More Apps! I Gotta Have More Apps!

Well, in the course of upgrading to a phone that doesn’t require tape to keep the battery cover on, I went with a major supplier’s leader.  (BTW, if you’re looking for me to say that I stayed with T-Mobile, forget it.  They continue to amaze me with their business prevention department.)

 

But that’s not the topic here.  If you haven't noticed, though the "...there's an app for that..." promo is over, there is no end to the number and variety of applications now available for just about every type of mobile device.

 

Today, I’m just getting the word out to a few folks who, like me, may have upgraded, or have loaded apps on their phone and allowed “automatic update.”  This applies to every OS I can think of and it’s pretty important.

 

Many new apps – and upgrades of older ones – now try to blow a high hard one past you like Ricky Vaughn.  They bury an acceptance in the “other” or “see all” category.  It’s worded a number of ways (after you drill down that deep) and may say “phone access” or “line access” or just phone…but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the app can ask your phone for its serial number, its phone number and the numbers of anyone you may be talking to while that app is in use.

 

In other words, you download say, a YouTube viewer.  It’s custom and you love it because there are no additional ads, it has great controls, and, hey, maybe even the colors are your favorites.  But, when you open it, it will phone home with info you your phone and your number.  And if you get a call in the middle of a video, it’ll get that number too.

 

To be fair, they are telling us.  But you really have to look for it.

 

Frankly, not too cool.  This is especially true since updates can slip this info by you, especially if you’ve set any apps to update automatically.

 

So I’m taking a closer look at everything, and I went back and reviewed all on my phone.  Someone tell me why a game like backgammon has to know my phone’s serial number, my phone number and who I’m calling or who’s calling me.  I actually lucked out.  I saw this as I transferred data and apps to my new phone.

 

Now what concerns me is (are) all the folks out there calling me with these apps on their phones.  I guess it’s no big deal.  I don’t have a bookie; I don’t do billion dollar deals on a cell phone, and, what else, well, nothing blackmailable so I guess I shouldn’t worry.  But just the thought that some clown can page through his phone-homes and see who’s calling me is a bother.

 

Do as you wish – address or ignore.  But, if you ignore this, please tell me you did so the next time we talk.

The NOT Customer Service

Online commerce – ecommerce – call it what you want…it’s great, isn’t it?  Don’t you wish a few more companies actually understood it?

 

For all you great firms who are proud of your online store (or have been told by your IT and marketing folks that you should be proud of it), I once again invite you to buy something from your site.  Oh, and when you do, use your online chat.  Yeah.  Do that.  Pour two large glasses of liquid, one of water and one of your favorite alcoholic beverage.  You’ll need the former because you’ll get pretty thirsty during the long and arduous task of extracting information from your online chat folks.  The latter?  Well, figure it out.  When you realize how poorly your company – YOUR BRAND – interacts with your clientele, you’ll down the whole thing.

 

I’ve been part of some really interesting exchanges in online sales chats. Most recently, when I questioned why a product hadn’t been delivered as promised and was, in fact, two weeks late, I was told, “Sorry, we don’t actually carry that.  It is in our catalog but is drop shipped from the manufacturer.  They may have a problem or be out of the item temporarily.”

 

My smartass response was, “…and that affects me how?”  I went on to ask why I didn’t at least receive an email telling me about the delay.  It was a response like, “sorry, we can’t do that.”

 

Can’t, won’t, don’t actually carry, not ours…isn’t that fantastic?  

 

I went on to tell the chatter that it had been 4 years since I had ordered from them; that it took me that long to get up the nerve to try again after they had totally screwed up the last order.  Then I added that I’d think about them again in another four years, maybe.  Didn’t matter.  Didn’t affect them, not that I expected that it would.

 

I asked a couple more questions; neither was met with an acceptable answer.  I also asked about canceling the order.  The chatter again had no answer for the chatee.  Instead, she (I assume, it was a female name) asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

 

Again, the smartass kicked in and I responded with, “Else?  You haven’t helped me with anything yet.  You can’t tell me why the product is two weeks late, you can’t tell me when it will be delivered…you don’t even know if there are any in stock.  And you can’t even help me cancel the order.  So what’s with ‘else’?”  Then my usual angry signoff of.  Seeya.” [click]

 

So, once again, take the time to buy something from yourself.  That sugar-baked ham or teeth-whitener, or seatcovers.  Whatever.  Use your online chat and see what you have - or don't have - working for you.  But, please…no drunken dials to me about what you found.

