[Bob Zelin]

House Committee calls for 2008 analog switch off

Jun 9, 2005 8:00 AM
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The U.S. House of Representatives Telecommunications subcommittee held a hearing last month to hear views on the proposed switch from analog to digital television.

The high tech and public safety community advocated a proposed deadline of Dec. 31, 2008, for the switch. In 1997, Congress said broadcasters had to transition to the digital spectrum by Dec. 31, 2006, or when 85 percent of TV viewers in any given market had a digital TV set.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton, (R-TX), said a big failure in current law is driving the need for legislation. Barton said he would be willing to support a limited equipment supply program, so long as it is targeted toward low-income households.

There was general agreement amongst attendees that it was critical to set a firm deadline for the switch. Consumers would benefit by moving television broadcasts from the current analog spectrum to a digital spectrum. Once the analog spectrum is available, not only would consumers be able to receive new Internet and communication services, but also police and firefighters could improve the radio systems that are vital to their lifesaving missions.

Accelerating the digital transition is the most important thing Congress can do to improve broadband deployment, particularly for rural areas, said Peter Pitsch, communications policy director for Intel.

Although the need for a firm deadline was agreed, opinions differ on the subsidy needed for digital set-top converters for existing analog receivers.

[Bob Zelin]

How about renting a nice JH-3, and free up that expensive camera !

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Tony –
this was a very funny post, and I was tempted to cut and paste the Broadcast Engineering report on the House Committee in Washington trying to force the 2008 “turn off analog TV”, and provide free converter boxes to low income families.

No matter what jokes we make on these forums, no insanity will occur compared to the day that you tell Grandma that she MUST go out and buy a new TV. Riots in the street.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

4:4:4
completely uncompressed. You will never use it (at least not this year) – it requires a Sony SR series HD VTR which is about $100,000.

bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

VTR’s are controlled by the RS422 protocol, popular with Sony and Panasonic. You have a RS422 port on the back of the AJA I/O, so that you can use this to control your Sony or Panasonic VTR via RS422 – this happens thru the Final Cut Pro software.

Unless you purchase an adaptor, like a Keyspan USA-28X, there is no other way to control a Sony RS422 VTR from a Macintosh computer.
Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

I am told by AJA that if the material is put into the system at 23.98, and you need to spit out at 59.94 – do this (I have not tried it – you try it)

1) Make sure Kona 2 driver is V 1.1.0 or later
2) Go to Kont 2 ControlPanel > Codec and set Pattern to 2:3:3:2
3) If you are in FCP 4.5, that’s it.
3a) if you are in FCP 5.0 –
go to System Settings>Effects Handling and set Uncompressed 8 and 10 to NONE
Otherwise RT Extreme overrides the Pattern setting.

I am told this works. I had the same question that you did, and I found out about a piece of hardware that Cobalt Digital makes – the 8021, that does the 2:3:3:2 pulldown in hardware ($3000) in real time, but AJA said that I don’t need it, and can simply do the above. If you try it, please let me know how it works out.

Thanks –
Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

your assumption is correct – it will embed and deembed the audio.

Bob Zelin ‘

[Bob Zelin]

you are correct – it uses the embedded audio, and then de embeddes when you go back from SDI to analog. Everything you are assuming is correct.

Bob Zelin ‘

[Bob Zelin]

Everyone has forgotten Peter Wiggins original question – will the existing Kona 2 run on the new Intel based MAC computers –

1) If it does run, AJA and Creative Cow will bill Peter Wiggins $2200, just because we don’t want you to be able to get away with no upgrade fees.

2) Do you think by that time, AJA will have made so much money, that they will never release an upgraded HD card to run on the new MAC hardware? Maybe Rudy and Clark will be on the beach with tropical drinks, saying “screw those damn editors”.

Bob Zelin

[Bob Zelin]

Brian –
you are going thru the experience that I went thru. You THINK that you have all the cables plugged in, but one or more of the drives dont show up, and you say “gee, do I have a bad cable, do I have a bad drive?”. I would take my “working system” over to a client, and I could not get all the drives to mount – you can imagine that when they are RAID 0 with 8 drives, you must get ALL the drives to mount to even see the array, so you can see my frustration on this.

Please let me know if you had success with getting all the drives to mount, and if you wouldn’t mind, when you get everything working, please disconnect everything and try it again, and see if you have “consistancy” with plugging this in, or if it makes you “suffer”. I would love to know.

Please remember that you can do this with power on, so you don’t need to shut down your computer, and reboot each time. you can seat and reseat these cables while “hot”.

Thanks –
Bob Zelin