[BC] Repacking the TV band

[Tim Sawyer]

Oh too true - the Commission and this Commission's Chairman in particular
(IMHO) believes that TV broadcasters care so little about the over-the-air
product that they will downgrade the streams to two 720p steams or whatever
combination fits - giving up everything else or time-share other data rates
as programming demands dictate. The legal contracts for channel sharing are
going to make the attorneys very rich.

Only the smaller guys are going to buy into this. TV can send the HD product
to the cable companies via other methods - right? No harm there?

Nobody cares about OTA -- except my clients of course, all of whom are
upstanding broadcasters who have spent countless hours of tech time and
money to ensure that they have the best possible signal in the market,
investing in possible mobile reception streaming tests, etc.  

After all, aren't broadcasters a "take-the-money" and run group?

When the cable is out - sat links, microwave and fiber are down and the
world is coming to an end - what happens then? 

When John Q. Public need to know what's going on to protect life and
property? Smartphones users with overloaded cell phone sites? I don't think
that's a workable solution. One-to-one is NOT broadcasting.

I've said it privately and I'll state it here - beware of this Commission's
agenda - it has no love for broadcasters (IMHO) - TV is the target today -
who's next?

Personally I'd buy stock in megaphone companies and stand on the corner with
my bullhorn - oh yeah we still have radio! Or do we?

TZS (aka grumpy).

-----Original Message-----

 From: Dana Puopolo

The trouble of repacking the TV band is: It won't work!
A 6 mHz HDTV channel has 19.3 mbps of bandwidth available
SD (480p) requires 3+ mbps bandwidth
720p HDTV requires 12+ mbps bandwidth
1080i HDTV requires 15+ mbps bandwidth

Do the math: there simply isn't enough bandwidth in one HDTV channel for
even
2 720P pictures.

-D