For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV" FCC says "What standards?" Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you. FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?" Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!" Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!" FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth." Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV?? Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!" Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it." Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built." FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it." Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?" Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!" FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that" Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!" Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
I have found that the important thing is not so much the monitor, as how your vision is corrected.
Using a good flat screen 17" CRT monitor is probably a good idea. Make sure you have good lighting in the room you are looking at the computer screen.
My keratoconus is bad enough that glasses can't fully correct my vision without giving me double vision. The general glasses I use around the house work to about 20 feet and give me a headache if I wear them for more than a coupl eof hours.
I wear Softperm (sorry I couldn't find any good links) contact lenses. They are hard lenses in the center and soft on the outside. Much easier to wear than straight hard lenses, but you get excellent vision from the the rigid center.
With my lenses on, I get 20/20 to 20/30 vision, depending on how tired my eyes are that day. IMHO, the standard toric & other soft lenses are all shit compared to these Softperms.
The main advice I would give to you is to take breaks from the computer. Ever hour or so, get up and wander around. I find it makes a big difference to take time away from the screen.
I work in one of the companies that owns a TV network.
Yes, the new standards are intended to be used by OTA local TV stations. They plan to instruct decoders to down-res any non-secure compliant setups.
So, people that watch over the air HDTV now and enjoy 1080i & 720p broadcasts, will eventually be watching 480i/p versions unless they upgrade to the new compliant hardware.
First of all, what is avertised as 'digital cable' is not HDTV. It is somethign completely different. 'digital cable' is the equivalent of DirecTV or Dish Network over a cable instead of over and satellite dish.
The HDTV signal is a very tightly compressed signal. To give you an idea, the native production format is around 1.5 GIGAHz of bandwidth. This can be squeezed down to a 19.3 MEGAbit/second signal. The 19Mbs signal can be shoved through a 6MHz pipe.
There are several pipes you can listen to at you house, each is handled differently.
Over-the-air: You need an arial antenna (rabbit ears or rooftop yaggi) to recieve the signal. Then the signal must be run through an ATSC decoder. The decoder aka settop box, decodes the MPEg and creates a HD signal that you feed into you HD montior. Care must be taken that you chose a settop box that has outputs that match the input of your monitor. ATSC decoders are $1,000 last time I checked. Could be less now. What you get -> Possibly 5-6 HDTV stations of the local area with less than 15 hours/week of actual HDTV programming.
DirecTV: You buy the special DirecTV HDTV reciever for $700 or so. Hook it up to dish antenna, plug into your HD monitor. What you get -> ONE channel of HBO movies. That's it...
Cable TV: Most cable TV systems do not retransmit the HDTV signal, you have to check with your cable provider. If they do, you will probably need settop box from the cable company that makes a signal that feeds a second ATSC decoder settop ($$), then that feeds your HD monitor. What you get -> Depending on local cable system, you may get some of the local HDTV stations.
The problem with the HDTV rollout is not FCC overregulation, it's lack of backbone.
The US public owns the airwaves and has the right to determine how they will be used. This is done by the FCC.
The FCC did two things, they mandated the channel allocations and format of TRANSMISSION only.
It was 'industry' that could not agree on a MPEG playback standard for HDTV itself. 1080i, 720p, 480p, etc. The FCC said, 'Do what ever you want for format, we'd like it if you stayed within these EIGHTEEN different formats ont he infamous Table 3, but you can do whatever you want. We are letting the market decide.'
And so, noone agreed on what to do. THe cost of production is high, the payback to broadcasters is zero, and therefore HDTV sucks.
Just as Europe is far ahead of the US in phone technology due to GSM standards, Europe is far ahead of the US in digital television due to DVB standards.
Standards aren't a bad thing. Without them, you wouldn't be reading this text.
The FCC didn't set standards and now we are in a mess. Getting out of it will be near impossible.
Time compression of spots is nothing new. Broadcasters have been doing this for several decades. Clipping out the frames of video isn't the method that had been used in the past.
The professional grade videotape decks (VTRs) have the ability to play back tapes and variable speed without affecting the video adversely. One VTR plays the tape at a slightly increased speed while the other VTR records it. Viola, a time compressed tape.
There is the issue of the change in audio pitch due to the playback speed. In some cases where the compression is limited, they simply leave the audio slightly off pitch. In the case where they really crunch the video, they need to use a pitch coverter (traditionally the Lexicon model) to fix the audio.
Broadcasters are high tech guys that have been hacked television while most computer geeks were still playing Lode Runner on their Apple ][s and Atari 800s...
No offense, Asimov is good, but I found his stuff a little 'loose'.
It seemed to take several novels to get the gist of the Foundation society and what was going on.
