FCC Follies

Those crazy guys who run the FCC need a swift kick to the lower posterior for this one. Not one of the people occupying space in that prescient bureaucracy saw this one coming. People using the DTV converters, or buying new DTV prepared televisions are sometimes unable to watch stations available with the same equipment using analog tuning. Doh! (I think I should immediately be exalted to FCC chairman, as I have known this since the gifted thinkers there started trying to sell this idea.)

One of the reasons that this is true is due to propagation differences, as I have previously noted, but more importantly, and also noted, is the fact that someone thought that lowering the output power in combination with further restricting transmitting antenna height would be a marvelous idea.

Their newest idea? Distributed transmission. Yes, just like your wi-fi connection, the government plans to fan out antennas, in hopes of getting back to the same coverage area they are giving up on February 17, 2009. Putting up a few new antennas is probably a good idea, but as the article in Ars Technica states, it’s unlikely that many affected areas will be able to respond in time. Somehow, it is rather late, in this almost 15 year old game, to be fumbling about, trying to repair mistakes that should never have been made. Why not simply ratchet up the DTV signal power? That must be too easy to do, and therefore becomes unacceptable.

Oops! Just another case of governmental narrow thought, and I tend to wonder why we are supposed to believe that people of any intellectual prowess are ever put to work for the common good.

FUBAR indeed!

(As before, I await the masses calling the FCC, the television stations, their elected representatives, and anyone else who will listen … in the week following the transition. This will get exciting!)

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