Charles W. Rhodes

In its recent Report and Order, the FCC revealed 11 scenarios under consideration for a 600 MHz Band Plan following the spectrum auctions.

The most amazing finding from the FCC tests of converter boxes is the number of such toxic channel pairs there are.

His trouble started suddenly one evening when he discovered interference across the high VHF band that he had never had before.

Last month, this column introduced a scheme for allocating UHF band channels by analyzing a set of contiguous channels for a given community.

With the end of the FCC’s spectrum auction in January, it’s time to measure its damaging effects on broadcasters.

By now almost everyone knows the NAB has filed a lawsuit against the FCC over its spectrum auctions TV channel repack.

There are no minimum performance specs in the FCC rules, and in fact, the FCC does not have authority to set them.

Ghosts of DTV signals could easily be seen on analog TV screens, but with DTV, they are invisible on the TV screen.

Without any changes to OET-69, the commission could not take up any additional planning criteria such as interference between DTV signals having a channel relationship other that N±1 and N.

Last month we discussed the restrictions that the FCC must work under in repacking UHF broadcast spectrum.

The FCC recently released details of how it will repack remaining TV spectrum in the UHF band.

The FCC has a spectrum utilization committee, which is now studying all the test data. When they will finish these studies is not yet known.

Lagging echoes are more the serious problem

FMI now has three aspects.

Such second-order distortion products may be generated by strong local FM radio signals in the front end of DTV receivers and downconvertors.

As many DTV signals are radiated in the UHF band with more than this power, they enjoy some signal level margin within their coverage area.

Our friend reminded us that the day we came was warm and sunny, and when it rains, that channel simply vanishes.

Could an SFN support our ATSC standard, or would we have to change our DTV standard to embrace COFDM and thereby obsolete millions of receivers?

What is needed is an EAS which can alert the threatened populace while not scaring the entire nation. Our present EAS cannot do this, but a well designed Digital EAS could over our DTV channels.

The IEEE Consumer Electronics Society celebrated its 75th anniversary at the International Conference on Consumer Electronics in January, along with the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

What a DTV signal can do that an analog signal such as NTSC could not do is to awaken sleeping persons believed by the local authorities to be threatened.

Since my article in the Oct. 19, 2005 issue of TV Technology, ("Developing a 24/7 Digital EAS System"), some real progress has been made by the FCC in the matter of the Emergency Alert System.