That Clog Called Management

There was a show in prime time around 1970 called Arnie.  Herschel Bernardi (probably more famous as the voice of Charlie the Tuna than for his dramatic work) starred as a loading dock worker who had suddenly been promoted to “corporate.”  A real worker becomes management.

 

It was an interesting albeit short-lived concept that might be worth review today.

 

Geez, Len, where are you going with this?

 

Herschel Bernardi
Courtesy
starscolor.com

Keeping Arnie Nuvo in mind, step back and look at today’s management.  Clogged with lawyers, DBA;s and MBA’s – all trained to manage but few with knowledge of the business they’re in.  Now, with due respect to the JD and other degrees, let me say that the whole method of organization is wrong.

 

In the media world, the last thing we need is a manager who doesn’t know the specific business.  Or one who wants to put everything into discreet “silos” which are convenient for PowerPoints but, frankly, don’t work in the real world.

 

If you read any of the corporate “self-help” books, you find that the involvement of line folks in management is the exception rather than the rule.  Yet when you look at successful companies, you find that the ones that do have open relationships among everyone are the ones making it.  Go figure. 

 

When you’re making flanges as was Herschel Bernardi, you have a pretty controlled input-to-operation-to-output.  That’s just not the case in the media world.  It’s too broad, it changes too quickly, and it rests on that fickle thing called an audience.

 

So bringing in management folks who haven’t had contact with your particular business is usually a big mistake.  I’ve seen it too many times.  Decisions made by the Harvard- or Kellogg-book but which don’t work in the real world.  Best example:  broadcast station expansion.  That was fun watching the MBA’s and DBA’s running the numbers.  “Hey, it’s simple.  We take over 3 stations in a market.  We central-cast, cut a truckload of people, raise the ad rates, and make wheelbarrows (I already used 'truckload') of money."

 

Now in case you don’t see the flaws, raising ad rates isn’t that easy.  If you don’t have the numbers, you don’t get the orders.  In an agency world where you can’t even get to a buyer – and where most of them are paid to say no – you can’t just raise rates.  In fact, major advertisers are gutsy enough to say, “Here’s what I want, here’s what I’m going to pay.  Take it or leave it.”  Ouch.  That’s a little different from the world of flanges.  And cutting people?  Cool idea.  Then, looking at the payroll, they toss out folks who know the history…the ones who’ve already made the mistakes.  Ah, but a younger person – if they think they need a person at all – will come at half the price.  That is until you factor in a repeat of the mistakes the old lady you let go learned from.

 

And central-casting.  Think about it.  With more and still more modes of information or entertainment delivery, is producing your [for example] Louisville news out of Dallas a good idea?  If local is the real USP for a station, do you want the lead of a story left on the cutting room floor because that guy in Dallas doesn’t know the background?  So, sure, go ahead and put the folks who may be able to contribute most to the company’s success in an isolated location where the only interaction is the nightly critique coming out of programming, or the consultant telling the female anchor not to smile so much.

 

A lot of the problems come out of the chasm between “management” and “labor.”  Both have a lot to learn from the other.  If you’ve run across Cluetrain Manifesto, you’ll recall that Levine et. al. talk about the flattening of the corporate pyramid.  People at the bottom (I hate that term) know a lot of what people at the top (that one too) are doing.  Observation, filtration, email, and intranet let them find out.  But, sadly, management seems to think that they can orchestrate a one-way communication path.  And what’s worse?  They don’t think they necessarily have to tell the truth!

 

So they say that all’s well, that they’re not changing the news format, not letting anyone go, etc. then, out of nowhere, an anchor gets replaced.  Whatever morale or corporate equity they built up just vaporized.  And, if you trace it back, you find that those lettered management folks didn’t see the difference between a people business and a widget business.  A silo was a silo. 

 

So, the solution?  Bring some “little folks” (oh wow, that’s so much better than “people at the bottom”) along.  No, not a monthly lunch.  Put them on specific developmental or analytical projects.  They’ll ask questions you didn’t know needed to be asked.

 

I’ll give you an example:  A few years ago, we were having a discussion about offering vanity email addresses.  You can imagine it – you sign up and you get yourname@somegreatsuffix.com, where somegreatsuffix = a really neat address.  Maybe co-opting a celebrity’s name, or a professional sport.  A couple of folks had run the numbers and they turned out to be really big.  A 20-year-old ops guy asked a simple question, “How you gonna convince people to give up the email address they have?  I mean, when all their friends…”  After a little research the numbers fell like a rock.  Today, that’s a little different but, at the time, we were able to keep from stepping in it.

