Digital bullshit

[Hipupchuck]

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

 

[Jim Yanik]

Hipupchuck <hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote in
news:To2dnQuPDpD7nt3XnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@giganews.com:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

I get a lot of audio dropouts on OTA digital TV,despite a strong signal
level(>60),as indicated by the built-in meter of the converter.

It's VERY annoying.(but I DO get a nice clear picture and more channels..)

Analog degraded gradually.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

 

[Gnack Nol]

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time. I haven't had a single
digital cell phone conversation without some audio fuckups of some kind.
I can't watch a single television program or documentary without some
kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind. I listen to PBS radio a lot
and every day they have some audio or RF fuckup of some kind or some
fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind. This is digital shit is
really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or something but I don't
remember this problem in the old days with analog things.

Actually signal fading was just as common with analog but unlike digital
there was no problem with signal blackout just a little fadeing.

Digital is a fine system on a clear day with a line of sight between
reciever and transmitter. It however fails miserably under less than ideal
(normal conditions) since it has to have a miximum level and unbroken
signal.

My best wish is that Michel Powell and the network idiots that cooked up
the system should suffer complete financial failure and wind up being able
to only find work on the counter at McDonalds at minimum wage.

Sadly we are stuck with this unhappy situation.

Gnack

 

[Arfa Daily]

"Jim Yanik" <jyanik@abuse.gov> wrote in message
news:Xns9C32C0EC8134Ejyanikkuanet@74.209.136.86...

Hipupchuck <hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote in
news:To2dnQuPDpD7nt3XnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@giganews.com:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.


I get a lot of audio dropouts on OTA digital TV,despite a strong signal
level(>60),as indicated by the built-in meter of the converter.

It's VERY annoying.(but I DO get a nice clear picture and more channels..)

Analog degraded gradually.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

Unfortunately, the signal strength indicator is not the best measure of the
signal you have when dealing with digital, and if that's the only indication
that your STB gives you, then it is falling short of what it needs to tell
you, really.

In the UK, Sky satelliteTV STBs give two signal indicators for each received
transport stream. One is a plain old signal strength indicator, whilst the
other is a signal quality indicator, which assesses how much error
correction is going on. You can have quite 'weak' indication on the signal
strength bar, but a solid quality indication of 60% or more on the other
indicator, and this will give you a consistently error free picture. I have,
however, seen it the other way about with a really strong signal, and poor
quality reading, and the box having real trouble resolving a picture.

Arfa

 

[hr(bob) hofmann@att.net]

On Jun 22, 6:44 pm, "Arfa Daily" <arfa.da...@ntlworld.com> wrote:

"Jim Yanik" <jya...@abuse.gov> wrote in message

news:Xns9C32C0EC8134Ejyanikkuanet@74.209.136.86...





Hipupchuck <hipupch...@roadrunner.com> wrote in
news:To2dnQuPDpD7nt3XnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@giganews.com:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind..
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

I get a lot of audio dropouts on OTA digital TV,despite a strong signal
level(>60),as indicated by the built-in meter of the converter.

It's VERY annoying.(but I DO get a nice clear picture and more channels...)

Analog degraded gradually.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

Unfortunately, the signal strength indicator is not the best measure of the
signal you have when dealing with digital, and if that's the only indication
that your STB gives you, then it is falling short of what it needs to tell
you, really.

In the UK, Sky satelliteTV STBs give two signal indicators for each received
transport stream. One is a plain old signal strength indicator, whilst the
other is a signal quality indicator, which assesses how much error
correction is going on. You can have quite 'weak' indication on the signal
strength bar, but a solid quality indication of 60% or more on the other
indicator, and this will give you a consistently error free picture. I have,
however, seen it the other way about with a really strong signal, and poor
quality reading, and the box having real trouble resolving a picture.

Arfa- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

It is similar to the information your wireless computer connection can
give you. Strong signals with a lot of reflections is nowhere near as
good as a weaker signal without any reflections.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck
<hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

Get used to it. Digital is here to stay.

One needs to get used to both digital and analog impairment. You grew
up hearing static and noise on the radio, and watching "snow",
herringbone, and ghosts on TV. However, digital radio garble and TV
"artifacts" are new to you, and therefore you are possibly less
tolerant. I've observed the reverse in young kids. They're growing
up in a digital world and are quite accustomed to digital cell phone
garble and TV artifacts. However, even the slightest bit of audio
static, noise, and distortion or TV artifacts, will send them into
critical hysterics.

