Brad on Broadcast

The Open Video Mobile Coalition (OMVC) and Broadcast Engineering magazine today announced plans to jointly produce a one-day technical conference designed to provide television station, group and network engineers with the knowledge needed to ensure successful deployment of Mobile DTV service as part of their digital TV transmissions. more

Is your station planning to tap into the 77 million household audience by providing mobile television programming? In a press release, Anne Schelle, executive director of the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) said, “OMVC continues to track the progress made by broadcasters who are turning on mobile DTV. The numbers of broadcasters on-the-air with mobile continues to rise, with 76 stations now on the air in 32 markets … Between those stations already on-air and those who are coming soon, we project that mobile DTV will reach more than 77 million households — or more than two-thirds of all viewers in America – in the next twelve months.” more

Two recent filings with the FCC provide a glimpse into the thinking of both MVPDs and content owners with regard to how viewers want to access programming. While it’s most common for cable and satellite providers to require a set-top-box (STB) to access programming, both FOX and Disney have filed Ex Parte letters with the FCC, which indicate other devices may be supported. more

Thought not yet targeted at 3-D TV, Intel’s new 22nm transistor combines small size with a 3-D construction. Shown in a microscopic photo in Figure 1, the new transistor represents a fundamentally different construction technology for future microprocessor families: the combination of 3-D construction and extremely small 22nm design. Note especially the higher ridge cross connections. These represent the new transistor’s gate, and the device’s source and drain are on opposite sides of the gate. The new process is said to continue the pace of Moore’s Law. more

CMMB America, together with Canadian technology provider Unique Broadband Systems (UBS) and Hong Kong affiliate CMMB Vision, announced the successful demonstration of Converged Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) mobile TV signals for the first time over cellular network frequencies in a trial demonstration near Denver.

The demonstration represents the first United States-based field test for CMMB and signifies the company’s attempt to position CMMB for its commercial launch of services in the U.S. market. The company says the results validate CMMB’s ability to cohabitate with cellular technologies as well as its superior coverage over varying line of sight and non-line of sight environments. more

Last week I witnessed what amounts to the fourth ownership change for Grass Valley since its inception. Founded in 1959 by Donald Hare in Grass Valley, CA, the company merged with Tektronix in 1974, and private investor Terry Gooding purchased the Grass Valley business in 1999. He then sold it to the French company Thomson SA in 2002.

Nothing against the French, but that ownership always seemed rocky. From my discussions with many GV personnel, the relationship between American and Technicolor’s French management was often strained. I more fully recognized one key symbol of the French style of management when GV press releases began listing the value of equipment sales in euros. I asked the Americans why a sale of equipment made in Grass Valley, CA, to a broadcast network in New York would be valued in euros. The paraphrased answer was, “Because that’s what they (the French) want.” more

Are you satisfied with the price and service, called value proposition, from your cable/satellite company? According to survey after survey, probably not.

According to an October 2010 study from J. D. Power and Associates, customer satisfaction with the cost of subscription TV service averaged 541 on a 1000-point scale in 2010. That’s down 14 points since 2009. Customers of traditional cable providers are particularly dissatisfied with their cost of service. Satisfaction with fairness of prices paid among cable customers is 22 percent lower than among customers of telephone company providers (such as AT&T and Verizon) and 18 percent lower than among customers of satellite providers (such as DIRECTV and DISH). more

Scanning my daily list of RSS feeds, I spied an article titled, “Meat producers should replace cattle with insects.” Okay, I’ll bite, what’s this about?

It seems that a bunch of scientists at Wageningen University in the Netherlands (think IBC) put their heads together and discovered that insects are highly efficient in producing “meat.” I put the word meat in quotes because, as you will soon see, these scientists use the word meat differently than you or I might. more

There’s plenty of good news for broadcasters at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). No, I’m not talking about 3-D television; I’m talking about mobile TV. more

Perhaps, not surprisingly, the FCC has launched a bid to require a new universal gateway device to replace the failed CableCARD program. According to the commission, the action would encourage the adoption of broadband and develop new retail sales of set-top boxes (STBs). The program is called AllVid. more