Meetings

May 2009 Meeting – Algolith

TV Magic will be hosting the May 20th SBE meeting at the San Diego office.  Ian Caldwell with Algolith will discuss technologies of noise reduction, including Mosquito Noise Reduction and Dynamic Noise Reduction. Lunch starts at noon, the meeting will run from 12:30PM to 1:30PM. TV Magic is located at 8112 Engineer Road, San Diego. If you have any questions, contact Eva at 858-650-3155.

Algolith solutions include a series of FPGA-based image processing and enhancement cards designed to meet the exacting needs of broadcast, cable, satellite, and IPTV providers. Ian will discuss, various approaches and technologies of noise reduction, including Mosquito Noise Reduction, Dynamic Noise Reduction, Block Artifact Reduction, Multiple Type Noise Reduction, Motion Adaptive De-Interlacer, Anti-Aliasing Processor and others. He will also give an overview of “Open Gear” technology for broadcasters.

Meetings

March 2009 Meeting – Tektronix Discusses AFD

One of the most common complaints about modern television is that the video doesn’t always fill the screen. Viewers who buy expensive flat-screen monitors often feel it’s very important that all the real estate is filled with active video, even when that means distorting the image geometry.

There’s help for viewers who want to see more screen filling. The Active Format Descriptor (AFD) is a metadata technology slowly finding its way into the broadcast chain.

Steve Holmes, Senior Applications Engineer with Tektronix, will discuss AFD packet monitoring and advanced metadata analysis through the appropriate flag system and data packets at our March 19 meeting at TV Magic, 8112 Engineer Road, in Kearny Mesa.

Note that this is a Thursday meeting. We’ll start with a free lunch at noon, short chapter meeting at 12:30, then the presentation. You should be able to leave for work by 1:30 PM. Guests are always welcome.

Best of Site, Commentary

Lessons Learned During the San Diego DTV Transition

San Diego was among the largest TV markets in the U.S. to have many of its major TV stations transition to digital only the evening of February 17. Major station groups backed out of their plans to transition early when it fell out of political favor. Locally, KFMB-DT needed to get off their low power provisional DTV channel. McGraw-Hill and Tribune surely wanted the electric meter to stop spinning so fast supporting two transmitters in an adverse economy at KGTV and KSWB, respectively.

The vast majority of the San Diego County estimated 78,000 households with over-the-air TVs made the transition without trouble. There were hundreds who needed help.

Speaking to dozens of viewers and other chief engineers in town, here’s what I learned:

Shutting Down the Analog Transmitters in Two Batches May Not Have Been Such a Bad Idea – Unprepared viewers woke up on February 18 with fewer TV stations, but they were able to receive some, and were motivated to then upgrade their systems to receive all the stations. No one was left without a source of TV news.

The “Night Light” Worked – KSWB reported fewer calls after keeping a repeating 30 minute instructional video about the DTV transition running on their analog channel 69 station for a week.

It’s About the Antenna – With at least four transmitter sites and rough terrain, it takes a skilled engineer to design and build a proper home antenna system in this market. The vast majority of callers were trying to receive all local English-speaking TV stations with a single indoor “rabbit ears and UHF loop” style antenna. With the few exceptions of people located in the center of the city in wood-framed homes using converters or receivers with the latest generation, highly equalization-adapting chipsets—receiving TV this way doesn’t work. A weak signal tolerated before became a blank screen at the bottom of the digital cliff.

A Few Brave Souls Want Information on Real Antenna Systems – A handful of callers wanted advanced information on fringe area reception. With only a couple of antennas capable of sufficient front-to-back ratios to eliminate co-channel interference from Los Angeles, this information means the difference between receiving all stations and receiving a few.

Not Ready for VHF – Many viewers had adapted to the UHF-only pre-transition market with their bow-tie array antennas, only to find that they now had to replace those antennas to receive new DTV stations on channels 8 and 10. Many viewers were told that the best system is a combination of high-band VHF antenna aimed permanently at Mt. Soledad and a UHF antenna aimed south toward Mt. San Miguel and Mt. San Antonio, but few wanted to actually go to the trouble of doing so.

Where Did the Converters Go? – Inventories of digital converters were spotty during the week leading up to the transition. Many stores appeared to have run out of converters for fear of having excess inventory. Anecdotal evidence told us that stores south of downtown fared worse, with large numbers of converters perhaps being sold to Mexican citizens for use in Tijuana, where many people are bilingual, they can receive large numbers of digital stations, and Asian imports carry a burdensome duty.

The Channel Master Converter Got Good Marks – The DigitalStream boxes got hot enough to make you not only wonder about their electrical consumption, but about their safety without a fire extinguisher nearby. The Zenith DTT900’s picked up an extra few stations from LA on my old log-periodic, but it didn’t have an S-video output. The Channel Master could be had at Fry’s sometimes for a 10-spot and a government card, but it had the S-video output. Andrew Lombard at KGTV said it was his favorite (although it doesn’t have analog passthrough).