The authors I mention drop you 'onto the island' of their world with enough survival information to get by without turning it into a textbook. Asimov seems to drop into lecture mode quite often. It's his style, but it's not for me.
Each these writers have written about future in a way that technology improvements by 2051 won't affect the stories they tell.
Vernor Vinge's Queng Ho & Bobble universes are far removed from the day to day tehcnology issues and focus on the role of the individual in changing society in crisis.
Dan Simmons' Hyperion series is a masterful look at religion, technology, and the hubris of humanity.
Larry Niven's Known Universe is perhaps one of the most detailed and consistent future histories created in the last 50 years.
John Varley's Eight Worlds series and Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy will stand the test of time as examinations of the effects of endless plentiful society on the individual.
While I love Neal Stephenson, William Sterling, and Bruce Gibson, they work is so focused on near future (part of it's appeal!) that they will suffer as technology passes them by.
In my RL job I deal with the makers of the set-top boxes that cable companies install.
They are all building set-top boxes with PVR (personal video recorder) capability built-in. Some will roll out within six months in select areas. PVRs will be standard gear in new digital cable boxes within 18 months.
I'm not clear on the patent issues, with the interlocking mess of things between Gemstar & Tivo, but Tivo will probably start making substanital monies from the patent licensing aspect alone.
The standard 19" rack width is used accross computer, music, and broadcasting industries. You just want to make sure you are dealing with 19" rack equipment.
The place we buy from is Pacific Radio in Los Angeles. More detailed info located here on modular racks.
The main considerations will be heat disapation and cabling. Just make sure you have adequate airflow and are setting things up where you have cables running all over the place.
-----
The terrestrial broadcast will interefere with the satellite transmissions. I happen to have a large earth station with three 9 meter, a 7 meter, and a half dozen TVRO dishes. We get terrestrial interference all the time from a variety of sources. Northpoint's plan will cause nothing but trouble.
Professional broadcasters go to great lengths to ensure that they are not interfering with the frequencies of others. Coordination of these frequencies is difficult and time consuming.
Intentionally broadcasting on the same frequency is simply idiotic. Northpoint is looking for the easy way to get some spectrum and they are attempting to muscle their way into some free space.
If people want bandwidth they should look at the TV broadcasters. Currently they are each allocated TWO channels due to this insane HDTV fiasco. Settle the HDTV issues and you will have plenty of bandwidth to spare. -----
The standards are set, the FCC & Consumer Electronics Manufacturers have spoken.
They are not going to change anything. The FCC already refused to changed the VSB format to the better CODFM transmission system.
There is no way in hell they are going to change the bandwidth allocations at this point.
For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
FCC says "What standards?"
Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
I can't speak to the salary issues, but I do know that there are tax issues involved in getting paid by a company outside the US.
You need to make sure to set aside cash to pay the accountant to figure everything out.
Your best bet might be having the overseas company pay you through a US job shop. That waay the taxes/social security/etc. are taken care of in a simple way. -----
Slashdot Mirror
For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
FCC says "What standards?"
Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
I have found that the important thing is not so much the monitor, as how your vision is corrected.
Using a good flat screen 17" CRT monitor is probably a good idea. Make sure you have good lighting in the room you are looking at the computer screen.
My keratoconus is bad enough that glasses can't fully correct my vision without giving me double vision. The general glasses I use around the house work to about 20 feet and give me a headache if I wear them for more than a coupl eof hours.
I wear Softperm (sorry I couldn't find any good links) contact lenses. They are hard lenses in the center and soft on the outside. Much easier to wear than straight hard lenses, but you get excellent vision from the the rigid center.
With my lenses on, I get 20/20 to 20/30 vision, depending on how tired my eyes are that day. IMHO, the standard toric & other soft lenses are all shit compared to these Softperms.
The main advice I would give to you is to take breaks from the computer. Ever hour or so, get up and wander around. I find it makes a big difference to take time away from the screen.
But the thing that sticks in my mind was the 'F-Test'
Not truly an acronym, nevertheless the compression of Freshman Test to F-Test, bought a whole new meaning to those 8AM exams...
BTW, when we you at RPI? I was '85-'89.
I work in one of the companies that owns a TV network.
Yes, the new standards are intended to be used by OTA local TV stations. They plan to instruct decoders to down-res any non-secure compliant setups.
So, people that watch over the air HDTV now and enjoy 1080i & 720p broadcasts, will eventually be watching 480i/p versions unless they upgrade to the new compliant hardware.
Insane? Yes.
Foolhardy? Yes.
First of all, what is avertised as 'digital cable' is not HDTV. It is somethign completely different. 'digital cable' is the equivalent of DirecTV or Dish Network over a cable instead of over and satellite dish.
