KPBS-DT reports progress on its digital television buildout, including erection of a new 150-foot tower on Mt. San Miguel and installation of HD encoders from General Instrument/Motorola. Delays in transmitter building renovation have pushed the projected DTV on-air date back to September 1, 2001.
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KPBS-DT UPDATE April 9, 2001
On Monday of last week, the new antennas for KPBS and KPBS-DT were delivered to our transmitter site on Monday of last week and Tower Structures began erecting the 150-foot tower that would support them. By Wednesday night, a new red beacon could be seen flashing brightly atop Mt. San Miguel. Engineers John Folsom and Leon Messenie documented the installation with over 275 digital images. The example attached with this report shows the tower crew tightening the bolts on the channel 15 antenna before freeing it from the crane. The shorter channel 30 KPBS-DT antenna is seen in front (more to the North) of the latter with some of its radome covers temporarily removed for handling purposes. Tower Structures will continue to hang the transmission line and place the microwave antenna mounts in strategic locations on the tower. The contract for renovation of the transmitter building was also awarded to Tower Structures. Work inside the building should begin in the next week or two, allowing for processing of the necessary paperwork. Because the start of this part of the project has been delayed so long, we have to revise our projected DTV on-air date to September 1, 2001. Last week we finally received and were able to install the SD and High Definition digital encoders from General Instrument/Motorola Broadband. Also delivered from GI was the computer and software that controls the configuration of the encoders as well as inserting the standard PSIP (Program and System Information Protocol) data tables. It's useful to note that at this time KPBS will not be able to provide the extended PSIP tables that provide more detailed descriptive information of programs going to air. The satellite IRD's from GI/Motorola also arrived last week and have been installed in their respective racks. Equipment still not delivered, but expected before the end of this month, includes two General Instrument HD decoders and the Evertz HD motion logo inserter. A representative from Harris Corporation gave a presentation here recently of the Louth station automation system recently acquired by Harris and used by many PBS stations. While the product looked promising, Engineering is continuing to research other vendors for hardware and software that will best fit KPBS needs. The budgetary figure from Harris for an automation package for KPBS was $225,000. This figure is consistent with earlier Engineering estimates for the cost of automation. Production engineer Paul Bain has been experimenting with editing in the 16 x 9 SD letterbox format and upconverting the result to the 1080i. He's also achieved success in controlling the Panasonic D5-HD machines from our Editware edit systems. This allows existing tools to be used to produce wide screen program video that can be integrated with HD program materials for air on KPBS-DT. |
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