I'm not sure how you're listening to PBS, but if it's an internet
streaming audio feed, increase the size of your buffer, and you'll
hear much less stutter. I have a Roku Soundbridge for listening to
internet audio. I can cause it to stutter by downloading a large file
and consuming all my available bandwidth. I do have some bandwidth
reserved for my VoIP phone, but haven't bothered to do the same for
various streaming media IP port numbers.

If you're listening to PBS audio on a dialup connection, satellite
connection, WISP wireless connection, or one of the slower cellular
data services, it's going to stutter no matter what you do. You'll
need more speed. Also, if you're listening to PBS radio on AM stereo,
HDradio, iBiquity, iBOC, DRM, etc they have their own set of issues if
the signal to noise ratio is insufficient to maintain a reasonable
error rate.

My DirecTV dish is pointed through a rather small hole in the tree
canopy. When the wind blows, my reception falls apart. I've also had
to move the antenna a few times to compensate for tree growth. My
cellular provider (Verizon) has problems in some areas where I tend to
work. I've found that different cell phones offer radical variations
in performance and sensitivity. Try to get one that has an antenna
that you can see, not buried inside the handset.

Incidentally, I'm 61 and have worked with the technology since the
stone age. The good old days of radio and TV offered little in the
way of quality reception. I was quite happy to be able to hear a
station, and quite good at tolerating the static and noise. TV was
Iconoscope smear, Vidicon blurr, Orthicon halo, and Trinicon bloom.
The color cameras were great at mangling the colors (NTSC = never the
same color). Pick your imparement, I've seen them all. You can have
the good old daze.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[msg]

stratus46@yahoo.com wrote:

On Jun 22, 8:32 pm, "hr(bob) hofm...@att.net" <hrhofm...@att.net
wrote:

It is similar to the information your wireless computer connection
can
give you. Strong signals with a lot of reflections is nowhere near
as
good as a weaker signal without any reflections.

It would be nice if some sort of elementary spectrum analysis could be
part of the 'signal strength' readout.I suspect the coefficients in
the ghost canceling (equalizer) portion of the receiver would be much
more effective as they indicate how much correction is needed for the
RF. Having aligned antennas for DTV with a Tek spectrum analyzer, I
can tell you that less than 10dB of notching in the signal will
usually work OK even with older receivers. Shallower notches work even
better. Our Samsung DTV receiver from 2003 gives a considerably
different signal strength reading from the ATI HDTV Wonder and still
different from the Tek. The Samsung leans more toward overall level
while the ATI tends to favor flatness of the spectrum vs actual
strength. In both cases they DON'T like dynamic response changes as
they are Jurassic in the DTV world. My later Hauppauge tuner is much
more tolerant of dynamic multipath and while it doesn't show spectrum
either, it shows raw errors vs correctable errors.

G˛

Which tuner card do recommend? I would like to find one with onboard
decoding, not dependent on the host CPU, that has well written drivers
(directshow). I had no luck with the Hauppauge WinTV-HD (original) card.

Michael

 

On Jun 22, 8:32 pm, "hr(bob) hofm...@att.net" <hrhofm...@att.net>
wrote:

It is similar to the information your wireless computer connection
can
give you.  Strong signals with a lot of reflections is nowhere near
as
good as a weaker signal without any reflections.

It would be nice if some sort of elementary spectrum analysis could be
part of the 'signal strength' readout.I suspect the coefficients in
the ghost canceling (equalizer) portion of the receiver would be much
more effective as they indicate how much correction is needed for the
RF. Having aligned antennas for DTV with a Tek spectrum analyzer, I
can tell you that less than 10dB of notching in the signal will
usually work OK even with older receivers. Shallower notches work even
better. Our Samsung DTV receiver from 2003 gives a considerably
different signal strength reading from the ATI HDTV Wonder and still
different from the Tek. The Samsung leans more toward overall level
while the ATI tends to favor flatness of the spectrum vs actual
strength. In both cases they DON'T like dynamic response changes as
they are Jurassic in the DTV world. My later Hauppauge tuner is much
more tolerant of dynamic multipath and while it doesn't show spectrum
either, it shows raw errors vs correctable errors.

G˛

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:00:21 -0500, Gnack Nol
<mchozfcesujcfc@mailinator.com> wrote:

My best wish is that Michel Powell and the network idiots that cooked up
the system should suffer complete financial failure and wind up being able
to only find work on the counter at McDonalds at minimum wage.

Sadly we are stuck with this unhappy situation.