 

More importantly, work to collapse the pyramid.  Open the company up.  If the average coder doesn’t feel comfortable dropping a suggestion to you, if you don’t feel you can stop by a designer’s office and ask how they’d do something, you haven’t accomplished it.

 

You don’t have to put Arnie in the corporate suites, but you can have lots of Arnies out there, all with suggestions that may just save your backside.

Amateur Radio

There’s a group of people out there – men and women, both – who are more giving, more helpful during emergencies, and probably less appreciated than about any other collection of folks you could find.

 

Specifically, they’re amateur radio operators.

 

You probably don’t know much about them beyond those funny license plates that combine letters and numbers and, underneath say, “Amateur Radio” or “Ham Radio.”  Or they may be the group that you were blaming for interference with your television, though it’s far more likely that such interference was coming from a citizens’ band operator (an entirely different group, most of whom have no knowledge of radio technology).  The CB operator is interested solely in communicating with other CB operators – at their licensed or greatly-increased power.

 

Why am I writing about amateur radio operators?

 

Well, first, to say thanks.  You’ll find ham operators helping out in just about any emergency.  And the bigger the problem, the more they seem to offer.  Emergency radio traffic and messages, coordination of aid and relief, even first aid and delivery of medicine.  More than once, ham operators have been pressed into service as air traffic controllers operating at ad hoc air strips when airports have been closed.

 

In many places they’re still the backbone of the public’s side of emergency action.  

 

It’s for the money, right?  Uh, no.  Especially since operating on any of the amateur frequencies (bands) requires a license which explicitly forbids use of amateur radio for “pecuniary interest.”  No.  They do it for the service.  And they maintain readiness – regular meetings, field day operations (going out, setting up temporary operations and passing traffic on a regular basis), meetings with local, state and even federal emergency officials.

 

Quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, lost children, just about any emergency you can imagine, you’ll find amateur radio operators mobilizing to help.

 

And you ask again, why am I writing about this?

 

Well, I spent a part of a recent weekend at a “hamfest”.  This is a convention of amateur radio operators.  It consists of learning sessions, FCC examinations, group meetings (like emergency operating groups), and an esoteric flea market offering items 99 percent of folks wouldn’t recognize, let alone want.  

 

If you have interest in radio technology – and by that I mean any sort of wireless communication – it’s a blast.  You can find everything from the latest computer and wifi gear to an iconoscope.  And if ever there were a place where one man’s junk is…well, this is it.

 

Cool.  And, yet one more time, why am I writing about this?  Well, by observation, I’ve established that the average age of a ham operator is somewhere between 60 and deceased.  There’s just been very little influx.  Nothing to interest the kiddies.  And that’s doubly disappointing since most amateurs acquired their first [usually “novice”] license in their early teens – or before!

 

So I got to thinking, why the lack of newbies?  Here’s what I’ve come up with 

·    The mystique is gone.  Once upon a time, you could tune up your homebrew rig into a homebrew antenna and “work” into any number of states and, depending on frequency, around the world.  You’d exchange QSL cards with the other party, noting the specifics of the contact.  Today, you boot up your factory-made computer using your factory-written OS into a factory-made modem and across a pair of wires (possibly through a factory-made wifi transmitter/receiver) to your Facebook page.  There, someone may have left a message wanting to contact you.  Afterward, you may even exchange emails.  There was a magic to waves leaving an antenna and delivering a message halfway around the world.  That’s been doused by the multitude of means by which we can achieve the same end.  For some, there’s a bigger mystery to data packets migrating from device to air to line to server to line to server to friend to deliver the message, “C U L8r.” 

There’s just no big deal to radio.

·    It’s a throwaway society.  Kids want the latest and the best.  Build something?  Nah.  Takes too long.  And, besides, I want the same xyz that everyone else has.

·    There’s not a lot of interest in helping others.  Wow!  Where’d that come from?  Well, with FEMA around along with a number of other government agencies, a lot of people feel that their taxes are taking care of paying for emergencies and for the help needed in the middle of them.  “Hey, I pay my taxes.  I shouldn’t have to do more than that,” seems to be the battle cry.  Worse, though, are the reports that some government agencies have become uncooperative – eschewing the help of dangerously suspect outsiders like ham operators.
 

