<em>I had planned on bringing you the details of the new Mitsubishi line tonight but this story (see below) broke today and it is important enough to preempt the product discussions. I am working on an expanded version of this press release which will be posted on our site tomorrow. The reason that this story is important is not because the consumer electronics industry cannot in the end meet the demands, but that the trade offs for doing so can backfire in several ways. First, the people needing these final transition boxes may be unhappy with the performance of lower power schemes and, secondly, the clock it ticking. It is hard to redesign and bring to market in time to accommodate the February 17, 2009 deadline for bringing an end to analog broadcasting. So, tomorrow, all things willing, I will bring you both my comments and research done on this story and then a discussion of the products from Mitsubishi.</em> _Dale Cripps

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I guess they are bored with all of the rain we are getting here. All they will do is open up the door to ebay and mail order ways for getting these devices. The consumers won't care if they meet energy requirements or not and the government won't be able to stop it.
The amount of energy that they would save in a year is insignificant compared to the amount that is wasted by them concocting such laws or the analog stations all broadcasting their redundant signals.
I haven't seen the whole article, but how much energy can these things use? I know they don't exist so it isn't easy to answer, but someone must have an idea how much added energy use will exist when they are turned on in addition to the TV set.
Energy Star. Aren't they the ones that made it possible for my computer to remain partly on all the time burning up energy when I think that it is off?
Next...

Bold headline. Except these regulations have been on the books since 2004 and the latest actions on the part of the California Energy Commission that I see were to delay the effective dates by 6 months. Did the CEA just wake up from a long nap?

The article clearly wants to instill fear while being short on facts. What specific requirement is the CEA having issue with? 3 years is a looooooong time to respond to a power supply redesign issue, IME and IMO.

BTW, it's projected in a Federal study that digital STBs will account for 4% of US power consumption by 2010. That's not an insignificant number, hence the reason for power consumption standards on both the Federal and State levels.

From what I know about the issue, it has nothing to do with the tuner performance of the boxes, but rather the power used during standby mode which makes up 75% of the time the DTV adapter is plugged into the wall. Claiming it will somehow result in poorer performance is not accurate.

First, it's not unusual for some aspects of a regulation to go un-noticed for many months.

Next; 4% for all digital set top boxes (DSTB)so I assume the way it's worded that means *all* including my satellite TV receiver, cable decoder, and anything associated with the addition of HDTV. Knowing stats they are probably calling the DVR, The DVD recorder/player, and VHS recorders STBs as well. To me we need to separate out the digital to analog (D/A) converters which is what we are talking about here and I think that is going to be a small % of the STBs.

But, let's look at power. It's should be safe to assume that a simple D/A converter it going to take considerably less power than say my satellite receiver which draws a maximum of 35 watts and typically runs at half that. If the D/A converter is full featured (IOW) it downloads menus and other information as does my satellite receiver then it needs to remain on most of the time. If I leave the satellite receiver unplugged for more than a few minutes it has to reboot when it's plugged in and that can take 3 to 5 minutes.

As to that 4% power figure we need to stop and think a bit. The typically new TV draws on the order of 150 to 200 watts with the old, large CRTs drawing much more. I have some large CRT computer monitors that draw that much. So if we figure a continuous power use of say 20 watts when the peak is 35 watts and the typical TV draws 10 times that much then the TVs are going to be drawing 40% of the power off the grid plus the 4% of the STB? That seems a bit unrealistic to me.

BTW, when my computers are off they are off. Nothing is running and they take a battery to keep the BIOS settings. OTOH they are typically running 24 X 7.

Roger, I'll let you read the piece for yourself. In the first page or two they define what "STB" was for this particular study.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2004/am_stb.pdf

Without seeing more on what specifically the CEA is complaining about, it's hard to determine if the complaint has any merit or is just a veiled attempt to allow sloppy STB designs into the market. I'm all for designing more power efficient, savvy code equipped hardware. I think there is too much "throw it over the fence" mentality when it comes to what the consumer electronics manufacturers put out for product these days.

