If you ever have the chance to hear Will Shortz speak in person, it is well worth it. If you have an interest in word puzzles, cross or otherwise, he is very interesting. Plus, he will usually play a game with the audience for a good amount of time.
I got all excited when I read the headline that I would soon be able to have my very own miniatureNew York City Subway car and Long Island Rail Road car. Thus being able take out any commuting frustrations in the comfort and safety of my home.:)
Statistics on telecommunications technology are kept by the World Bank.
The highlight of the statistics for the US is that there are about 660 telephone lines per 1,000 people. There are about 2,100 radios per 1,000 people. That means the average person has two radios to listen to, but only 60% of the people have a telephone line. Now, if you adust from people to households, it gets a bit more optimistic. Only about half of people have Internet access. Radio is one of those "lifeline services" in telecommuncations policy buzzspeak.
Start looking at countries other than the U.S., the numbers get worse.
My friends and I always joked about doing something like this when we were in college. Of course we were brainstorming before wireless networking really emerged so we came up with some interesting ideas. Like stringing an Ethernet cable across the street, using power from a lamp post to power a repeater. Or a really expensive satellite hop to make it a few blocks away. Or maybe something with lasers...
We never actually tried anything since we figured the school wouldn't appreciate it. Just goes to show the benefits of going to a school like MIT instead of a liberal arts school.
> Okay. I used to work in a TV station. [snip happens] > The average VTR in a TV station is in the range of $10,000.
More like $50k these days for a Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, Betacam IMX, D2 or whatever VTR.
> Interestingly, there's one video format that you can take anywhere in the world, and any TV station > or production house can use it: 3/4". Razor sharp analog pictures, very little generational loss, good > and fast tape speed.
Actually, 3/4" has a lot of the same problems VHS does. Both use a "color under" subcarrier system for modulating the NTSC color. Over the air NTSC modulates the main luminance carrier and then at a higher frequency modulates the color subcarrier. VHS and Umatic modulate the color subcarrier at a lower frequency than the main carrier. This even more severely bandwidth limits the color signal than is normal in NTSC.
There are quite a few other reasons to avoid 3/4". Any copy from VHS to analog tape format is going to give an immediately more significant generational loss than a digital encoding. Sony Umatic decks have a number mechanical problems that are only exacerbated by their age now. It's getting more and more difficult to find parts and qualified service personnel for Umatic desks these days. Not to mention that they are physically large VTRs and tapes. That poses a storage problem for the average home user.
This isn't really anything new. The first successor to long copper lines in the US were microwave links. Plenty of other developing nations have been using wireless links to reach far flung small villages for a while now. One of the big examples of this has been
Chile.It is especially useful in mountainous areas. In rough terrain it becomes cheaper to put up two expensive microwave towers that it is to pay for the labor of stringing copper or fiber.
Re:Uh, yeah....
on
Open Source TV
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Well as any mass media theorist will tell you, any news/information/education program has an inherent bias. Doesn't matter what the producer says, some sort of bias creeps in when they have to make decisions just related to keeping to the alloted time for the program. So by giving you the uncut material, they eliminate some of the bias. There will still be bias remaining from the fact that the producers had limited resources in gathering the original material.
I can see DVHS being handy for TV stations replacing Beta, but not much else.
Heck no. Maybe a small market station or cable local orginator that is using SVHS might use it. But this is designed as a consumer format. Its got copy protection built into it and broacasters need to be able to look at things and copy things pursuant to constantly changing agreements.
Not to mention that its recording a highly compressed bitstream. Broadcasters tolerate some compression but not much before it hits the transmission point. It would go through too many decompress/compress cycles of a lossy algorithm before you ever see it at home. And that wouldn't be good at all.
Michael
--
The opinions above are mine. All mine! Bwuahahahahaah!
Per household reached, its always cheaper for a wireless solution than a wireline system. Of course that return doesn't start happening until you've got quite a few people buying your service.
It costs on average about $1000-$5000 per home passed by cable. So you can start out building your network small. Or you can spend several hundred thousand dollars to over a million to build a TV station and reach a whole city.
Michael -- The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
No more big name telemarketers calling us. But the carpet cleaner/realtor/widget dealer around the corner keeps calling. Even informed them that they were violating state law and they didn't seem to care. I once almost made a professional telemarketer cry with threats of legal action when she kept on going with her script.
The best "general" cookbook I've found is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.
I'm losing faith in the venerable Minimalist. His Tandori Chicken recipe in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner calls for juice a whole lime and some corriander. Only thing is he only tells you where to put half the lime juice and never tells you what to do with the corriander. So much for one recipe a week equaling perfection.
