. Others can. For example, right now I'm listening to WSRR 98.1 in Memphis, nearly 300km away, while WSIX 97.9 is pumping out 100,000 watts from a tower 50km away.
Finally, RBDS (not RDBS). In theory a station could get income by charging for text messages on RBDS decoders. I don't know of any station actually doing so.
What they do make money at is leasing other subcarriers. A FM station can carry two sub-programs along with their normal stereo audio and the RBDS subcarrier. Traditionally these sub-programs were used to deliver background music ("Muzak") though they can also carry medium-speed data up to maybe 20kb/s or so.
There are a few misconceptions in this thread, but first...
You may be interested to know there already exists a type of low-power FM radio station that may be legally operated 0.6MHz - and even 0.4MHz - from existing stations. They're called "FM translators".
As an example, there's an 80-watt translator K213CN on 90.5FM in West Memphis, Arkansas. If K213CN didn't exist, it would not be possible to create a legal LPFM station on 90.5 at its tower site. It's too close to WEVL (89.9) and WKNO (91.1) across the river in Memphis.
FM translators have NO technical differences from FM stations. The difference is simply legal: a translator must rebroadcast the programs of another station, while a station may originate its own programs.
This strikes me as a serious inconsistency in the FCC regulations. (created by chance, not really intentionally) I have considered filing a petition to close the gap...
The difference between XM and DirecTV is the bandwidth of the signal. Radio requires a relatively slow data rate - I don't know what XM uses but doubt it's more than 128KB/s. Television requires a lot more - digital terrestrial TV in the U.S. uses 19200KB/s.
A faster data rate requires a wider receiver bandwidth. That wider bandwidth admits more noise.
DirecTV uses a highly directional dish antenna. The dish receives very well in one specific direction and rather poorly in other directions. It rejects a lot of the noise, making it possible for the desired TV signal to override it. But you have to accurately aim the dish at the satellite. Easy if it's fastened to the side of your house, not so much so if it's on the roof of your car.
(that said, I read the other day where someone *is* offering dishes for mobile satelite TV reception... I suppose a pair of motors, a GPS, and a small controller would do the trick..)
Because of the much lower data rate, XM doesn't have as much of a noise problem. A non-directional antenna is able to receive enough signal to override the noise.
The FCC has changed its mind about removing the low VHF channels from TV service. (my guess is the communications interests didn't want the lower frequencies - they require larger antennas - so the FCC gave them 52-59 instead) For example, channel 6, where the San Diego Fox affiliate operates, will remain in TV service in the U.S. indefinitely.
The FCC has bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada for digital channel assignments. Canada has already assigned digital channels for all existing analog stations in the country (though only two experimental stations are operating) and there are allocations for Mexican digital operations near the border as well.
There are two phenomona which commonly cause long-distance VHF-UHF reception. One is the tropospheric ducting we're talking about here. In general, the greater the distance, the less common it is for a duct to cover that distance. KY-TX is by no means impossible, but it's relatively rare.
The other common phemonon(sp?) is sporadic-E. It happens in a higher layer of the atmosphere. There is a *minimum* distance - it varies with frequency, but for FM and TV sporadic-E signals will usually be at least 800km away and commonly closer to 1500km. KY-TX is far more likely to be sporadic-E. Especially if it happened in early summer, the peak of the E season.
WTFDA is an organization of long-distance reception fans in North America. There's some good technical information there.
Digital TV is not really spread-spectrum. There are eight carriers within a 6MHz channel. The FCC does not consider it possible to operate narrowband services within the same channel and service area as a DTV station.
Here's a more-or-less helpful paper on the modulation scheme used.
Digital stations operate on the same spectrum as analog - digital channel 20 is the same as analog channel 20.
Tropospheric ducting is as common on UHF as it is on VHF. In some places it may be less noticable because there are fewer UHF stations to receive.
The FCC did take ducting into account. (for example, UHF stations on the Gulf Coast where ducting is even more severe must be 50km further apart than those in the Midwest)
It's a statistical game though. Short ducts (100-200km) are fairly common; longer ducts much less so. Ducts have formed covering the entire East Coast from Maine to the Bahamas. If the FCC were to mandate there be no interference ever under any weather conditions, then there could only be one user of channel 20 anywhere on the East Coast.
There simply aren't that many frequencies available.
See the F(50,50) and F(50,10) charts in 47CFR73.699 of the FCC regulations. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/includes/curves.html (not strictly applicable to digital but the underlying concepts are the same)
WCVB is operating within their licensed parameters. I don't see much chance the FCC will sanction the TV station. The two-way stations will have to either live with it or switch to other bands.