It should also be noted that countries like the UK and Australia are addressing these very same issues today. You can find some of their legislative efforts with a Google search.

A sidebar to these proposed regs, Motorola made some comments in response to solicitation for such by the Legislature and their only objection seemed to be with the wording that required testing at both 115V and 230V. Maybe they saw an unintentional requirement for dual power supplies? Later revisions of the proposal(Feb. '06) seemed to address their concerns.

I find that sorta interesting because IME Motorola is not exactly known for efficient power budgeting with their products. My Comcast box(Moto 6412) is known to have marginal cooling issues and resulting performance problems. If you design these products from the get-go with better power management and budgeting some of these problems will go away. It's that penny-wise, pound foolish thing biting them on the butt.

Bob Mankin wrote:Roger, I'll let you read the piece for yourself. In the first page or two they define what "STB" was for this particular study.

http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2004/am_stb.pdf

Without seeing more on what specifically the CEA is complaining about, it's hard to determine if the complaint has any merit or is just a veiled attempt to allow sloppy STB designs into the market. I'm all for designing more power efficient, savvy code equipped hardware. I think there is too much "throw it over the fence" mentality when it comes to what the consumer electronics manufacturers put out for product these days.

It should also be noted that countries like the UK and Australia are addressing these very same issues today. You can find some of their legislative efforts with a Google search.

Virtually all DVB-T COFDM receivers sold in the UK can meet the California energy usage requirements today. The CEA tried to sabatoge the California energy requirements in Congress in the recent hearings on the DTV transition and the need for a converter box.

The CEA attempt is not a veiled attempt, more like a blatant attack on efficiency at the bequest of some of thier members who would rather sell us junk receivers for the US junk modulation, 8-VSB.

The main cause of delay in the US digital transition is our lousy 8-VSB modulaltion. Where was the CEA when 8-VSB was being chosen and later when it was challenged as being inadequate?

The UK has now sold over 11 million enegy efficient COFDM STB's in the last three years and sales are now accelerating. In January, the slowest sales month of the year for STB's they were selling at a 70,000 a week clip. In the US that would translate to 420,000 per week or almost 22 million a year. And the UK has no mandate. UK citizens freely and enthusiastically buy COFMD receivers because they work plug and play. They are not foisted on them with a mandate that saddles 75% of the public with 8-VSB receivers they did not want and do not need.

The CEA has got it all wrong from the beginning for the US public and for their members.

I am always puzzled by those who say that COFDM is the reason other nations are doing so well in SDTV and we are doing so poorly in HDTV when our HDTV market is the most successful in the history of consumer electronics. Sure it got off to a bumpy start. While there are glitches to this very day the pain of a difficult start is well behind us. Ask the retailers. They are showing record years in video sales due entirely to H/DTV.

Your comment that the COFDM DVB-T box meets the California spec of 1 watt standby and 8 watts active is correct. It should be added that the DVB-T does not decode 19.2 Mb/s MPG 2 signals nor does it have the GEMSTAR program guide we manage in standby.

I do think that had we the luxury of 7 and 8 MHz channels the COFDM choice might have been attractive. But we operate, and were mandate to live, in a 6 MHz channel. I was there when COFDM was first brought forward at the IBC in Amsterdam and knew all of the U.S. team who were assigned the task of evaluating it. Some of those people have said in later years that given the wider bandwidth, such as in Europe, it would have been a good choice, but none have said that 8-VSB was a decidedly bad choice, though all were disappointed in the early iterations of the hardware. It has its trade offs and in the U.S. environment, where reach is a stated importance, it serves...how well…only time will tell. The micro-reflection issues are never heard of any longer, especially after the 5th gen STB. Even the most vocal anti-8-VSB spokesperson, Nat Ostroff, is no longer concerned or attacking 8-VSB, but is installing it in all of the Sinclair stations aggressively. "Get up to full power" is his latest message.

