RF Shorts – May 26, 2011

By Doug Lung
published


"Old Fogey" Returns to Off-Air TV
BND.com has a nice article, Old fogey ditches cable: Now I get 18 channels, at least half of them useless describing one person's experience in dropping cable TV for off-air TV. "Along came cable, then satellite, and last year I realized I was paying an enormous amount of money each month (enormous to me anyway) for something I really wasn't using. So, after much consideration, I went back to free TV. Actually it wasn't free to convert. I had to buy an antenna and the hardware to install it. I had to crawl up on my roof to do the work. I had to buy a couple of digital converter boxes for my older televisions, which are analog. I had to figure out how to operate the stuff. That wasn't easy for a Baby Boomer."

Mobile DTV Chip Maker Siano Receives $20 Million Finance Package
Digital mobile DTV chip developer Siano Mobile Silicon announced it has completed a $20 million expansion capital financing round. The funds came from JVP, a leading Israeli venture capital firm that has been an investor in Siano since its inception. Alon Ironi, CEO of Siano, said, "North American broadcasters are now preparing to deploy mobile ATSC, and, with market experts estimating an installed base of roughly 70 million tablets in the United States within two years, the U.S. market serves as a natural extension to our strong position in other markets. Over the last few weeks, we have been finalizing our new line of innovative solutions to meet the unique needs of the U.S. market, and the new funds will be used to implement these plans "

Bosch Granted FCC Waiver for Imaging Device
In Order DA 11-899 in ET Docket 10-253 released earlier this week, the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology granted a request by Robert Bosch, GmbH, to waive Section 15.503(b) of the FCC rules for Bosch's Wallscanner D-tect 150 Professional "wallscanner" imaging device and functionally identical versions of that device. Bosch stated the wallscanner would operate well below the maximum -41.3 dBm/MHz EIRP established in Section 15.509 in the 3100 to 10600 MHz band. Bosch said its retail cost and function are such that it will not be considered a consumer tool.

Doug Lung
Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack.
A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.