Are you refering to 8VSB versus COFDM? If yes, I agree. We should
have gone with COFDM as Europe has done:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8VSB#8VSB_vs_COFDM>

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[N_Cook]

Hipupchuck <hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote in message
news:To2dnQuPDpD7nt3XnZ2dnUVZ_tqdnZ2d@giganews.com...

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

Those engineers decades got it right, the current crop haven't a clue.
Traditional analogue propogation with progressively worse reception
picture becomes progressively more noisey
loose colour
vestigial picture looses syncs, sound quality gets worse
loose sound

For me most info is conveyed in the sound so it is in the correct position
of the list
Not these days , sound is about the first to go, who designed the crap
digital repeat / redundency codec algorythm ?


--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/

 

On Jun 22, 11:09 pm, msg <msg@_cybertheque.org_> wrote:
<snip>

Which tuner card do recommend?  I would like to find one with
onboard
decoding, not dependent on the host CPU, that has well written
drivers
(directshow).  I had no luck with the Hauppauge WinTV-HD (original)
card.

Michael

I've only tried 2 different models. The ATI HDTV Wonder of which I
have 4 - 1 on the shelf and 3 in computers though one of the PCs is
currently not in use. The other tuner is a Hauppauge "WinTV-HVR-1250
PCI Express TV hybrid tuner" running WInTV 6. I was having problems
with Fox on ch 65 in LA so the Hauppauge is connected to cable though
I did have it running on the antenna for a while. The ATIs were all in
Atlhon XP single core PCs (2 3200s and a 3000). Cruising around on the
net would cause occaisional stutters while in record. Just a simple
'record' would use 10-25% CPU time but sometimes bump up to 100 and
then the stutter. Lasr fall I got a Phenom 8650 on a Gigabyte board
which is nearly stutter-free and that's _trying_ to get it to fail by
doing audio noise reduction in Adobe Audition while recording TV. It's
pretty much do what you like without problems. I now have a Phenoom II
on another Gigabyte board which is even better.

G˛

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <Xns9C32C0EC8134Ejyanikkuanet@74.209.136.86>,
Jim Yanik <jyanik@abuse.gov> wrote:

I get a lot of audio dropouts on OTA digital TV,despite a strong signal
level(>60),as indicated by the built-in meter of the converter.

It's VERY annoying.(but I DO get a nice clear picture and more
channels..)

Can only speak for the UK, but when digital STBs came along they varied
tremendously in quality. (I can see the main London TV mast while typing
this and have a good quality outside aerial.) Not surprisingly the cheaper
ones were worst for blocking and dropouts. My main system uses a Topfield
twin tuner PVR and works perfectly - as it should at the price.

Analog degraded gradually.

Hmm. I don't want any degradation. Here we only have 5 analogue channels,
all on UHF, and the most recently started is not surprisingly CH5. Which
was squeezed into a waveband which didn't really have space for it. And
despite my perfect reception of all others, it isn't great at some times
of the year.

Of course there's a debate about the lower than ideal bitrates used on
digital - but that's another argument.

--
*Who is this General Failure chap anyway - and why is he reading my HD? *

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article <h1q2h9$rff$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
N_Cook <diverse@tcp.co.uk> wrote:

Those engineers decades got it right, the current crop haven't a clue.
Traditional analogue propogation with progressively worse reception
picture becomes progressively more noisey
loose colour
vestigial picture looses syncs, sound quality gets worse
loose sound

For me most info is conveyed in the sound so it is in the correct
position of the list Not these days , sound is about the first to go,
who designed the crap digital repeat / redundency codec algorythm ?

Strangely the first digital off air most had was NICAM on TV. And that was
designed so its carrier was more robust than the video. So you had
'perfect' sound even with a pretty well unwatchable picture.

--
*A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory *

Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

 

[b]

On 23 jun, 00:19, Hipupchuck <hipupch...@roadrunner.com> wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

on a related note, a relative bought one of those 'mini' digital set
top boxes that are really just an extended scart plug (US: AV
connector used in europe) with a plug-in IR detector to stick on the
front or top of your TV.
I have never seen such crap in all my life, even with a known good
signal there was breakup and pixellating. They must use a cheap tuner
or something. In the end I used a first generation box and all was
well!

I think the DVB spec, MHP and the compression needed to cram more
channels into existing bandwidth means that errors are more pronounced
under digital. Anything that interrupts the datastream is disasterous
for digital, whereas with analogue this just wasn't an issue.

-B

 

[Meat Plow]

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck
<hipupchuck@roadrunner.com>wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

I don't remember being able to do much with analog cell phones. I
don't remember being able to download 2 MB/s with analog cable
internet. I don't remember being able to listen to my favorite analog
radio stations while traveling.