The real loss is in the technology that’s not being developed.  If you look back through the history of radio and television, you’ll see so much of the development came from individuals applying for and operating experimental stations, or holding “ham” tickets.  2XG was Lee DeForest’s experimental radio station in New York.  If it weren’t for DeForest’s audion, we’d still be waiting for anything beyond Morse code. Charles Herrold’s 6XF became KQW which then became KCBS. There are many of others – launched by rugged individualists rather than corporations.  And Philo T. Farnsworth and his work with television changed the “face” of communication.  I call them rugged because you have to know that they were bitten by their power supplies once or twice.  No fun. 

 

Usually on their own, they develop circuits, write software, and spend their own time putting it all together to create a new product or service.  And they do it because they just want to.  Most realize that they’ll never see an ROI.  But that’s not what they’re about.  It’s that big smile when they break the distance record at 243gHz or do a moonbounce, or radio-control their lawnmower.  

 

And a lot of products have come from them – not all from the knowledge required for the license, itself, but from the analytical thinking that it brings about.  And we owe a lot more to ham operators than we admit.  For everything they’ve created, for the services they perform, and because, by a far greater percentage than the general population, they’re genuinely good people.

 

By the way, if you’re one of those genuinely good people and you’ve always wanted to figure out how things work, or build something electronic, an amateur radio ticket isn’t that hard to get.  You can ask around or check the web.  Arrl.org (American Radio Relay League) is a great place to start.  If you have a kid who’s interested in the subject, send him or her there, too.  In fact, it can be a pretty cool family pursuit.  For younger folk, besides the radio experience, a ham ticket today provides a good foundation for the IT world.  And, by the way, the converse – IT being a good foundation for radio/television – isn’t necessarily true!

 

So thanks, to all of you out there having fun helping.  

 

NB:  Just a few additional noteworthy hams:  Howard Hughes, Nolan Bushnell (Atari)  Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (first transmission of human voice), Robert Moog, Julian Hirsch, Luke Montgomery, Steve Wozniak, Joseph H. Taylor, Jack Kilby, Leo Fender, David Packard (the “P” in “HP”), Wilson Greatbatch (invented the pacemaker), Perry Spencer (inventor of the microwave oven)  Norio Ohga and Akio Morita (Chairman and Founder of Sony, respectively) and about half of all astronauts!

Everyone! Stay CALM! I'm in charge here. - Alexander Haig

The CALM Act. 

 

I really didn’t think I’d see a lot about it but it seems the CALM act is everywhere. Yes, today’s the deadline for implementation and, no doubt, tomorrow the Notices of Apparent Liability will start flying.

 

I’ll be up-front with you:  I’ve written about this before and about the futility of passing laws about anything that starts with “psycho”, in this case, psychoacoustics, especially when trying to rely on machines to control the outcome.  Might as well outlaw a disease; in a similar vein, it doesn’t matter since physics behaves as it does and doesn’t pay much attention to congress.

 

More on that later.  I want to discuss this little thing called compliance.  You see, not only must stations comply with the rules, they must document their compliance.  A number of operations maintain programming for 90 days after airing.  Others, as much as 2 years.

 

The 90 days is the minimum retention period and during that time, the station must be able to provide any segment of the broadcast day to an inspector or government representative should they request it.

 

That means that if a viewer challenges a telecast – maybe he/she heard a commercial that was too loud – the commission can come back and say, “Give us 5 minutes on either side of the commercial and the commercial, itself.  Oh, and send the log of the dialnorm on the audio.”  Huh?  Yep.  You have to be able to step up and provide the data/metadata that supports your claim that you were legal at the time.

 

Stations are keeping the logs for longer and longer periods because of the possibility of complaint.  But wait, there’s more.  It’s not just CALM compliance.  It’s everything else.  Closed captioning?  You don’t want to be challenged.  Political ads?  Same thing.  Contests and all else, too.  You really want to be able to pull up the goods, send ‘em off to the commission with a note like, “See?!”

 

That’s a “fur piece” as Bob Shreve used to say on the SchoenlingAll-Night Theater, from the old audio or VHS loggers.  It requires much more.  And, son of a gun, there are a couple of devices out there that’ll do it and more.

 

Last nite, a bunch of us got the inside scoop from Ken Dillard at Digital Nirvana, Inc.  Now I don’t know how they decided on that name – maybe it means somebody with all 1’s on their bank account number.  That aside, these guys make the Monitor IQ box.  Yes, there are others out there.   This box is particularly intriguing.  It can do it all.  And more.  Ken explained how it integrates with sales, programming, legal, and engineering.  First, you can watch all the stations in the market.  Then, as it archives, you can pull up any segment and look at it – content, captioning, CALM, and (in metered markets) ratings.  