He still comes up with some of the best fast and simple meals though.
Advertisers. They pay for their commercials to be seen by a certain number of eyeballs that meet certain criteria. If that doesn't happen, then they don't pay. If the advertisers don't pay then the program service isn't gonna pay for the the program. There is (usually) nothing in ad purchase agreement that gives an escape for a good show. It can be the Best Darned Show Ever but no advertiser will care if their commercial isn't being seen by the right people.
--
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any one else. Other standard disclaimers apply.
> the worst sin of Nicktoons is the 'splitting' of episodes
This is called "repurposing." Expect to see lots more of it with all these new-fangled technologies emerging. Keep in mind the kiddies usually don't mind seeing this stuff over and over and over again. How many parents have had to "lose" their kids Raffi CDs?:)
> Worse than that, they tend to start shows early and end them late
Cable programmers have been doing this for a long time. Ted Turner was the first. It gets you to start watching before any other show is on and when you try and flip to another channel, they are showing commercials so you come back to the show your started with.
--
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any one else. Other standard disclaimers apply.
Working for a television program service provider, I can tell you that StorageTek silos are quite bad when it comes to the abuse of the many mounts and rewinds that occur when you read the video off a tape repeatedly. In fact, we are trying to get rid of our StorageTek right now. Those small little tapes jam, break or have the oxide wear down pretty quickly.
We've become quite partial to Ampex DST libraries. The only problem I can see so far with them is the easiest expansion method is to attach cabinets in a straight line. Of course they can get pricey, but deliver reliable reads and writes. The tapes they use are a 3/4" and based on the transport of time-tested digital video tape recorders.
The one other big warning I'll give is to choose your archive managment/robot control software carefully. Some of the software out there claims to do a lot, but it comes to real world situations, do silly things like try and put tapes into a storage bin that already has a tape in it. It's the software that's holding us up from replacing our StorageTek with an Ampex DST.
--
Standard disclaimers apply. All opinions are my own.
Slashdot Mirror
Does it come in goldenrod?
Ikegami has a smallish multi-format camera, the HDL-240C.
I might have some prior art in my basement that pre-dates that. It's called a shoebox with pictures in the order they were taken.
> this past weekend, Will Shortz mentioned
If you ever have the chance to hear Will Shortz speak in person, it is well worth it. If you have an interest in word puzzles, cross or otherwise, he is very interesting. Plus, he will usually play a game with the audience for a good amount of time.
I got all excited when I read the headline that I would soon be able to have my very own miniature New York City Subway car and Long Island Rail Road car. Thus being able take out any commuting frustrations in the comfort and safety of my home. :)
Statistics on telecommunications technology are kept by the World Bank.
The highlight of the statistics for the US is that there are about 660 telephone lines per 1,000 people. There are about 2,100 radios per 1,000 people. That means the average person has two radios to listen to, but only 60% of the people have a telephone line. Now, if you adust from people to households, it gets a bit more optimistic. Only about half of people have Internet access. Radio is one of those "lifeline services" in telecommuncations policy buzzspeak.
Start looking at countries other than the U.S., the numbers get worse.
My friends and I always joked about doing something like this when we were in college. Of course we were brainstorming before wireless networking really emerged so we came up with some interesting ideas. Like stringing an Ethernet cable across the street, using power from a lamp post to power a repeater. Or a really expensive satellite hop to make it a few blocks away. Or maybe something with lasers...
We never actually tried anything since we figured the school wouldn't appreciate it. Just goes to show the benefits of going to a school like MIT instead of a liberal arts school.
Sorry, I already patented that stress relief method. I'd be more than happy to discussion licensing terms. ;)
> Okay. I used to work in a TV station.
[snip happens]
> The average VTR in a TV station is in the range of $10,000.
More like $50k these days for a Betacam SP, Digital Betacam, Betacam IMX, D2 or whatever VTR.
> Interestingly, there's one video format that you can take anywhere in the world, and any TV station
> or production house can use it: 3/4". Razor sharp analog pictures, very little generational loss, good
> and fast tape speed.
Actually, 3/4" has a lot of the same problems VHS does. Both use a "color under" subcarrier system for modulating the NTSC color. Over the air NTSC modulates the main luminance carrier and then at a higher frequency modulates the color subcarrier. VHS and Umatic modulate the color subcarrier at a lower frequency than the main carrier. This even more severely bandwidth limits the color signal than is normal in NTSC.