I am not here to support 8-VSB either. It never made any difference to me personally which way it went. I spent a lot of time when Ostroff raised the 8-VSB question in Baltimore. I went there and saw first hand the issue he was pointing to. I was the first to bring the story out after having diner with Ostroff at the NAB and took some serious buffeting from within the industry for “rocking the boat.” I had hundreds of web pages devoted to both sides of the story. CEA weighed in by viciously attacking Ostroff and claiming Sinclair was going broke, and, for that reason alone, was not embracing 8-VSB. But that is all history and we are now in the 5th gen of 8-VSB and there are other improvements coming. Is it perfect? Even Ostroff acknowledged that neither is COFDM, though it is a very handsome scheme.

But at this stage of the game this 8-VSB vs COFDM contest is like arguing over which side of the road we should be driving on when we have been driving on the right side in this nation going on 100 years. I know many people favor the left side of the road because they came from that heritage, but arguing about it is not going to change a damn thing. There is just no going back—there is NO WAY to drop 8-VSB -- and the best and only choice we have left in front of us is to make the very best out of it.

Any slow down in the start of the market introduction could be laid to a hundred factors including no programming and terrible retail experiences. It was also artificially pushed by the FCC. I preached loudly then that anything but a market pulling it would have a negative consequence down the line and that we should launch with more fanfare. But everyone was scared and so they crept into the market. I think we are going to experience a little consequence from that early fear and confusion as we come to the close of the transition. I think that the unexpected thing not factored in to the big picture is that people have embraced and love HDTV so much. That is what saved it—the appeal of the product. There are armies of people now who love HDTV, understand that it is a national objective, and who will lend an unpaid hand to help finish the transition, especially as we get to the very end where individual acts become the last sweep. We also have the subsidy to help, but it is quite small in reality and it will be the average people's love for HDTV and DTV that makes the big difference in the end. Oh, before you take it that I think everything has been perfect from the start and all players were saints, please correct that because I think that HDTV is a success in spite of all the human mistakes and out and out blunders made along the way. I think CEA is very "self-contained" and insulated from the real world, though I have known most of the principals there for years. I hardly think they are chief among HD villains. Gary Shapiro has taken and worn the emperor’s crown quite well but been closed fisted and hard headed in some matters. But I am glad that it was not my job to run CEA. They represent a lot of highly competitive and awesomely powerful organizations who are seldom in agreement. I really don't think CEA does very much to honor those who have been most helpful to the cause, but, then again, they started the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers as a means for recognizing and honoring the leaders from all parts of the industry, not just CE makers. The NAB, NCTA nor anyone else did that.

This CEA opposition to the California power requirement is clearly about money. There is a federal subsidy of one billion dollars, which includes $200 million in admin fees paid to NTIA. That is all that has been allocated and while a re-design of the DTA to meet the state's requirements is acknowledged to me as possible, nothing is possible without money to make such a remake happen nor without tradoffs. The GEMSTAR program guide, with grid and full two week look-ahead could be dropped since it takes more standby power for memory and updating than meets the state's standby power requirement (the 1 watt power guideline was established by President Bush, BTW). Insert PSIP instead and you have enough of a guide with lower power. Efficiencies in decoding the ATSC signal in active is another matter that is now more answered by faith than fact, but there is enough faith among the manufacturers to take up the challenge if they don’t get the regulation rescinded or back to reflect what they now have. Some of you chip designers with innovative ideas in power consumption, step up and be counted now.

As it is now the box operates at 8 Watts standby and 18 Watts active. The state of California acknowledges that these analog sets with ATD devices are likely to be turned on less than the primary viewing sets and those who rely entirely upon over-the-air use their televisions far less than those buying services from satellite or cable.

