A few comments.
Gordon Smith writes:
> Any of Ethernet, USB or over the air. There are data channels
> transmitted as part of every multiplex service which carry all sorts of
> information and network service data. The BBC, for instance, transmits
> firmware patches for quite a range of popular makes and models of service
> receivers including Sony, Samgsung, Panasonic and lots more. Digital
> radio and TV services over here in the UK are far more than what we see
> and hear.
Such is true, here both over the air and on cable. Most
Americans get their TV via cable or satellite and only around
10% or so receive over the air signals.
There is no hard connection now between tv channel
numbers and their actual frequencies. When the United States
began the digital transition around 1995, every analog TV
transmitter on VHF and UHF was duplicated by a digital allocation
wherever it could be found. Channel 4 in Oklahoma City had
occupied 66-72 MHZ which is Channel 4 in the Americas since
1949. Their digital channel is 27. In june of 2009, they flipped
the big power switch to off on Channel 4 forever and kept their
digital channel on UHF. They still call it Channel 4, though,
and viewers see Channel 4.1, 4.2 and others when they connect to
an antenna and scan their televisions. Each transmitter simply
sends out packets every so often identifying what base channel
the viewer will know it by. The viewer is unaware of this magic
and he or she just presses 4.1 or 8.2 on their remote and it all
works. I doubt that it is any different in the UK but different
television systems will use all that digital capability in
different ways.
Back to the video recorder, you say,
> Not currently. This machine is produced by a British manufacturer. But
> undoubtedly they will catch on overseas at some point and maybe other
> manufacturers will follow suit. I must say though that it makes a
> pleasant change for us to be first to produce something. :)
Yes. Hopefully, it will catch on everywhere as much of the
technology is just out there for sale to manufacturers who buy a
chassis built for maybe the US, British or Korean markets but
the user interface will be programmed in American or British
English or Korean and they then go out by the boatloads. We all
may end up with very similar devices that might differ slightly
in hard drive size or who knows what but will more or less be
the same machine just customized for the local conditions.
When I worked as a repair technician for our Audio
Visual Center, we would open up equipment with a particular
brand stamped proudly on the outside only to find that the
chassis had been made by a different manufacturer. Sometimes,
you find the same device but its en sides might be made by Sony
one year and Hitachi the next. It's all about who can do the job
for the lowest price.
On the old days, you say,
> That is correct, with the exception of the fact that the transmitters
> aren't owned any longer by the BBC and it was actually NTL who shut down
> the old VHF systems. As you rightly say though, it made life very
> interesting at times to listen to them.
I am glad to be old enough to have seen the tail end of
the vacuum-tube era since it makes me appreciate what we have
now. We quickly forget such things as how often tubes burned out
and how much interference people just endured in the days.
During Solar peaks, we could hear those BBC/NTL
transmitters on a good day from about 8:30 in the morning in the
US until around 14:30 or so in our afternoons which would be
20:30 in the UK or well past dark there in Winter.
The UK transmitters were around 41.5 MHZ on several
frequencies and then the French had several audio transmitters
around 41.25 MHZ so one could tune back and forth and hear
either a jumble of French voices or a jumble of British voices.
The British voices were more jumbled because many of the NTL
transmitters while identifying themselves as BBC1 transmitted
local programming during parts of the afternoon which meant you
might hear Welsh from Wales or a program in English from BBC1
Northern Ireland at the same time.
at 17:45 or 5:45 P.M, all transmitters simultaneously relayed
BBC1 "News Round."
Between 1978 and 1980, I was job hunting so had lots of
time to waste listening to things like this so I even have some
recordings of BBC1 afternoon programming and French ORTF TV
sound, some of which is amazingly clear at times.
AM sound can have as much fidelity as digital or FM but
all that noise and the whine of heterodynes and the fact that
the capture ratio in AM is atrocious makes AM the oil lamp of
radio communications. It was a start, but we have so much better
thing now.
Martin
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