AKA: Television!
I am talking about the type of TV you need an antenna for. I have been installing a few of these low-power digital TV transmitters at various places and it is good work.
This transmitter’s dry weight is about 500 pounds, which was a little bit too much for our appliance hand truck, so we built a ramp. They have a nice set of wheels on the bottom, so they roll into place.
There are a few differences in the way things are done. First of all, there is a different set of acronyms:
- ASI- Asynchronous Serial Interface, format for MPEG transport stream, max speed 270 Mbps.
- SDI – Serial Digital Interface – Similar to ASI but can run much faster, up to 12 Gbps.
- TS – Transport Stream, Encoded video and audio streams into the exciter. Same idea as composite audio input on an FM exciter.
- TSID – Transport Stream ID, a unique number assigned to each DTV station and encoded with the transport stream.
- PSIP – Program System Information Protocol, carries program and system data about the transport stream.
- ATSC 3.0 – recently updated ATSC standard that allows TV stations to do more with their transport streams than before. Will also change the modulation from 8VSB to COFDM.
Then, some things that look familiar are called by different names, BNC cable vs ASI cable… I am a neophyte in the TV world, so there are still many things to learn.
EAS is still EAS, but now there is a locally generated video to go along with the audio.
A while back, some fool wrote their congressman because THE COMMERCIALS ON THE TEE-VEE WERE TOO LOUD, so there is something called CALM Act compliance.
However, at the output connector on the exciter, through the amplifier, filters, directional coupler, etc; it is RF and behaves like RF. Even more interesting; Mr. Doherty’s name is used to describe the RF amp. Doherty amplifier or Doherty modulation was designed by William Doherty for Western Electric in 1936. It was not until Continental Electronics began using it in their AM (317B) and Shortwave (420A) transmitters that it became known broadly. Old things are new again:
That picture is from my visit to Greenville, NC in 2017. This is the control console, the transmitter is behind the glass and takes up half the building. It was installed when the site was built in the early 1960s. The new Doherty UHF amplifiers use LDMOS devices, notably the BLF888E in the Anywave units.
The Channel Band Pass Filter is required by the FCC, basically, it ensures that the TV transmitter is staying in its allotted 6 MHz channel. They add phase rotation, as noted above. This is why pre-correction is needed to keep the ATSC signal linear across the entire 6 MHz bandwidth. RF is RF and we like RF.