This is not true in the elderly, who only too often use television as their only companions. We can all look for ways to aid our seniors. They did not ask for DTV or HDTV or any of the hassle of getting outfitted for the turn-off and they depend on their TV for life itself. We who love H/DTV and were a part of the driving force for its realization owe it to anyone who is discomforted by our efforts to help them get hooked up to the digital service. At least there will be a better picture for them as well as added programming on the sub-channels.

This whole DTA thing is not that interesting of a business. It’s a ‘one time to market’ thing. Where is the market for the bare bones DTA after the shut off of analog? Maybe for the ICs, yes…but maybe, no. The few who have stepped up to volunteer as vendors for this one time market can draw from that subsidy in various ways, one being more development costs and fewer total boxes.

I suppose you can look at it that the few dollars per year in added power consumption is being sadly passed on to the end user of the box if it is not re-designed to meet the lower power guidelines. From purely an individual consumer’s view it is better that the box be redesigned and cost less power. But from a cultural view I am not sure that the self-interested consumer view holds the holy water. It may be that the cost of this transition, a transition which we, the public, are the chief beneficiaries, will have to be shouldered a bit more by us. I have seen nothing but vast improvements in television value since we launched this transition and we are benefiting every hour of the day and will continue literally forever. This collective benefit is growing with each new HDTV installation and is going to have, if it is not already having, a regenerative effect upon our entire society. I don't know if it is related but just yesterday there was a report saying that high paying jobs are on the rise again in the U.S. going contraty to every prediction by the pundants and politicians. I think both the money and energy to support the completion of this transition is being created from within our own society as a result of it. It is a net net gain no matter what we put into it. For that reason I ask each of you to consider what you can do to aid in the completion of the transition so that all of the benefits we can possibly gain from it are realizable.

I will do everything I can to bring you the entire story about this power issue and hope to goodness we can lend weight to the right side of the argument. As I see it today the manufacturers have a time element and somewhat of a money element in meeting expectations that were established by a presentation of the European box. I was told by a key man within CE that no matter what this power issue is not going to be a deal breaker and we will get through it one way or the other. It now seems to me that the issue is: Who is going to pay for compliance--the CE makers, the public, the government? Or, is the regulation going to be rescinded? Are the decisions going to be made in time so that the shut off date is not set back for lack of decoders in the subsidy program? (If that slippage occurs what is the danger that the entire movement gets derailed. We are still not to critical mass, though by then we should be.)

So, keep watching for my reports. I will be doing a great deal more research and talking to all those who are in the decision making side. I look for your feedback for in the end something has to happen to change minds one way or the other. I don’t know what that influence is going to be if not coming from a serious public/professional debate? _Dale

The COFDM vs. 8-VSB argument is decided and dead. Bob, I give you the persistance award, but that dog won't hunt. We won't be switching to COFDM in the US. Period. End of story.

I totally disagree with the idea of a subsidy for power supply design! If a vendor wants to compete in this space, then pony up the R&D and play the game like all the rest. Forget the gov't handout idea. Are these companies expecting handouts on the front end also planning to hand over their profits on the back end when they get to market? I'm guessing no. If you don't believe in capitalism and the inherant risk taking, then sit on the sidelines and let someone else do it! But don't sit their and whine that you can't make enough money off the deal, because I can assure you that someone else will.

We're not talking designing a space shuttle here. 3 years to get it done is plenty of time, IMO and IME. The fact that only selected vendors are complaining about the timetable should tell you something. This is not a "one time to market" thing and if they are using this excuse as justification for some subsidy, they should be slapped!! 5 years is the average useable life expectancy on electronics. Future generation product will be needed. Using taxpayer dollars to fund R&D now that the Corporation purely profits from later is flawed in so many ways it makes my blood boil. The $200 M "admin" fee is precisely the sort of welfare situation that the program was sure to start when subsidy was even brought up. Another case of the gov't doing it all wrong. If they had let the private sector figure it out, I can assure you that 50 million STB units would get someone's attention enough that a power efficient design that still made the company a profit would be forthcoming. The gov't should set the standard with reasonable input from the private sector and then GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY.