Scan and Rescan, Then Scan Again – Viewers were told to rescan on February 18 for digital versions of channels 8 and 10. But that wasn’t enough. If a viewer had an antenna on a rotator, they had to perform a complete “first birthday” style scan to wipe channels 8 and 10 from their analog reception memory positions and record the Mt. Soledad stations. Then they had to scan in ADD mode for UHF stations on Mt. San Miguel. Then, depending on location, might have to scan a third time to receive English language XETV in Tijuana. Some TVs behave differently, so rescanning could delete previously found stations. Viewers with those TVs had to be instructed on how to restrict their scans to a set of physical channels while ADDing. Got that, Mom?

What Do You Mean Channel 6 is really 23? – Related to the previous item, viewers needed to know the physical channel numbers in order to properly scan channels and make sure they have the right antenna pointed in the right direction.

So Tell Me Once Again How to Wire My Old VCR to the Converter? – As consumers tried to adapt their older technology, they felt left behind when trying to integrate the new converters to their trusty recorders. Conducting automatic recordings with unmanned channel changes, we’ve learned, requires a Dish DTVPal or Zinwell ZAT-970A converter and careful reading of the manual.

I Give Up! – Cable, fiber, and satellite providers ran a heavy ad campaign to promote the simplicity and reliability of reception using their systems, capturing perhaps 6,000 exasperated OTA viewers. Many subscribed to the lowest tier of service, but providers were glad to have them.

Lifeline Rates are Not Published – Viewers calling TV stations were not aware that they could get all local TV stations, in HD, using the lowest tiered rates on cable.

Some Stations Really Put Out – KGTV collected excess government converter cards from their viewers and redistributed them to viewers who had requested too late. They also had instruction materials from each of the popular makes of converters and TVs in order to help people with rescanning. KFMB Stations Director of Engineering Rich Lochmann and yours truly at XETV went on the air to explain rescanning. KSWB produced the nightlight video.

Local News

KFMB-TV Signs Off Analog Signal After Nearly 60 Years

An era, nearly 60 years in the making, came to an end at 11:59pm on February 17th when KFMB-TV ceased analog broadcasting. KFMB was San Diego’s first television station when it went on the air in May of 1949 and is one of three broadcast stations in the nation’s 28th market, to transition to full time digital operations.

“The transition went smoothly, and just as we planned it” says Rich Lochmann, Director of Engineering for the KFMB Stations. Shortly before 11pm, Lochmann and Rick Bosscher, RF Systems Manager, were joined at the Mt Soledad transmitter site by former KFMB Engineer Frank Aamodt, and Chris Aamodt, current Senior Broadcast Maintenance Engineer at KFMB.

The Aamodts are father and son and represent two generations of engineers who have served the KFMB Stations. Frank Aamodt, who is 87, started at KFMB in 1948 even before the station was on the air and worked there for two decades as Assistant Chief Engineer.

Following a tour of the current broadcast facility, at 11:59pm, the senior Aamodt pressed the “off” button on the station’s analog transmitter. Following the rerouting of transmissions line, Aamodt then placed the new digital station on the air, by pressing the “on” button for the digital channel 8 VHF transmitter at around 12:20am, signaling a new era in San Diego television history. Aamodt called the event “exciting” and very different from the time he worked with transmitters and broadcast equipment. “In those days we didn’t have a lot of money so we had to make everything ourselves” says Aamodt who added that the digital broadcast technology is “amazing”.

Local News

San Diego DTVs Ready for Transition

Some San Diego broadcasters are making final preparations for the DTV transition at midnight tonight. KFMB and KGTV are shutting down their analog VHF transmitters on Mt. Soledad and putting digital transmitters on the air in their place. KSWB will stay on for a week with a “night light” consumer message about the transition.

KPBS Director of Engineering Leon Messenie says that his station will leave the analog channel 15 transmitter on through their March pledge drive. KNSD and KUSI now say they will wait until June 12 to drop their analog service.

The transition delay bill passed by Congress does not mandate a June 12 analog shutdown, but would give broadcasters that option, as well as fund an extended converter box discount coupon program. All network owned and operated stations will keep their analog transmitters on until June. KNSD is an NBC O&O station.

Meanwhile, XETV managers have declared their intention to turn over their analog channel 6 transmissions to another Televisa service. The exact date of the transition and content to be broadcast haven’t been determined.

Stations transitioning Tuesday night are preparing for a barrage of phone calls Wednesday morning. They expect to have additional staff members answer the phones and triage calls for the depth of their technical questions. KGTV has conducted a trade-in program for people who haven’t used their converter coupons to give them to viewers who need them.

Entravision stations, both Mexican LMA stations and US low powers, are attempting to convert to DTV. XHAS-DT in Tijuana, “T33”, signed on today for the first time on adjacent UHF channel 34. XHDTV Tecate is due to come on line soon on channel 47. KBNT has an application pending for a digital service on channel 14. The FCC signaled that it might approve that application for a low power service after stating in a recent ruling for LA County emergency services on channel 15 that its use in Los Angeles did not preclude reusing the channel for low power TV in San Diego. Channel 14 is similarly used for land mobile in the LA basin.

Society of Broadcast Engineers