 

You have to think about watching a sportscast running against other stations in the market and easily spotting what keeps folks around and what drives them away…overnight.  This is not a cheap box, but given all the new rules and the fines that can be incurred, it’s cheap insurance.

 

And now for my favorite topic:  the audio, itself.  Let’s all pick dialnorm -24.  Cool.  Our processors are going to take everything to -24.  That’s cool, too, but, first do they really know what’s going on around them?  When Martha and John are whispering sweet nothings on the porch swing, should the processing really take the following commercial down to that level?  As it brings it up, it creates a different mood.  Is that OK with the advertiser?  How does it change the spot?  And what happens to the louder one after it?  Oh, and did I pay for a particular level of modulation when I bought the commercial time?

 

Let’s go farther.  What if (as I’ve written about before) the mix has an overabundance of highs or lows?  What are you going to do?  The system says dialog is the benchmark.  Well,  just the simplest look at an oscilloscope while listening to dialog tells you that there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between the actual power in a piece of audio and the apparent loudness.  But that’s exactly what we’re asking a processor to look for and act upon.

 

So, when that 5.1 mix comes barreling through and totally masks the dialog, what’s going to give?  Well, as they say in the retirement home, “Depends.”

 

And that means that every mix is different and it’ll be the psychoacoustic elements that will cue the viewer as to whether the sound is balanced from scene to scene.  Once again, you can process it like crazy but until you can teach the machine to listen like a human, it’s going to get it wrong a good part of the time.  Check the link below.  Read it closely.  If you don’t see any problems, you didn’t read it closely!

 

And when you realize that most of the ATSC parameters for CALM and dialnorm are based on those developed in Europe (including France, the folks that gave us SECAM), you also know that it means stations will be compliant – and still sound bad.  How do I know?  Take a trip to London, Frankfurt or Rome.  Listen.   Case closed.

 

But, compliance is the goal so, congratulations to all the techs who have been slaving over the past months to get their stations to that point.  We’ll be listening...on receivers...all of which will vary and will interpret audio and its metadata differently, thereby creating a [vastly] different listening experience for each receiver owner.

 

ATSC’s CALM and DIALNORM

Give me an L-F-ing Break

This is a general request.  It goes out to all the folks mixing audio for television.  It's a simple request, too:  Listen to your product before it goes out the door.  I mean, really listen!

 

Eight thousand years ago, when we laid back a final track, we listened to it.  Yeah, yeah, everybody listens to their tracks.  But, at the time, before stereo, MTS, BTSC and all the other acronyms, we listened on the studio monitor, then on a four-inch Quam squaker atop the audio console.  (We also viewed release video on a mono monitor, too, but that’s for another day.)

 

Any number of times the great audio on the JBL or Altec sounded like garbage on the Quam…and far worse than just what the poor response of that midget caused. 

 

Often the problem was the desire to pump a lot of bass into the signal.  Cool idea.  And on a console TV system with some semblance of an audio reproduction system, it sounded pretty good.  But that bass, when pushed through the 5 watt amp to a small speaker suddenly suffered from A) heavy distortion from the amp and B) even worse distortion as the tiny voicecoil, now getting some nice square waves from the amp, bottomed and topped out, taking the midrange with it. 

 

So, you listened on the small speaker and you heard the problems…and you remixed so that folks could actually hear intelligible audio. 

FADE TO BLACK

 

FADE IN

It’s 35 years later.  We’ve jumped over stereo, forgotten about quad and moved into at least 5.1 sound.  And, hurray for the dot-one.  That is if you have the audio system for it.  No, wait.  Even if you do have the system for it, it’s not a hurray.

 

Why, you ask?  No, really, I just heard someone ask why.  

 

The thinking on the creative side is, “Now we have some real audio.  Let’s use it all.”  And the production guys try to give creative what they want.  So when that Hummer is thundering across the salt flat, they mix the LFE’s (the low frequency effects…the dot-one part of 5.1 content) hot – really hot.

 

But, guess what.  After they listen on the studio monitors – in 5.1 and properly adjusted – many apparently don’t listen in other formats.  And, as far as I can tell, no one in the studio is listening through a TV broadcast audio processor…and, get this…I’m revealing a big secret here…all broadcasters are using them.

 

I’m not going to go into a lot of technical detail here.  But let me offer one example…You’ve produced a “smokin’” (hey world, would you stop with that word!) make that “driving” audio track.  Lots of LFE information.  It hits the station’s audio processor.