 

[PeterD]

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck
<hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

... Maybe I'm too old or ...

You nailed it.

 

[Hipupchuck]

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck
hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

Get used to it. Digital is here to stay.

One needs to get used to both digital and analog impairment. You grew
up hearing static and noise on the radio, and watching "snow",
herringbone, and ghosts on TV. However, digital radio garble and TV
"artifacts" are new to you, and therefore you are possibly less
tolerant. I've observed the reverse in young kids. They're growing
up in a digital world and are quite accustomed to digital cell phone
garble and TV artifacts. However, even the slightest bit of audio
static, noise, and distortion or TV artifacts, will send them into
critical hysterics.

I'm not sure how you're listening to PBS, but if it's an internet
streaming audio feed, increase the size of your buffer, and you'll
hear much less stutter. I have a Roku Soundbridge for listening to
internet audio. I can cause it to stutter by downloading a large file
and consuming all my available bandwidth. I do have some bandwidth
reserved for my VoIP phone, but haven't bothered to do the same for
various streaming media IP port numbers.

If you're listening to PBS audio on a dialup connection, satellite
connection, WISP wireless connection, or one of the slower cellular
data services, it's going to stutter no matter what you do. You'll
need more speed. Also, if you're listening to PBS radio on AM stereo,
HDradio, iBiquity, iBOC, DRM, etc they have their own set of issues if
the signal to noise ratio is insufficient to maintain a reasonable
error rate.

My DirecTV dish is pointed through a rather small hole in the tree
canopy. When the wind blows, my reception falls apart. I've also had
to move the antenna a few times to compensate for tree growth. My
cellular provider (Verizon) has problems in some areas where I tend to
work. I've found that different cell phones offer radical variations
in performance and sensitivity. Try to get one that has an antenna
that you can see, not buried inside the handset.

Incidentally, I'm 61 and have worked with the technology since the
stone age. The good old days of radio and TV offered little in the
way of quality reception. I was quite happy to be able to hear a
station, and quite good at tolerating the static and noise. TV was
Iconoscope smear, Vidicon blurr, Orthicon halo, and Trinicon bloom.
The color cameras were great at mangling the colors (NTSC = never the
same color). Pick your imparement, I've seen them all. You can have
the good old daze.



On the other hand, cable had become virtually trouble free until digital

reared it's ugly head, in my area anyway.
I don't remember analog ever freezing and coming back on with minutes of
missing content.
Take a book, rip every other page out of it, then read it. You like
that? It's completely worthless to me. No point is watching at all.
If content in unimportant then the entire entertainment system in
unimportant and unnecessary.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:43:10 -0400, Hipupchuck
<hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

Thanks for ignoring literally everything I wrote.

On the other hand, cable had become virtually trouble free until digital
reared it's ugly head, in my area anyway.

On what planet do you live? In the Peoples Republic of Santa Cruz CA,
the various mutations of cable providers have done fairly well at
keeping the analog system running. I live in the trees, which have
the irritating habit of falling on the power, cable, and phone lines,
whenever the wind blows. There were plenty of incidents of ingres,
water incursion, rotten connectors, intermod, and other problems
resulting in marginal signals or worse. I didn't have cable, but did
plenty of troubleshooting for friends. Incidentally, most of the
problems I found were from customer provided wiring and distribution.
Ocassionally, there was a signal level problem, but that was rare.

I also had a chance to do a side by side comparison between analog
cable and digital satellite picture quality. Satellite was much
better looking. As simple clue is to horizontally shift the picture
until you can see the right edge of the picture. Analog was ragged
indicating jitter, which causes line misalignment, and manifests
itself as image blurrrrr. Digital was a nice straight line.

I don't remember analog ever freezing and coming back on with minutes of
missing content.

Nope. Analog didn't do that. It had a different set of picture
impairments, most of which I consider to be equally iritating, but
which I learned to tolerate over the years. As others have mentioned,
analog fails slowly and gracefully, while digital is either perfect or
awful, with nothing in between.

Take a book, rip every other page out of it, then read it. You like
that? It's completely worthless to me. No point is watching at all.
If content in unimportant then the entire entertainment system in
unimportant and unnecessary.

Content? You mean like programming that targets an intelligent
audience? Surely you jest. Whether analog or digital, todays
programming is barely worth watching. Do we really need 100 home
shopping channels and continuous infomercials? There is one
difference. In the past, the FCC limited commercials to 15 minutes
per hour. Now, it's 30 minutes, which I find oppressive.

