Mobile DTV on the cheap

[Chip Fetrow]

I remember them.  They showed movies, much the same movies that were  
on HBO, then at 10 PM they switched to soft-core, pan and scan porn.

They gave me a decoder to install at WMZQ so we could simulcast a  
concert and see it at the same time for commercial cut-aways.  Yes,  
they did have commercials on some shows.  Remember the FM sound  
carrier was given over to a hawker channel, so "sound" was AM, and  
pretty awful.  They left it with us for YEARS.  I left, and after even  
more years, I got a call from the then CE wondering where the box was  
located, as it obviously worked in the conference room, but he  
couldn't find it.  The feed to the studio was switched so normally the  
F-connector on the wall never had any RF on it, mostly so the jock  
would pay attention to his show, not the Redskins game (on another  
channel).

--chip

On Jan 15, 2011, at 3:49 PM, Robert Stratton wrote:

> Pay OTA services aren't all that new, at least in the DC area.
>
> Channel 50 here in the the DC market used to sell a nighttime SSAVI- 
> scrambled naughty movie service. Interestingly it happened to be the  
> same type of scrambling (I won't dignify it by calling it  
> "encryption") that Cox used for their local CATV service. My  
> understanding is that when the pay service failed, the market was  
> flooded with descramblers that didn't get returned. I wouldn't be  
> surprised if that was a motivation for Cox to migrate to something a  
> little more robust in the content protection department.
>
> It was fascinating to watch them flip the switch from their  
> infomercial-saturated daily schedule. Some nights they would forget  
> for a little while, which may well have been a marketing method. I  
> should probably look to see how many FCC complaints were filed when  
> that happened and people accidentally stumbled across people in  
> flagrante delicto on their TV.
>
> --Bob S.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> So much for FREE OTA TV.
>>
>> --chip
>>
>> On Jan 8, 2011, at 10:19 AM, tacos-request at amrad.org wrote:
>>
>>> Message: 4
>>> Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2011 20:50:45 -0600 (CST)
>>> From: Robert Stratton <bob at stratton.net>
>>> Subject: Re: Mobile DTV on the cheap
>>> [...]
>>> One thing of which to be aware - some of the ATSC-M/H streams are
>>> encrypted. There are two competing ventures of content providers and
>>> broadcasters to try to develop pay services on top of Mobile DTV.
>>> It's possible that you'll see streams in the software that it might
>>> not be able to render because of encryption.
>>> [...]
>>> --Bob