 

More than likely, that unit is a multiband processor.  If so, depending upon on its settings, it may squash the dynamic range considerably and completely change the ratio of LFE to audio.  And, again, depending upon settings, if there is a “bass coupling” control, that driving bass will upset the reproduced levels of the midrange and high frequencies, usually reducing them considerably.  

 

So you dump in a thunderous series of 40Hz sfz notes and the track pulses wonderfully.  Then, it hits the processor which, when it sees those pulses, lowers the overall gain – and you lose the dialog!

 

Right.  The dot-one tail is wagging the 5 dog.

 

Now, these days, finding good dialog is hard enough.  But then, to have to dig it out of the mud because of the LFE channel, well, that's just not fun.  It means either backing up with the DVR and trying to pick out a few of the words or just changing channels.

 

Then, don’t forget to figure in processing to comply with the CALM Act.  I have earlier posts on that so I won’t rehash it…but that has to be figured in and should be in the monitor chain at the post house.

 

And to go one step further...most home units put out 2 channel stereo, relying on external audio amps to decode to 5.1.  Oh, and that stereo may pass through a set’s processing, offering EQ and even “audio leveling” which, in most cases, is compression.  If the station processing didn’t crunch your track and destroy the ratio of LFE to music and dialog, the receiver’s waiting like a safety in the game you’re watching, to step on your mix with cleats.

 

Now, let’s say the viewer has a nice LED screen – flanked with its internal 2x6” speakers.  They don’t even hear the LFE information.  It may get to the speakers but it may not even generate any sound at the speakers.  So what does the viewer/listener hear?  Nothing but the audio level dropping and, probably, the dialog disappearing.  And, frankly, as a consumer, I don’t particularly like that.

 

Hey creative folks:  try to remember as you mix that pushing the excitement envelope can, in some cases, render the audio unintelligible.  I won’t point fingers but listen critically to just about any one-hour crime drama.  It ain’t pretty.

 

If your finishing house doesn’t have at least some gear to simulate the broadcast transmission process, ask ‘em why they don’t.  And if they do, insist that they use it.  Listen in 5.1, stereo, stereo small speaker, mono small speaker, and 7.1 if you can.  And here’s a tip:  listen on computer speakers, too.  And, shortly, you’ll want to check it on your iPhone’s earbuds.  No  doubt, in short order, multiple mixes will be packaged in the transport stream and be keyed in automatically by the receiver.

 

IFor now, though, if you listen on a number of possible receiving devices, I’ll tell you this:  the audio you leave with won’t be the same as the super-hot mix you had in mind.  But viewers/listeners will get the content.  And wouldn’t that be pleasant.

http://www.orban.com/products/television/8685/

http://junger-audio.com/products/product-overview/digital-audio-processor-devices/tap-television-audio-processor/main-information/

http://omniaaudio.com/omnia-6ex-and-6exi-features-and-benefits

http://wheatstone-processing.com/

TV's Back to the Future II

Well, the sequel is never as good as the original.  But, I wrote about Back to the Future before.  There's lots of news.

 

The FCC’s TV auction plan is in place.  If you’re not familiar with it and you’re A) a broadcaster, B) an advertiser, C) an agency person or, D) a viewer who likes HD television, you might want to get familiar with it.

 

Here’s the executive summary:   

·    Over-the-air television takes a lot of the radio frequency spectrum

·    The FCC wants more spectrum allotted to personal communications services like wireless Internet/broadband.  They want to be able to auction off spectrum to increase revenue to the government

·    The FCC has proposed allowing telecasters to combine their services onto a single channel, freeing up spectrum.  For this, each telecaster would receive a payment
 

Hey!  That’s pretty neat.  Let’s get channels 7 & 9 & 13* to combine inside one channel, say, “7”.  They’d keep their own identities, branding and other associated equity – even their number – but they’d all be contained in the channel that was formerly allocated solely to the owners of “7”.

 

That means that the frequencies that “9” and “13” occupied are now vacated and can be reassigned for PCS – through auction.  And, per the commission, the broadcasters so “sacrificing” their spectrum, will be rewarded financially.

 

Still cool?  Do you see everyone as a winner?  As the old army joke goes, “Not so fast, Mullany.”

 

When you put two or three stations inside a single channel, something has to give.  That give is on signal quality.  Without going into detail, it means that HD evaporates.  Under the current – and currently discussed – systems, there’s no not enough room inside 6mHz to cram multiple HD channels.  In fact, you won’t see two 720i signals inside the 6mHz channel without some significant adjustment to coding.

 

Fine, Len.  What does that have to do with me?