The HDTV signal is a very tightly compressed signal. To give you an idea, the native production format is around 1.5 GIGAHz of bandwidth. This can be squeezed down to a 19.3 MEGAbit/second signal. The 19Mbs signal can be shoved through a 6MHz pipe.
There are several pipes you can listen to at you house, each is handled differently.
Over-the-air:
You need an arial antenna (rabbit ears or rooftop yaggi) to recieve the signal. Then the signal must be run through an ATSC decoder. The decoder aka settop box, decodes the MPEg and creates a HD signal that you feed into you HD montior. Care must be taken that you chose a settop box that has outputs that match the input of your monitor. ATSC decoders are $1,000 last time I checked. Could be less now. What you get -> Possibly 5-6 HDTV stations of the local area with less than 15 hours/week of actual HDTV programming.
DirecTV:
You buy the special DirecTV HDTV reciever for $700 or so. Hook it up to dish antenna, plug into your HD monitor. What you get -> ONE channel of HBO movies. That's it...
Cable TV:
Most cable TV systems do not retransmit the HDTV signal, you have to check with your cable provider. If they do, you will probably need settop box from the cable company that makes a signal that feeds a second ATSC decoder settop ($$), then that feeds your HD monitor. What you get -> Depending on local cable system, you may get some of the local HDTV stations.
Heh, that was a while ago. Did you save it somewhere? Or is it deep in the /. archive?
I actually wrote it for my fraternity mailing list. The reference to Sun-day is an inside joke.
It pays to be a broadcast engineer in discussions like this.
The problem with the HDTV rollout is not FCC overregulation, it's lack of backbone.
The US public owns the airwaves and has the right to determine how they will be used. This is done by the FCC.
The FCC did two things, they mandated the channel allocations and format of TRANSMISSION only.
It was 'industry' that could not agree on a MPEG playback standard for HDTV itself. 1080i, 720p, 480p, etc. The FCC said, 'Do what ever you want for format, we'd like it if you stayed within these EIGHTEEN different formats ont he infamous Table 3, but you can do whatever you want. We are letting the market decide.'
And so, noone agreed on what to do. THe cost of production is high, the payback to broadcasters is zero, and therefore HDTV sucks.
Just as Europe is far ahead of the US in phone technology due to GSM standards, Europe is far ahead of the US in digital television due to DVB standards.
Standards aren't a bad thing. Without them, you wouldn't be reading this text.
The FCC didn't set standards and now we are in a mess. Getting out of it will be near impossible.
Time compression of spots is nothing new. Broadcasters have been doing this for several decades. Clipping out the frames of video isn't the method that had been used in the past.
The professional grade videotape decks (VTRs) have the ability to play back tapes and variable speed without affecting the video adversely. One VTR plays the tape at a slightly increased speed while the other VTR records it. Viola, a time compressed tape.
There is the issue of the change in audio pitch due to the playback speed. In some cases where the compression is limited, they simply leave the audio slightly off pitch. In the case where they really crunch the video, they need to use a pitch coverter (traditionally the Lexicon model) to fix the audio.
Broadcasters are high tech guys that have been hacked television while most computer geeks were still playing Lode Runner on their Apple ][s and Atari 800s...
Worst case I can use the LCD display with something else.
Does anyone have links to modify/hack information?
Pure science fiction that more of today's writers grew up reading.
Besides the Barsoom tales, there is the Pellicudar tales on Venus as well.
No offense, Asimov is good, but I found his stuff a little 'loose'.
It seemed to take several novels to get the gist of the Foundation society and what was going on.
The authors I mention drop you 'onto the island' of their world with enough survival information to get by without turning it into a textbook. Asimov seems to drop into lecture mode quite often. It's his style, but it's not for me.
Iain Banks Culture stories are fantastic!
I'd recommend Consider Phlebas to someone starting out.
Use of Weapons, Excession, and Player of Games are excellant as well.
Each these writers have written about future in a way that technology improvements by 2051 won't affect the stories they tell.
Vernor Vinge's Queng Ho & Bobble universes are far removed from the day to day tehcnology issues and focus on the role of the individual in changing society in crisis.
Dan Simmons' Hyperion series is a masterful look at religion, technology, and the hubris of humanity.
Larry Niven's Known Universe is perhaps one of the most detailed and consistent future histories created in the last 50 years.
John Varley's Eight Worlds series and Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy will stand the test of time as examinations of the effects of endless plentiful society on the individual.
While I love Neal Stephenson, William Sterling, and Bruce Gibson, they work is so focused on near future (part of it's appeal!) that they will suffer as technology passes them by.
Geez, I guess the mods are all out of good stories to mod up and Natalie Portman grits to mod down...