Just another demonstration of how the lobbyists manage to screw it all up and in the end the taxpayer simply pays for Corporate greed.

Here is the problem with applying free market thinking throughout this particular situation:

WHAT IF THERE IS NO MARKET?.

THAT IS WHY A SUBSIDY IS IN READINESS.

The subsidy is there as a reserve in the very likely event that there is no market demand for the products that need to be installed on existing analog sets still dependant upon over-the-air signals in order that the shut off of analog frequencies can occur without severe political "noise" or repercussion.

As far as being competitors, these companies compete all day long every day of the week with all kinds of products that we want. To label them as non-competitive seems short sighted.

The problem we anticipate is in the last phase of the transition in the form of a non-responsiveness from the poorer markets. There is a market segment of over-the-air television viewers who neither care anything about, nor do they want digital television services at any price. This segment will not, and often cannot, do anything about the transition on their own using their own very limited funds. So they will NOT demand (the first cause of a free market) any part of this final outfitting unaided.

How do you gear up a bunch of competitors for such a non lucrative market? You don’t. No one wants into it until there is at least some recovery to be anticipated. That anticipation is answered in the subsidy program. But if you think anyone is going to get rich in that market I urge you to review the facts again. It is a one-time market that is created by a specific and unrepeatable circumstance. It won’t be the basis for some new industry or sector of the market. It is purely a provisional device to outfit the last part of a market that cannot or will not outfit itself. It will be specified and managed much like any other government procurement, i.e., there will be government specs created and open bidding for their manufacturing will be posted. These devices will be specified by the NTIA. I used to be in the aerospace business and it is not at all unlike a mil spec procurement, which, for the most part, is a pain. Those most adept in dealing with complex government paperwork and certifications of products usually do the best.

Believe me when I tell you this; you cannot shut off analog services and just let the poorest of the market scream into the ears of their Congressman and make headlines in newspapers.

There are two possible scenarios to a free market approach to this particular problem:

1) Stop the transition now (it was never free market anyway). End digital terrestrial broadcasting requirements (not free market created in the first place) and return to the way things were (the free market), leaving broadcasters with no (non-free market) obligation to send out two signals (digital and analog).

That ends the return of the spectrum (because it won’t exist -- staying in analog will not liberate spectrum as will digital), that then ends the auction (which stops any new businesses that would use the liberated broadcast spectrum), and that also kills off the plan to upgrade communications for Homeland Security.

2) Help the least able part of the population secure devices that will allow for the transition to be completed without dissafection and create the money for it form the auctions and administer it all under the guidance of WE, THE PEOPLE government.

OK, make your free market choice out of those two scenarios.

A little more background: When digital was developed it allowed for a repackaging of the broadcast spectrum. Both the advent of digital broadcast technology and improved component tolerances liberated half again as much usable 700 MHz broadcast band for other uses. One use was as a temporary transition channel for broadcasters so a smooth transition could take place. Then, when the transition was completed those newly “liberated” and unused frequencies could be given back to the FCC for reassignment using the FREE MARKET way of an auction.

The free market value of the spectrum is estimated to be between $20 and $70 billion dollars (or $10 billion for you skeptics). Why is raising money out of innovation that bad? Does it put us on some sort of slippery slope where we slide off into socialism or communism if we borrow some of the funds to enable it all? I don’t see how.

The sale of the spectrum, however, is entirely dependant upon a clean cut-off of the analog channels. The market value of the spectrum is crucially dependant upon it being available in every part of the nation at the same time. That is why the universal cut off date of February 17, 2009 means so much to the future use of that spectrum. To get that universal cut off means that we have to satisfy all of the public who are directly impacted by the shut off but who still have no interest or financial ability to outfit themselves for the digital substitution.