There are quite a few other reasons to avoid 3/4". Any copy from VHS to analog tape format is going to give an immediately more significant generational loss than a digital encoding. Sony Umatic decks have a number mechanical problems that are only exacerbated by their age now. It's getting more and more difficult to find parts and qualified service personnel for Umatic desks these days. Not to mention that they are physically large VTRs and tapes. That poses a storage problem for the average home user.
This isn't really anything new. The first successor to long copper lines in the US were microwave links. Plenty of other developing nations have been using wireless links to reach far flung small villages for a while now. One of the big examples of this has been Chile.It is especially useful in mountainous areas. In rough terrain it becomes cheaper to put up two expensive microwave towers that it is to pay for the labor of stringing copper or fiber.
Well as any mass media theorist will tell you, any news/information/education program has an inherent bias. Doesn't matter what the producer says, some sort of bias creeps in when they have to make decisions just related to keeping to the alloted time for the program. So by giving you the uncut material, they eliminate some of the bias. There will still be bias remaining from the fact that the producers had limited resources in gathering the original material.
I can see DVHS being handy for TV stations replacing Beta, but not much else.
Heck no. Maybe a small market station or cable local orginator that is using SVHS might use it. But this is designed as a consumer format. Its got copy protection built into it and broacasters need to be able to look at things and copy things pursuant to constantly changing agreements.
Not to mention that its recording a highly compressed bitstream. Broadcasters tolerate some compression but not much before it hits the transmission point. It would go through too many decompress/compress cycles of a lossy algorithm before you ever see it at home. And that wouldn't be good at all.
Michael
--
The opinions above are mine. All mine! Bwuahahahahaah!
Per household reached, its always cheaper for a wireless solution than a wireline system. Of course that return doesn't start happening until you've got quite a few people buying your service.
It costs on average about $1000-$5000 per home passed by cable. So you can start out building your network small. Or you can spend several hundred thousand dollars to over a million to build a TV station and reach a whole city.
Michael
--
The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
No more big name telemarketers calling us. But the carpet cleaner/realtor/widget dealer around the corner keeps calling. Even informed them that they were violating state law and they didn't seem to care. I once almost made a professional telemarketer cry with threats of legal action when she kept on going with her script.
The best "general" cookbook I've found is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman.
I'm losing faith in the venerable Minimalist. His Tandori Chicken recipe in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner calls for juice a whole lime and some corriander. Only thing is he only tells you where to put half the lime juice and never tells you what to do with the corriander. So much for one recipe a week equaling perfection.
He still comes up with some of the best fast and simple meals though.
> So. Who buys the ratings bullshit?
Advertisers. They pay for their commercials to be seen by a certain number of eyeballs that meet certain criteria. If that doesn't happen, then they don't pay. If the advertisers don't pay then the program service isn't gonna pay for the the program. There is (usually) nothing in ad purchase agreement that gives an escape for a good show. It can be the Best Darned Show Ever but no advertiser will care if their commercial isn't being seen by the right people.
--
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any one else. Other standard disclaimers apply.
Quick lesson in the TV biz...
:)
> the worst sin of Nicktoons is the 'splitting' of episodes
This is called "repurposing." Expect to see lots more of it with all these new-fangled technologies emerging. Keep in mind the kiddies usually don't mind seeing this stuff over and over and over again. How many parents have had to "lose" their kids Raffi CDs?
> Worse than that, they tend to start shows early and end them late
Cable programmers have been doing this for a long time. Ted Turner was the first. It gets you to start watching before any other show is on and when you try and flip to another channel, they are showing commercials so you come back to the show your started with.
--
The opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily represent those of any one else. Other standard disclaimers apply.
Working for a television program service provider, I can tell you that StorageTek silos are quite bad when it comes to the abuse of the many mounts and rewinds that occur when you read the video off a tape repeatedly. In fact, we are trying to get rid of our StorageTek right now. Those small little tapes jam, break or have the oxide wear down pretty quickly.
We've become quite partial to Ampex DST libraries. The only problem I can see so far with them is the easiest expansion method is to attach cabinets in a straight line. Of course they can get pricey, but deliver reliable reads and writes. The tapes they use are a 3/4" and based on the transport of time-tested digital video tape recorders.
The one other big warning I'll give is to choose your archive managment/robot control software carefully. Some of the software out there claims to do a lot, but it comes to real world situations, do silly things like try and put tapes into a storage bin that already has a tape in it. It's the software that's holding us up from replacing our StorageTek with an Ampex DST.
--
Standard disclaimers apply. All opinions are my own.