All modern browsers allow users to turn off cookies completely.
People all ready have the choice.
You can't legislate stupidity out of life...
Here is the Hauppauge WinTV-D (pdf) linkage.
It appears to do the same thing.
In my RL job I deal with the makers of the set-top boxes that cable companies install.
They are all building set-top boxes with PVR (personal video recorder) capability built-in. Some will roll out within six months in select areas. PVRs will be standard gear in new digital cable boxes within 18 months.
I'm not clear on the patent issues, with the interlocking mess of things between Gemstar & Tivo, but Tivo will probably start making substanital monies from the patent licensing aspect alone.
The standard 19" rack width is used accross computer, music, and broadcasting industries. You just want to make sure you are dealing with 19" rack equipment.
The place we buy from is Pacific Radio in Los Angeles. More detailed info located here on modular racks.
The main considerations will be heat disapation and cabling. Just make sure you have adequate airflow and are setting things up where you have cables running all over the place.
-----
Informative IMHO
-----
The terrestrial broadcast will interefere with the satellite transmissions. I happen to have a large earth station with three 9 meter, a 7 meter, and a half dozen TVRO dishes. We get terrestrial interference all the time from a variety of sources. Northpoint's plan will cause nothing but trouble.
Professional broadcasters go to great lengths to ensure that they are not interfering with the frequencies of others. Coordination of these frequencies is difficult and time consuming.
Intentionally broadcasting on the same frequency is simply idiotic. Northpoint is looking for the easy way to get some spectrum and they are attempting to muscle their way into some free space.
If people want bandwidth they should look at the TV broadcasters. Currently they are each allocated TWO channels due to this insane HDTV fiasco. Settle the HDTV issues and you will have plenty of bandwidth to spare.
-----
I use adsubtract on my windows box. Not only does it block the ad server requests, it blocks the cookies as well.
-----
The standards are set, the FCC & Consumer Electronics Manufacturers have spoken.
They are not going to change anything. The FCC already refused to changed the VSB format to the better CODFM transmission system.
There is no way in hell they are going to change the bandwidth allocations at this point.
For those interested in a brief history of HDTV, here it is:
Here's how it went:
Broadcast Industry asks for bandwidth for HDTV
FCC says "OK, we'll set aside bandwidth for HDTV"
FCC says "What standards?"
Industry says 'No Standards Please' and come up with EIGHTEEN recommended formats for HDTV. I am not shitting you.
FCC says "Isn't 18 different standards a bit much?"
Industry says "Shut the fuck up FCC, we know what we are doing. The 'market' will handle this!"
Consumer Electronics dudes whine "18 formats make every thing cost more, you are fucking us!"
FCC says "OK, it's your call on standards, 18 formats is fine, infact there are NO STANDARDS AT ALL, 'cause we are letting the 'market decide', but you start broadcasting HDTV now or we take back the FREE bandwidth."
Industry says "What? We really just want the free bandwidth. You really want us to do HDTV??
Congress says "Fuck you Industry. Broadcast HDTV or we'll legislate your asses back to Sun-day!"
Industry says "We're fucked. 18 formats? Why the hell did we do that? Let's change it."
Consumer Electronics dudes say "You ain't changing shit. We are already building the boxes you said you wanted built."
FCC says "Yah, ya boneheads we told you 18 was too many, now you gotta live with it."
Industry says "Well FCC, will you at least make the cable companies carry the HDTV at no charge?"
Cable companies say "Fuck you! You gotta pay! Bwah-ha-ha-ha!"
FCC says "Yep, no federal mandated on HDTV must carry, we are letting 'the market' handle that"
Industry says "We are so fucked. We are spending 5-10 million per TV station in hardware alone and have 1000 HDTV viewers per city, even in LA!"
Consumer at home says "Where is my HDTV? Why does it cost so much? Fuck it, I'm sticking with cable/DirecTV."
Consumer electronics dudes, broadcast industry, FCC, and congress all cry. Cable companies laugh and make even bigger profits.
-----
Chroma is right.
We all take the drudgery of 'file, window, and application management' as an acceptable practice.
I'm old enough to remember line based editing. At the time it didn't bother us because we knew of nothing else.
-----
I can't speak to the salary issues, but I do know that there are tax issues involved in getting paid by a company outside the US.
You need to make sure to set aside cash to pay the accountant to figure everything out.
Your best bet might be having the overseas company pay you through a US job shop. That waay the taxes/social security/etc. are taken care of in a simple way.
-----
There was an interesting Wired Magazine article that discussed the work being done by Paper Computer to make cheap flat computers.
There was a Slashdot article about these guys over a year ago.
-----