I doubt very much if anyone coming to this web site will apply for a free box to convert their guest room TV to digital, but there are many who cannot even see-- 20 million suffer from macular degeneration--who could not possibly be interested in an improved picture but who do enjoy the company of familiar TV personalities and programs no matter how impaired their viewing of it may be. My own mother is in that category (very limited vision) and no amount of encouragement would get her to buy a digital television set, though she is financially able and she is a cable user and not impacted. Many buy their TVs from the Goodwill due to their economic standing. They are NOT what anyone would covet as a lucrative market if free market forces are to be the only dynamic. They are, however, a political grouping that reasonable people in the business understand cannot be molested by a shut-off of their TV services as a consequence of our basking in what we find as affordable benefits of digital broadcasting! We led the revolution for our own purposes and we have to be part of the finish of it to be perfect fair to all parties. Since the auction is the means for creating the money to do it (and that from other people, namely the wireless groups) it only begs our peace and nothing else.

Now, if I heard that everyone who is benefiting from the digital television revolution was "adopting" someone to help make their move in the transition then you would be the market and I would agree that those big international giants should compete for your business. But I do not hear of any such movement nor have I met anyone who would buy their grandmother a set top box if their life depended on it. So, I think this subsidy, which is paid for at considerable risk to these wireless companies, is the best alternative and there is already a fixed amount of money established by passed and signed legislation to do it. Any of the manufacturers in the world can compete for that business and the government will be the buyer as they are with ammunition and paper towels. The consumers will have to act in some small way to announce their needs.

The entire industry of manufacturers, retailers, and signal providers will be mobilizing their powers to make huge free market announcements that the shut off is coming. Those announcements will encourage everyone to do their part in making this national objective complete…but…everyone knows that some will never get the message and they must be when discovered led by the hand to make the change or we will hear them hollering later. If that doesn’t happen, however, and everyone understands it is a national objective and acts on their own, great! That would be an outstanding win win. __Dale

Bob Mankin wrote:Bold headline. Except these regulations have been on the books since 2004 and the latest actions on the part of the California Energy Commission that I see were to delay the effective dates by 6 months. Did the CEA just wake up from a long nap? ...

If you go to the following link:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/documents/2006-01-30_WORKSHOP_TRANSCRIPT.PDF

You will see a meeting taking place on Monday, January 30, 2006. The PDF file is a bit long, but if you go to page 199 and read on from there, you will see that it was a second chance to fix an impossible standard.

The estimate for the number of homes in California is 12,507,767 as of 2002. In the meeting notes the estimate was 13% of the homes use just an antenna; that comes to around 1.6 million California homes needing DTV Adapters. See:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/06000.html

Assume that the power savings is 7 watts per home, that comes to an 11.2 megawatt savings. This sounds like a big number until you consider that when ALL analog TV stations shut off their transmitters, this is going to be a lot more than 11.2 megawatts saved. Also, given that the estimated life of the adapters is about 7 years, see meeting notes, why spend all the extra money for something that won't be around that long?

Please take the time to read some of the notes from the meeting, there's a lot of complex problems created by the 8 watt on / 1 watt standby standard.

See also:


http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/documents/2006-02-10_CEA_DT_ADAPTERS.PDF

and

http://www.energy.ca.gov/appliances/documents/index.html


Bob Diaz

Good info, Bob. But personally I'll take the techie over the lobbyist when it comes to objectivity. You'll note he was fairly specific about how the stream can be demodulated and decoded with minimal parts. $24 for the BOM. That should quiet the guys insisting that these boxes are somehow expensive and complex.

