Posted on 07/15/2021 5:11:52 AM PDT by mylife
A significant event in the history of technology happened yesterday, and it passed so quietly that we almost missed it. The last few remaining NTSC transmitters in the USA finally came off air, marking the end of over seven decades of continuous 525-line American analogue TV broadcasts. We’ve reported on the output of these channels, the so-called “FrankenFM” stations left over after the 2009 digital switchover whose sound carrier lay at the bottom of the FM dial as radio stations, and noted their impending demise. We’ve even reported on some of the intricacies of the NTSC system, but we’ve never taken a look at what will replace these last few FrankenFM stations.
If you are an American you may have heard of ATSC 3.0, perhaps by its marketing name of NextGen TV. Just like the DVB-T2 standard found in other parts of the world, it’s an upgrade to digital TV standards to allow for more recent video compression technologies and higher definition broadcasts. It has an interesting backwards compatibility feature absent in previous ATSC versions; there is the option of narrowing the digital bandwidth from 6 MHz to 5.5 MHz, and transmitting an analogue FM subcarrier where the old NTSC sound carrier on the same channel would have sat. Thus the FrankenFM stations have the option of upgrading to ATSC 3.0 and transmitting a digital channel package alongside their existing FM radio station. It’s reported that this switchover is happening, with one example given in the Twitter thread linked above.
The inexorable march of technology has thus given better quality TV alongside the retention of the FrankenFMs. We have to admit to being sorry to see the passing of analogue TV, it was an intricate and fascinating system that provided a testbed for plenty of experimentation back in the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at hackaday.com ...
So, no more UHF?
No static at all.
digital is xmitted in VHF AND UHF
or you can just Torrent.
The Clinton admin gave away a bunch of frequencies at a point in time when bandwidth was becoming an issue, further complicating any future freqs/bandwidth decisions. Frequency wise, the Clinton Administration gave away the farm & probably were rewarded for it in some way shape or form... i.e. Clinton Foundation.
Then there was the Yellow cake...
Too bad the quality of the content has gone the other way.
Overtaken by advancing technology. Like telegraph wires that used to stretch along every railroad track in the US.
Just - no longer needed.
Someday, in the not too distant future, all those windmill towers and solar panel farms will be abandoned and taken down, repurposed for something else. What, I cannot now imagine.
Widespread acceptance of thorium-fueled molten salt atomic reactors shall have displaced them, whenever it is that the superstitious fear of all things nuclear is finally dispelled.
They were all low power television (LPTV) stations that had coverage of only a few square miles.
Reportedly stood for: National Television Standards Committee.
Those of us that worked with the stuff knew it stood for: Never The Same Color.
Good riddance.
ntsc was around long before color
Chips to make your TV work, chips to make your car work, and all the chips made in China.
I’m thinking of buying a horse.
All that analog stuff didnt need chips .
THEN, we would switch the TV to UHF and pull in another 1/2-dozen fuzzy stations. Life was good.
I counted enough pulses in Tektronix waveform monitors for pointless evaluation forms for show nobody watched.
“Those of us that worked with the stuff knew it stood for: Never The Same Color.”
I read a book on how the color was introduced into the NTSC signal, in such a way that the augmented signal would still play on a black and white tv. It was fascinating.
For those that don’t know how it was done, it was done by putting in the color information as a ripple on the black and white signal. Black and white TVs wouldn’t see the ripple.
Yes, the color was “not always the same” but it was amazing that they got color squeezed into that black and white signal. There wasn’t a lot of spare bandwidth.
FCC selling off space to phone technology.
The so called Franken FMs broadcast on
TV channel 6. 87.75 MHz. Most FM dials do pick that up; there were things like a sports station in Chicago that broadcast on that frequency, but gone now. Only
pirate radio could wind up there.
For awhile there were portable radios that had AM, FM, and TV-Sound— for channels
2 through 13. UHF far too high to include.
Exactly. You could build your own NTSC television from spare parts.
70 years of compatibility is also impressive. There was a respect for the consumer and his investment, that no longer exists.
Broadcast is giving way to directed entertainment, which has its own ends, as well.
Paging Winston Smith. Mr. Smith, you are wanted at the white courtesy phone…
Donald, is that you?
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