(I wonder whether WCVB really is the culprit? There are analog stations on channel 20 in Waterbury, Connecticut and Washington, DC which are more powerful than WCVB-DT, and in the Connecticut case, far closer to New Jersey.)
For what it's worth: - The deleted upper channels were 70-83. Channels 52-69 will also be eventually deleted once analog television is closed down. (if?) Four of these channels will be assigned for public-safety two-way radio.
- The FCC has now decided you *can* have adjacent TV channels. After all, it works on cable. There are now stations on channels 2, 3, and 4 in Boston; a permit for a channel 3 station in Jersey City (just across from channels 2 and 4 on Manhattan); and a channel 28 broadcasting from the channel 29 tower in Philadelphia.
- When the digital conversion is complete, stations will have the option to move their digital operation to their current analog channel. WCVB could chose to move its digital operation to channel 5 once the analog transmitter there is closed.
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Note that the WinTV-D card downconverts HDTV signals to standard definition. Hauppauge also makes a WinTV-HD that does display HD. (I have a WinTV-D, and I must say that standard-definition digital is a huge improvement over analog - IMHO far more of an improvement than HD digital is over SD digital.)
The WinTV-D will (probably) not work with HDTV over cable. They use different modulation protocols. Not sure about the WinTV-HD but I doubt it, you'll probably need the converter from the cable company to receive HD that way. There are other makes of digital tuner card on the market, it's possible some support cable.
If you're reasonably close to the local broadcast towers you stand a good chance of receiving their HD signals with a standard antenna. Whether it has to be aimed depends on the local terrain. AVS Forum has a section devoted to local off-air reception. You can look up the locations of your local towers on my website - feel free to email the address at the bottom of that page for more info.
The tests showing ruinous interference and used in the ARRL's formal comments to the FCC were conducted in July and August of this year. At least one of the technologies/companies that still seeks general deployment obviously hasn't licked the interference problem.
I have to grant you #10, multi-day outages of telephone service seem routine out here 30 miles from Nashville... while the electricity is rarely out for more than a few minutes. What the utilities *should* do (and a report last week which I can no longer find showed one who had) is use their existing right-of-way to run fiber.
It is interesting to note that a proposal for a new amateur radio band at 136KHz (available in many other countries) was denied by the FCC earlier this year. The Commission felt amateurs would be unable to make effective use of the band because of excessive interference from existing power-line communications at the lower frequencies. They also feared that amateur transmissions in this band would interfere with the power companies' low-frequency communications.
Yet now, the utilities feel they can use shortwave spectrum, where the lines "leak" RF even more effectively, without causing - and receiving - ruinous interference? I guess in a country full of lobbyists this makes sense...
The amateur service is not the only one affected, though we're certainly yelling the loudest. CB radio, 27MHz cordless and wireless devices, and a variety of commercial and military communications also continue to use shortwave spectrum.
Some forms of BPL are rumored to use frequencies as high as 80MHz - this would wipe out over-the-air reception of all three major TV networks at my location. Not to mention the local fire department.
I am not completely convinced the utilities actually want to provide broadband data communications. There have always been occasional problems with defective power distribution equipment causing severe interference to shortwave, but lately FCC enforcement action (here too) seems to be increasingly necessary to get stuff fixed.
I have to wonder whether what they really want is to get Part 15 regulations relaxed so they don't have to fix these problems anymore?
(there's a good technical discussion of the whole issue here.)
My concern is over what criteria will be used to flag a program as non-recordable. Will they only flag major movies and sporting events? Or will the regular sitcom and drama series be flagged as well?
(I work second shift. The only programs that are on TV while I'm home are infomercials, preachers, soaps, and Sesame Street. If I'm unable to record prime-time TV for viewing later, I might as well not have a TV. My situation is obviously by no means unique.)
The scheme used may well end up obsoleting existing ATSC receiving equipment. Studios are concerned about something called the "analog hole" - you can't record off the digital output, but there's no way to pass the Broadcast Flag to the analog outputs of the decoder. (well, there is, but existing analog recorders will ignore it) You could just record in analog - with the development of new equipment, even in high-definition analog.
Plugging the "analog hole" would require ensuring the ATSC decoder has no analog outputs. Any external connection between your decoder and your display would have to be digital, so as to preserve the Flag.
On the other hand, I have to agree with the poster who suggested obsoleting all existing decoders would probably kill the DTV transition. This will not be an easily-resolved issue.