The CEA guy wanted to go on and on about current STBs(where are these, btw?), and kept harping on HDTV. You can't compare the currently used STBs anymore than you can use the Pace example they cited because it's apples and oranges. Current STBs are dated technology wise and overly complex for the intended task. As the consultant noted, you pick the simplist low power single chip solution you can find to decode. In fact, given the parameters laid down, it's not that difficult to spin an existing design, bring it up to current silicon technology and reduce power consumption there even further. When there are potentially 40 or 50 million units to be produced, spending a couple of million to rework a chip is peanuts in comparison.

7 watts per household isn't exactly correct since the average TVs per household is, I believe, set at ~2.5 units. Don't hold me to that though.

No long term use for the product according to the CEA. Except the digital tuner mandate has already been botched and you can still buy analog sets today. How many 15-20 year old TV sets still in service do you know of? I know of several. The point being these converters will have longer than the short lifespan the CEA would have you believe.

The CEA literature you linked to states as a bullet:

"Industry dialog has already disproved the outdated 1W/8W"

Apparently not written by the two CEA guys who attended that meeting or perhaps their hearing is a bit selective?

Newer chip designs with equal functionaltiy can REDUCE power requriements, so what flawed logic are they using to suggest lower power requirements are outdated? Did you read within the same legislation are new, lower power requirements for all sorts of devices? So while technology marches forward on other consumer products and machinery, the CEA would have you believe high tech is going in reverse???

Sorry, not buying it. I work with EEs as a daily routine, including some working in this specific field.

Why do you think the Motorola comments I mentioned earlier had nothing directed toward the power requirements? Think they're hiding behind the CEA? Asking because I'm trying to understand who's really pushing the agenda.

EDIT: LOL, the more I read the CEA stuff, the funnier it gets. Read the bullet about 5x in the datastream for HD. And they care about HD for this adapter for what reason?? You're converting for legacy analog sets. IOW, there will be no need for a power hungry, complex decoder chip.

Test data from one retailer?? A little short on facts there. No engineering or economic reason for produing a higher power device? Oh, how about a CEA member sitting on a bunch of dated, power inefficient component inventory?? Is that a possibility?

Pretty easy to see through this stuff.

Dale, I'll make this sound more simplistic than it is, but let's assume 40-50 million of these boxes are required and there's a profit of $20 per to be made.

You still want to insist no one will step in to fill that need?

Especially since the R&D required or "barrier to entry" is minimal. All of the technology already exists, it's simply a matter of shaving the few percentage points of profit out of the design and running with it.

This perception that we're somehow re-inventing the wheel to make this thing happen is wrong, wrong, wrong. Where I get pissed is the $1 B subsidy and immediately hear that 20% is used for admin costs. That's ridiculous and the poster child for how the gov't can screw up a subsidy program. It should have been free market from the start.

I don't know who the CEA is fronting for, but I say let 'em eat cake! There are players who will step in to fill the need, one time product or not.

To Bob Mankin,

There are too many things you covered for me to address everything, so I'll just focus on the engineering details of building a low power HDTV Tuner.

First, the COFDM system used in Europe is a dual speed system. That is the HD (High Definition) image is send using a high speed data rate and a SD (Standard Definition) image is sent using a lower speed data rate. The idea behind this is, if the signal is weak or the noise level is high, it's easier to receive the signal with the lower data rate. So, viewers on the fringe of the signal could at least see a SD image.

This also makes building a converter box a lot easier. The high speed data is ignored and only the lower speed data is used. There is no need to convert from HD to SD, because the lower speed data is already in SD. The number of pixels that are required in a second are: 720h x 576v x 25 frames per second = 10.37 Mega-pixels per second.

With the US 8-VSB, there is NOT always a SD image being sent. A converter box must deal with 1 of 18 possible resolutions and frame rates. If you watch CBS, NBC, or PBS, they could be sending 1920h x 1080v x 30 frames per second = 62.2 Mega-pixels per second.

With COFDM there are less pixels to process and no conversion is required. With 8-VSB, there are a lot more pixels to process AND conversion from HD to SD is required.