 

I guess first, the issue is that over-the-air 1080i and 720p – and maybe 720i may disappear from stations which choose to band together in a single channel.  With 8VSB, we already stuff 10 pounds of, uh, stuff in a 5 pound bag.  So there’s not much room for the higher quality signals.

 

Now that may be ameliorated by the fact that broadcasters could still supply the higher-definition signal to cable system headends, telcos, and to DTH satellite uplinks.  So subscribers to these services could still see HD.  But for the 20 or so percent who view over-the-air, well, thanks for playing.  Your HD set will do its best to upconvert 480.

There is (are) a slew of issues:

 

Is there a conflict of interest on the part of broadcasters which own or are owned by cable systems?  Does Comcast care if over-the-air viewers get 480i?  Heck, that should drive more viewers to cable for the quality.

 

Does anyone really care about over-the-air?  Maybe broadcast television becomes like AM – lower quality, poorer resolution and looking for a niche that draws viewers.

 

Does broadcast turn to the PCS guys to distribute their product on portable devices?  If so, who needs hi-def on a small screen?  But then, as devices grow in size, there’s that need for higher resolution – which 480 won’t be able to deliver.

 

And what about the future.  If you’re new to this issue, you’re probably new to 4K, too, which is Ultra HD.  The concept – which was viewable at 2012 NAB – provides for a standard that is 3840x2160 in resolution, or about 5 times (linear or over 20 times total) the resolution of 480 and twice that of 1080.  Like I said, there’s already 10 pounds of stuff in the bag, so unless the compression scheme includes instructions like, “Imagine a lake with a boat on it…” there’s no way we’ll ever see 4K over the air.  You can read more here.

 

There are plenty more – you can think through them.   They all spin a pretty sad story for a medium.  But do we really need over-the-air distribution?  Is it OK to forsake the 20 percent who view via OTA so that more people can get broadband?

 

Just follow the money.

·    The PCS and cellular lobbies are far stronger than broadcast

·    The NAB is living somewhere in the 1930’s.  I hear they’re considering an award to Vladimir Zworykin

·    Cable and broadcast integration and cross ownership means the broadcasters have less to lose.  In fact, if they take the bait, there may be lots of money for them

·    The demos of those 20 percent, well, pretty low importance
 

In its announcement, the FCC says that it, “…expects a healthy and vibrant broadcasting industry to thrive after the auction…”  which is a lot like telling a patient that, “you’ll be much better without that lousy heart and those kidneys.”

 

They held a workshop – Broadcaster LEARN.  You can check out the video on the NPRM for the auction here.

 

In the meantime, keep in mind that the average viewer has no idea this is happening. No thought that part of the value of HD is being rendered obsolete almost immediately after the FCC – and congress – mandated its implementation in the first place.  And they won’t figure it out until the resolution drops like a rock and they’re told by their local station that they need to subscribe to cable, telco, satellite, some paid service in order to get those lines of resolution.

 

*Note that currently, those channel numbers are carry-overs from analog days.  Your channel “7” may have been on the actual channel 7 (174-180mHz) but moved to another 6mHz block yet through channel virtualization, everyone

The Legacy of "Legacy"

We talk about it all the time – legacy products.  It’s supposed to mean gear that’s entrenched and because of that, hard to substitute for, even though it’s no longer in production.  That's not really it anymore.

 

So let’s find another word for “great products that are no longer being manufactured but need support because they’re being used every day.”  After all, in our world, that’s what the legacy products are.  In many cases, they are the core of a manufacturer’s business.  And, often, the reason they’re still in use is because they worked so well.  Sometimes the product survives the manufacturer.  We used Bell & Howell 70’s for years after the company and Chuck Percy were gone.   Great images and, if you needed to elbow your way out of a scary situation, the “Filmo” could take it.

 

Now, I understand the idea of not wanted to be married to a product forever.  I can speak firsthand about a closed-circuit system I designed then got a call some fifteen years later asking if I could fix a camera's focusing problem.  But, I didn’t launch a business on the product.  It was a one-off. 

 

On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of product X out there, manufactured 5, 10, or even 20 years ago.  They’re still working and sometimes still relied upon.  Should the manufacturer continue to support them?

 

The point here is twofold. First, the TTL (“time to legacy”, not time to live) is getting shorter and shorter.  Technology is changing so fast that great products get forced into the background, supplanted by newer and, possibly, better ones.  But the older ones worked and, often continue to work unless the manufacturer stopped supporting it.  Take an SD to HD upconverter.  Ones that work, work!  And one that’s 5 years old will probably cost a lot more to repair than to replace.