(or will it? Just enact the a "TV Studio Protection Act" which makes it a federal felony to connect a VCR to a DTV decoder...)
Officially, KZND is a TV station, not a radio station! Ironically, it's a low-power TV station - supporters managed to get that service approved over objections. As with LPFM, most outlets are indeed national religious organizations, but there are some excellent and interesting LPTVs.
From a technical standpoint, TV sound is essentially the same thing as FM radio. (in fact, if you live in some other city that has a regular TV station on channel 6, you can hear the TV sound on 87.75 FM. Some TV stations even promote the fact.) Really the only difference is lower "peak deviation" - this means the TV sound is low in volume when listened to on a radio.
What got KZND in trouble was they were only broadcasting sound - they weren't operating the visual transmitter. My understanding is that they've begun transmitting a community-events slate or something like that on the picture transmitter, and the case is closed.
Arguably your signal can interfere with signals coming from outside the state. Imagine, for example, a 10-watt unlicensed station in Benton Harbor on 101.5 FM. This station's signal is way too weak to cause any interference to listeners in Indiana, or any other state except Michigan.
However, licensed station WNSN in South Bend, Indiana covers Benton Harbor. This station might have been able to sell advertising to Benton Harbor businesses - but it can't, because your station is clobbering WNSN's signal.
You are, in fact, interfering with interstate commerce.
It becomes somewhat less clear-cut when you consider a station in, say, Mount Pleasant where nobody can receive out-of-state stations. Who defines how far into the state out-of-state signals can be heard? (with my antenna and receiver, I could regularly hear out-of-state stations from the center of every state except Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii...)
True enough, on both counts.
The definition of "protected contour" was set at a time when FM receivers were MUCH worse than they are today. On any decent radio (the car radios on which most listening happens) a 50dBu signal provides reliable service, but stations are only protected from interference to the 60dBu contour.
One comment suggested that FM stations increase power at night - not true. All FM stations are licensed for the same power at all times. Many AM stations change power at night. (though they usually reduce it, not increase) Certain atmospheric phenomona do cause FM signals to cover greater distances, and these phenomona do usually work better at night.
The cited 104.7 station was not in Spokane. KEEH has changed frequency to 104.9. (in any case I doubt their signal would make it across the mountains) I would bet the 104.7 was in Wenatchee. 104.9 could have been in Vancouver, Canada.
The Boston stations 0.4MHz apart are not officially in Boston - officially, there are only 12 FM stations in Boston. For example, 92.5 is officially in Haverhill while 92.9 is considered Brookline.
In this particular case I believe 92.5 is a "grandfathered" short-spaced assignment, originally authorized at much lower power and not attempting to cover Boston.
There are some (many!) "rimshotting" stations officially in outlying towns and attempting to cover large cities from the fringes. As two examples, WQZQ ("102.5 The Party") and WBUZ ("102-9 The Buzz") here in Nashville. WQZQ is officially in Dickson, with a transmitter 49km west of Nashville. WBUZ is officially in LaVergne, with a transmitter 44km southeast of Nashville. Both stations deliver a 70dBu "city-grade" signal across Nashville but only a 55dBu signal at each other's transmitter sites.
Someone mentioned stations being 0.2MHz apart. Actually, channels are 0.2MHz apart - adjacent channels cannot be used in the same area.
I have no idea what "0.5MHz bleed" is. The term appears neither in the FCC regulations nor in broadcast engineering texts. Some receivers cannot separate stations 0.4MHz apart. Others can. For example, right now I'm listening to WSRR 98.1 in Memphis, nearly 300km away, while WSIX 97.9 is pumping out 100,000 watts from a tower 50km away.
Finally, RBDS (not RDBS). In theory a station could get income by charging for text messages on RBDS decoders. I don't know of any station actually doing so.
What they do make money at is leasing other subcarriers. A FM station can carry two sub-programs along with their normal stereo audio and the RBDS subcarrier. Traditionally these sub-programs were used to deliver background music ("Muzak") though they can also carry medium-speed data up to maybe 20kb/s or so.
There are a few misconceptions in this thread, but first...
You may be interested to know there already exists a type of low-power FM radio station that may be legally operated 0.6MHz - and even 0.4MHz - from existing stations. They're called "FM translators".
As an example, there's an 80-watt translator K213CN on 90.5FM in West Memphis, Arkansas. If K213CN didn't exist, it would not be possible to create a legal LPFM station on 90.5 at its tower site. It's too close to WEVL (89.9) and WKNO (91.1) across the river in Memphis.