With a COFDM converter, any data being processed can be performed at a lower clock rate compared to 8-VSB. The higher the clock rate, the more power a device, even a single chip device, will consume. Add to that the additional processing required for conversion from HD to SD and any EE should be able to understand that a 8-VSB converter WILL consume more power than a COFDM converter.

When the consultant used the COFDM converter as his example, he was using flawed logic. Likewise, when he pointed out that there are 8-VSB USB tuners that consume 1 to 2.5 watts, this is REALLY deceptive. The USB devices have the tuner and decoder, BUT lack the power hungry processing that follows. That processing is performed on the computer and the computer power requirement is NOT being added to the total power required.

In order to reach the $50 to $60 price point for converters, manufacturers will need to use as many single chip solutions as possible. In general, the higher the part count, the higher the price.

I really doubt that these manufacturers have some huge inventory of older outdated boxes they are going to shove on the market. First to sell them at a $50 to $60 price point would be to take a huge loss and the manufacturers swore before congress that the future converters will be around that price. Second they said in the meeting that the boxes could go as low as 15 watts, but none went under 10 watts. That sounds like they are running the prototype converters with as many single chip solutions as possible. Third, NONE of the current 8-VSB HDTV Tuners out there offer an RF output. The RF output is REQUIRED by the FCC and Congress; so, dumping old inventory is not an option for manufacturers.


In reading your comments, it appears to me that there are several things you are unaware of:

First, as of March 1, 2006, ALL TVs with screen sizes 24" and larger must have a digital tuner built into it. You will still find stores with 24" and larger TVs with an analog tuner, because retailers are allowed to sell off existing inventory.

Second, as of March 1, 2007, ALL TVs of any size must have a digital tuner.

Third, the first 4 generations of 8-VSB HDTV Tuners were pathetic as far as performance. Unless the signal was perfect or nearly perfect, the HDTV Tuner wouldn't work. NO ONE was going to commit to a single chip design with such poor performance. The fifth generation tuners finally gave the performance required, but there was a delay before this could be put into a single chip design. It is only recently that we have seen the sixth generation 8-VSB HDTV tuners using single chip designs.


The troubling part of the energy requirements is that a bad decision was made using bogus information. If you don't believe what I have written here, show this message to the EEs you work with and ask them if what I have written is correct or not. Does a faster clock speed to process more data result in a higher power draw or not? Any EE or tech knows the answer.

With an impossible requirement, expect about 15% of California homes to be left in the dark when analog TV is shut down.


Sincerely,

Bob Diaz

Bob, not sure where the idea got started that COFDM is lower power, when in fact COFDM requires MORE power to transmit equal distances when compared to 8VSB. As for the reception circuit, show me a completed circuit and let's analyze the power budget. You're making the circuitry sound MUCH more difficult that it really is in practice. Until then, we have the word of what appears to be an independant Engineer vs. a lobbyist organization. A bit of a stretch to say that's an objective discussion taking place.

The suggested end product will not be a "single chip" solution. That term is overused in this discussion. For signal integrity reasons, the tuner chip will most likely remain seperate from the decoder chip. It's not important, as it will not significantly impact the final cost.

When speculating on obsolete parts, I was referring to components, not completed units. No one in their right mind is sitting on billions of dollars in completed pre-spec hardware.

I'm well aware of the tuner phase-in. The problem is that all the way into 2007 you will still be able to purchase a brand new analog set that in two years will be need additional hardware to continue to function. This is the fault of the government for not mandating the tuner requirement further in advance of the hard date switchover to digital.

The entire COFDM argument centers around multipath rejection. That was based on the first gen tests. 8VSB has closed that gap. We have 8VSB here for the standard, so let's work towards developing it further rather than holding onto the past. That ship has sailed.

The requirement is not what I consider impossible. Apparently Motorola doesn't consider it impossible because they made no mention in their comments. It was noted early in the discussion that only a subset of vendors were complaining. That should tell you something.