Anyway, have someone with a clue look at your system. There's
something wrong. If the service were as bad as you suggest, the
various service providers would have an angry mob at their doorstep.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[JB]

"Jeff Liebermann" <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:ekq045dggdbmqbhcadoqddvm56ia8k8126@4ax.com...

On Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:19:15 -0400, Hipupchuck
hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

I don't think digital is ready for prime time.
I haven't had a single digital cell phone conversation without some
audio fuckups of some kind. I can't watch a single television program or
documentary without some kind of audio or video fuckup of some kind.
I listen to PBS radio a lot and every day they have some audio or RF
fuckup of some kind or some fucking emergency test fuckup of some kind.
This is digital shit is really a fucked up system. Maybe I'm too old or
something but I don't remember this problem in the old days with analog
things.

Get used to it. Digital is here to stay.

One needs to get used to both digital and analog impairment. You grew
up hearing static and noise on the radio, and watching "snow",
herringbone, and ghosts on TV. However, digital radio garble and TV
"artifacts" are new to you, and therefore you are possibly less
tolerant. I've observed the reverse in young kids. They're growing
up in a digital world and are quite accustomed to digital cell phone
garble and TV artifacts. However, even the slightest bit of audio
static, noise, and distortion or TV artifacts, will send them into
critical hysterics.

I'm not sure how you're listening to PBS, but if it's an internet
streaming audio feed, increase the size of your buffer, and you'll
hear much less stutter. I have a Roku Soundbridge for listening to
internet audio. I can cause it to stutter by downloading a large file
and consuming all my available bandwidth. I do have some bandwidth
reserved for my VoIP phone, but haven't bothered to do the same for
various streaming media IP port numbers.

If you're listening to PBS audio on a dialup connection, satellite
connection, WISP wireless connection, or one of the slower cellular
data services, it's going to stutter no matter what you do. You'll
need more speed. Also, if you're listening to PBS radio on AM stereo,
HDradio, iBiquity, iBOC, DRM, etc they have their own set of issues if
the signal to noise ratio is insufficient to maintain a reasonable
error rate.

My DirecTV dish is pointed through a rather small hole in the tree
canopy. When the wind blows, my reception falls apart. I've also had
to move the antenna a few times to compensate for tree growth. My
cellular provider (Verizon) has problems in some areas where I tend to
work. I've found that different cell phones offer radical variations
in performance and sensitivity. Try to get one that has an antenna
that you can see, not buried inside the handset.

Incidentally, I'm 61 and have worked with the technology since the
stone age. The good old days of radio and TV offered little in the
way of quality reception. I was quite happy to be able to hear a
station, and quite good at tolerating the static and noise. TV was
Iconoscope smear, Vidicon blurr, Orthicon halo, and Trinicon bloom.
The color cameras were great at mangling the colors (NTSC = never the
same color). Pick your imparement, I've seen them all. You can have
the good old daze.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

For me, the path to the local channels was excellent, so picture quality was
as good as NTSC could be. I did away with cable years ago to get closer to
the source because of quality issues. ATSC HD is nice but without some real
time signal analysis it is hard to aim the rotor for those DX stations. The
other beef is with the supposed 480i channels with annoying compression and
dithering that just don't measure up to NTSC standards. Maybe people on LSD
won't mind too much but what of the rest of us.

I guess I should go to YouTube HD. They have the entire 3 seasons of the
original Star Trek and it looks good on the big screen. Aye' Just need a we
bit more bandwidth.

 

[GregS]

In article <r5u145lecmg2oqgbr6cvvgr4b5ik7uh6kt@4ax.com>, Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

On Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:43:10 -0400, Hipupchuck
hipupchuck@roadrunner.com> wrote:

Thanks for ignoring literally everything I wrote.

On the other hand, cable had become virtually trouble free until digital
reared it's ugly head, in my area anyway.

On what planet do you live? In the Peoples Republic of Santa Cruz CA,
the various mutations of cable providers have done fairly well at
keeping the analog system running. I live in the trees, which have

Several years ago, I set up the great 36 inch CRT Toshiba in the living room.
That was great, but when I got glasses, I could not believe the reception.
It was then I became aware of some of the horrible digital signal
processing that was broadcast as analog. It was a problem
mostly on certain feeds, and especially sports on grass feeds.
The grass really looked funny. Good analog is going to look
better than highly processed digital video except for that HDTV.
Its funny the local stations, especially news feeds look just
as bad in their HDTV transmissions.

And that damm cell phone !!!!
Who is that talking ??

I still have not checked my cable. What is going to happen to the analog
cable stations. like from 2-70. ?? Are they still there.


greg