FM translators have NO technical differences from FM stations. The difference is simply legal: a translator must rebroadcast the programs of another station, while a station may originate its own programs.
This strikes me as a serious inconsistency in the FCC regulations. (created by chance, not really intentionally) I have considered filing a petition to close the gap...
The difference between XM and DirecTV is the bandwidth of the signal. Radio requires a relatively slow data rate - I don't know what XM uses but doubt it's more than 128KB/s. Television requires a lot more - digital terrestrial TV in the U.S. uses 19200KB/s.
A faster data rate requires a wider receiver bandwidth. That wider bandwidth admits more noise.
DirecTV uses a highly directional dish antenna. The dish receives very well in one specific direction and rather poorly in other directions. It rejects a lot of the noise, making it possible for the desired TV signal to override it. But you have to accurately aim the dish at the satellite. Easy if it's fastened to the side of your house, not so much so if it's on the roof of your car.
(that said, I read the other day where someone *is* offering dishes for mobile satelite TV reception... I suppose a pair of motors, a GPS, and a small controller would do the trick..)
Because of the much lower data rate, XM doesn't have as much of a noise problem. A non-directional antenna is able to receive enough signal to override the noise.
The FCC has changed its mind about removing the low VHF channels from TV service. (my guess is the communications interests didn't want the lower frequencies - they require larger antennas - so the FCC gave them 52-59 instead) For example, channel 6, where the San Diego Fox affiliate operates, will remain in TV service in the U.S. indefinitely.
The FCC has bilateral agreements with Mexico and Canada for digital channel assignments. Canada has already assigned digital channels for all existing analog stations in the country (though only two experimental stations are operating) and there are allocations for Mexican digital operations near the border as well.
Actually probably not (grin).
There are two phenomona which commonly cause long-distance VHF-UHF reception. One is the tropospheric ducting we're talking about here. In general, the greater the distance, the less common it is for a duct to cover that distance. KY-TX is by no means impossible, but it's relatively rare.
The other common phemonon(sp?) is sporadic-E. It happens in a higher layer of the atmosphere. There is a *minimum* distance - it varies with frequency, but for FM and TV sporadic-E signals will usually be at least 800km away and commonly closer to 1500km. KY-TX is far more likely to be sporadic-E. Especially if it happened in early summer, the peak of the E season.
WTFDA is an organization of long-distance reception fans in North America. There's some good technical information there.
(yes, I'm crying)
Digital TV is not really spread-spectrum. There are eight carriers within a 6MHz channel. The FCC does not consider it possible to operate narrowband services within the same channel and service area as a DTV station.
Here's a more-or-less helpful paper on the modulation scheme used.
Digital stations operate on the same spectrum as analog - digital channel 20 is the same as analog channel 20.
Tropospheric ducting is as common on UHF as it is on VHF. In some places it may be less noticable because there are fewer UHF stations to receive.
The FCC did take ducting into account. (for example, UHF stations on the Gulf Coast where ducting is even more severe must be 50km further apart than those in the Midwest)
It's a statistical game though. Short ducts (100-200km) are fairly common; longer ducts much less so. Ducts have formed covering the entire East Coast from Maine to the Bahamas. If the FCC were to mandate there be no interference ever under any weather conditions, then there could only be one user of channel 20 anywhere on the East Coast.
There simply aren't that many frequencies available.
See the F(50,50) and F(50,10) charts in 47CFR73.699 of the FCC regulations. http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/includes/curves.html (not strictly applicable to digital but the underlying concepts are the same)
WCVB is operating within their licensed parameters. I don't see much chance the FCC will sanction the TV station. The two-way stations will have to either live with it or switch to other bands.
(I wonder whether WCVB really is the culprit? There are analog stations on channel 20 in Waterbury, Connecticut and Washington, DC which are more powerful than WCVB-DT, and in the Connecticut case, far closer to New Jersey.)
For what it's worth:
- The deleted upper channels were 70-83. Channels 52-69 will also be eventually deleted once analog television is closed down. (if?) Four of these channels will be assigned for public-safety two-way radio.
- The FCC has now decided you *can* have adjacent TV channels. After all, it works on cable. There are now stations on channels 2, 3, and 4 in Boston; a permit for a channel 3 station in Jersey City (just across from channels 2 and 4 on Manhattan); and a channel 28 broadcasting from the channel 29 tower in Philadelphia.
- When the digital conversion is complete, stations will have the option to move their digital operation to their current analog channel. WCVB could chose to move its digital operation to channel 5 once the analog transmitter there is closed.