"It seems Harris is more interested in making sure they keep the orders for their products flowing into their factory than the long term welfare of their customers."
Thursday, August 12, 1999
Nat Ostroff
Comments on the Harris Paper
By
Nat Ostroff, Vice-president, Sinclair Broadcast Goup
August 12, 1999
When the Harris paper broke into the foreground yesterday, we asked Nat Ostroff of Sinclair Broadcast Group to make some general statement followed by specific questions to those issued raised in the Harris commentary and in the trade press. --Dale Cripps, Publisher
To: Nat Ostroff
From Dale Cripps
What are your comments with regards to the following Harris statements?
"Harris said: Switching to COFDM modulation for DTV would cost many times previously estimated $50,000 per station."
Harris said: "Sinclair Broadcast demonstrations of DTV indoor reception proves nothing about indoor reception of ATSC generally because they use "selective"circumstances. Bruce Allen of Harris (formerly with Thomson Consumer Products) said those wanting to reopen DTV standard issue have "extremely high" burden of proof, and the Sinclair demonstration "falls far short of warranting the delay, disruption and confusion that would accompany reopening this debate."
Do you believe you have the "extremely high" burden of proof? Or is the use of "extremely high" an improper characterization of what is needed?
Bruce Allan was also quoted saying, "Sets used in Sinclair demonstrations were "almost laboratory toys" (were not these the same "laboratory toys" now being sold to consumers?) and predicted "vast improvements" beginning in the fall. Trade-offs between VSB and COFDM were "pretty well understood and accepted" when selection was made, he said, and, even though it makes both, Harris remains convinced that VSB is "the right system for the U.S."
Your comments please.
Dale Cripps
Mr. Nat Ostroff:
It seems Harris is more interested in making sure they keep the orders for their products flowing into their factory than the long term welfare of their customers. As a manufacturer that stands to benefit from a "land rush" of orders for new equipment it seems pretty clear that they have a short term economic benefit to protect. This paper seems to be addressed at that goal. Long after the transmitters are delivered and the bill paid we as broadcasters will have to live with the outcome. If that outcome is a less than  enthusiastic reception of DTV because the "reception" of DTV is a failure, Harris Corp will be onto other things. We are the one who will get stuck with a poor outcome. Frankly, I was surprised that Harris is foolish enough to enter this debate against the best interest of the broadcasters. Remember, it is NOT 8VSB against COFDM. It is instead the performance of 8VSB against COFDM. I would have thought that Bruce Allen would have used his connections to the CE industry to make that point on behalf of his new constituents rather than pander to his old pals at CEMA.
Now to the specific points that you have raised.
1. Transmitter cost issues: Harris has chosen to use the raw power differences that have been calculated for 8VSB vs COFDM. The number is about 3db. Since Harris did not witness the tests in Baltimore that investigated the far field performance of both system they are unaware that there seems to be little or no difference in practical terms between the two systems at the horizon when real world path conditions are involved. In short, we never found a location where 8VSB was received better than COFDM at the horizon. This seems to prove that the theoretical advantage of 8VSB vanishes under real world impairments. Thus, there is no incentive for a broadcaster to up his power to get better far field performance. Remember, in our tests both 8VSB and COFDM were run at the same average power. By the way, the peak to average power difference between the two system can be managed by current transmitter technology without a major increase in average power bills.
Another point is that reception at the fringes of the coverage area is always at the control of the viewer because he can erect a bigger antenna or, heaven forbid, add a preamp. All of the coverage calculations used to determine the FCC interference and coverage areas were done assuming that NO PREAMP was used at the fringes. Therefore the assumed 6db downlead losses built into the maps can be removed by the viewer using a preamp. This is lot far more than the difference in the power and SNR calculated between the systems. The REAL DIFFERENCE is that the viewer in the grade A will receive COFDM without doing anything special while he will be powerless to solve the reception problem if we stay with 8VSB in its current state.
2. The "selective circumstances" comment:
This is an outright lie. Yes, I am calling HARRIS a liar!! Anyone who attended the tests knows that we were open to any location. Many chose to select random locations. I reference Bruce Jacobs' post on Jan's observations of the tests as an example.
3. Burden of Proof
There is no doubt that proof is required now. Both from our point of view and from CEMA's point of view. The failure of the present generation of consumer DTV receiver puts the real burden of proof back onto the CE industry. You know the old expression, " fool me once shame on you,. Fool me twice, shame on me." We have no intention of having the wool pulled over our eyes again!!! The burden of proof now rests on the guys who fooled us the first time. That now appears to include Harris too!
4. General Comments:
Harris and its lawyers seem to think they understand the broadcast business. Let me say that they haven't a clue how we manage to pay our bills, including their invoices for expensive, non-revenue producing, DTV transmitters. The loss of easy reception in the Grade A area of our coverage cannot be tolerated. The difficulty presented by 8VSB in this generation of recievers cannot be characterized by Harris as "marginal". It is in fact significant! The Harris solution is for the viewer to "mitigate" the problem by installing an outdoor antenna. All I can say is that it is clear that the intellects at HARRIS just don't get it and may never get it! Anything that we do to make reception more difficult makes the broadcaster less of a player in this new competitive world. We simply can't afford that outcome. I don't think Harris can afford it either!!.
By the way, since when does HARRIS speak for the broadcaster?? They have the arrogance to say " so-called (in-door) "rabbit ear" type (antennas) make no sense for broadcasters, content providers, or consumers." Wow, what arrogance! I don't recall seeing any TV station that Harris owns or operates. I don't recall hearing that the officers of Harris get paid directly from the ad sales revenue from any TV station. Let them speak for their own economic interests and stop trying to speak for something they clearly don't understand.
Copyright 1999
|Home| |E-MAIL|
|