 

You have to ask the reasons for stopping support.  To me, they boil down to 

·    Products no longer interface with new technology.  Obvious example:  an analog cell phone.  A company could support it but no cell tower will recognize it so why bother?

·    Parts are no longer available.  That’s becoming more and more prevalent.  It extends from OEM to aftermarket items.  If you have a box that uses a Burr-Brown A/D converter from 10 years ago, good luck if that chip goes.

·    New products replacing the legacy units are so inexpensive that they render repair of the older gear futile or cost-ineffective.  Should Dell support a 20 pound, 15 year old “laptop?”

·    Cost to keep staff for support is exorbitant.  If your math tells you that you have 500 units out there and you figure ten percent are still really in use, do you continue to staff for those 50 units that might fail?

·    Bought out by another company for the name – a company that doesn’t realize that by not supporting the legacy products, they’re devaluing the very name they purchased. 

·    My favorite:  Because it forces you to buy the newer product.  I already wrote about this one, specifically T-Mobile and its refusal to support a phone’s software any longer than the manufacturer supports the hardware.  Year guarantee on the phone?  On day 367, if they upgrade software and your phone is rendered useless, too bad.  (Aside: of course your 2 year commitment remains in effect).

I’ve dealt with each of these and, in many cases it’s understandable.  But other times, not.  Should any company support their VCR’s from a few years back?  No?  Well, what about DVD players?  How about mini-discs?  (Actually, Sony still does).  Videotape – Type C, Beta, Digibeta?  For how long?  How ‘bout DAT.  (Call Panasonic and try to get a number for an authorized repair service… I dare you.  But then, trying to get an answer from Panasonic on anything is impossible.  And please don’t suggest the online chat.  What an experience that is.)

 

It’s interesting on the broadcast side.  A few years back, equipment was supported by the manufacturer just about forever.  Then came the letters and notices, ”…after 25 years of manufacture, XXX Company will discontinue its support of the TT5 and TT25AL transmitters in 24 months.  After that, support will not be available and parts will be kept on hand only until the current inventory is exhausted.”

 

Then the notifications began coming with less of a delay.  Twenty years, 15, 10.  So what’s the right length of time?  If I need support for a Sony stereo amplifier should I get it?  For how long?  If it goes bad, does it get to be a door stop?

 

Fortunately, the problem has created a new industry – the “not-necessarily-authorized-but-we-know-more-about-the-product-than-the-manufacturer-and-we-can-get-the-parts-and-fix-it” business.  I see a number of them – and often recommend some of the ones I’ve come across.  Folks that can out-do Panasonic, Sony, Denon, Tascam, JVC and many others.  They fill the void.  However, I’m finding that many of these folks can’t get parts, or the manual, or haven’t been able to train on the unit.  And that relegates the box to boat anchor status. 

 

I don’t like to throw stuff out there without having answers but, in this case, I can’t offer much:

·     If you can’t get factory support for your legacy product, ask them (are you ready?) “Do you remember anyone who worked there who may be able to service it?” 

·     If you get a notice of discontinuation of support, contact the company immediately and find out who the current support person is.  Establish some kind of relationship.

·     If not – and that’s usually the answer – you’re looking for a repair shop.  It may or may not be factory authorized.  With legacy products, factory-authorized doesn’t necessarily mean better service.

·     If you’re contemplating purchase of new equipment, look at the history of the company’s support of past legacy products.

·    Get a commitment from the manufacturer that they will support the product for (place time frame here based on your needs).  It’s important for continuity and workflow.  If you have to train personnel on new cameras every 12 months, it can eat up a lot of time.  There’s another reason this is important.  How does a company capitalize a piece of gear for longer than the time that it’s supported?  I’ll let the bean counters argue with the IRS on that one…but a number of stations are still writing down NTSC gear they bought just before the conversion to digital

·     Ask:  “What’s in development.”  “Should I be waiting for model D versus the current model C.”
 

Now, some of the above might not be worthwhile.  If you have one audio distribution amp, chances are, it's not worth the time to do all of the points.  If it fails, you may be out of luck.  But if you have 10 HD cameras using DVD for storage, you may want to do all of it.  Of course, you could choose to help the economy by junking everything the moment it breaks.  Oh, wait.  Workstations.  Interfaces.  One piece breaks and we have to replace it all.  Oops.

 

OK – gotta go. I just received a text.  I’m having problems with the tablet I bought this afternoon and the message says it goes out of warranty in an hour.