SBE CHAPTER 40 NEWSLETTER
MARCH 2000
San Francisco
Roy Trumbull - Editor [email protected]
Bill Dempster - Artist
Advertisers for this month's newsletter are:
Zack Electronics - (800) 998-3947
Advanced Marketing - Frank A. Santucci - (650) 365-3944
Belden - Steve Lampen - (415) 440-8393
Orban - Rick Sawyer - (360) 715-1913
MARCOM - Martin Jackson - (408) 768-8668
William F. Ruck, Jr. Broadcast Engineer - (415) 995-6969
RF Specialties of California - Bill Newbrough - (888) 737-7321
Hammett & Edison, Inc. - Dane E. Ericksen, P.E. - (707) 996-5200
LeBLANC - David A. Hill - (650) 574-4600
Gentner Communications - Kelly Hanning - (800) 879-9317
Improbable Missions Fource - Mike Schweizer - (888) 4-ISDN4U
Broadcast Systems - (800) 801-2623
Brill Electronics - Larry or Sam - (510) 834-5888
Kathrein (Scala Division) - Michael Wm. Bach - (541) 779-6500
Harris - John Briskie - (650) 593-1837

BABES/SBE LUNCHEON ON WEDNESDAY Mar 29TH
This month our speaker is from ADC and the topic is technical innovations in the ADC line of TV and DTV transmitters.

As usual, our luncheon will be at Sinbad's just south of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero near the foot of Mission St.. Please RSVP to Carol Brahney at Zacks: 408-487-9302 ([email protected]). We meet at 11:30 and are seated at 12:30.

SBE CHAPTER 40 ELECTIONS
It is time to elect chapter 40 officers once again. The following candidates have agreed to run:

Any additional nominations should be made at the March meeting.

IPOs R Us
The keynote speaker at the recent SMPTE conference spoke about launching a new company with venture capital and leaving the business he grew up in. Network technical types and a number of locals have fled the scene to try their fortunes elsewhere.

I think I finally found my big idea.

I noticed over the holidays that the various consumer electronics stores didn't even blush about charging full list for everything but remaindered merchandise. I propose to charge full list all the time.

The typical store stocks only a tiny portion of a manufacturer's line. I think I can make money by stocking the full line. Rather than diddle around a bunch of empty shelves at the mall, connect with eroy, I'll actually have the merchandise. It will cost you, but I'll have it. What a concept!

XDS IS UPON US
A month ago I had a call from a viewer asking about some odd stuff that was showing up on his screen and that started me looking. The culprit is E.T. docket 97.206 whose Report and Order was released Mar. 12, 1998. This is the infamous V chip docket. It required that all receivers larger than 13 inches after July, 1999 have the ability to block reception of programs based upon a code contained in extended data service (XDS) on line 21 field 2. The applicable rules section is 73.682 (a)(22) and figure 17 of 73.699.

The document that contains the technical description is EAI 744 and it is to be incorporated into the B version of EIA 608.

If you get a new TV and mess around with the remote control enough, you'll discover that the extended data also contains the name of the program and the time remaining in the broadcast. What is apt to upset viewers who get into this mode is that you can also get a text box that will block the middle of the screen.

Most of the syndicated program tapes we play contain this information. I frankly haven't checked to see what they rate a talk show when it's "big tits" day.

I haven't verified this, but I think the analog PSIP information that carries the relationship between your analog and digital channel numbers goes into the XDS information.

Naturally your existing closed caption generator doesn't do any of this stuff. You'll have to spend some money.

END OF THE WEBS
Webs are what Daily Variety use to call the networks. They haven't made any money in years and now they're trying to sock it to their affiliates. Since they produce little programming other that news and sports, they have to buy shows from outside producers. They are expensive. But a consortium of stations could do the same thing so what's the network advantage?

They may have gone too far with their affiliates by making a blatant grab for their digital spectrum. There seem to be plenty of entrepreneurs with better ideas.

EMAIL ADDRESS
If you have an email address, please contact Warren Reese at [email protected]. Warren is in charge of our email list, which we use when we need to notify members when something has happened between newsletters.

WEB PAGE
Webmeister Tim Pozar has the current newsletter plus newsletters all the way back to 1996 at: http://www.lns.com/sbe
Broadcast Transmitters
Performance and Quality from the RF Experts Russ Erickson, Account Manager - ADC Broadcast Systems Division
16778 West View Drive, PO Box 310, Mead, CO 80542-0310
970-535-9300, Toll Free 877-440-7877, Fax 970-535-9110
[email protected], www.adc.com/broadcast