RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Re: [MLUG] People Hate 802.11b > Why ?

["Spurling, Shannon" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

 But, your missing the basic scientific/physical reason reason why
digital makes no sence for UHF and VHF frequencies, TV, radio, or what
ever. Don't you think it's just the slightest bit strange that you don't
see many special apps that uses digital encoding below the 1GHz range?
Digital encoding is wasteful! It has been and always will be. Your
putting digital information into an analog medium (The EM spectrum), so
you have encoding and framing overhead. Why does any one use it? Because
it's noise resistant. You can regenerate the siginal really easily, but
once the siginal is distorted past a certian point, there is no fixing
it. Then you have the codec overhead for encoding mpeg video. Mpeg video
is fairly clean, and well compressed, but it requires quite a bit of
bandwidth. It all has to do with representing an analog picture in a
digital format. It takes several bits of digital information to describe
an analog event. Think of a color. If I say pure red, you know generaly
what I am talking about. Now describe that digitaly with 16 bits of
information. That's a lot more information. There are encoding and
compression tricks to get around that problem, but it's still there, and
the more diverse (less repetitive) your data is, the less the tricks
help . Now, if you were to use real audio, and some buffering, I'm sure
you could get video over a digitaly encoded UHF channel. But who wants
to wait while friends buffers for 2 min in the middle of the show from
network congestion. :-)
I have a question. This may sound bad, but what is the deal with every
one trying to make every thing digital and computerized? I mean, there
is a time and place for every thing. The whole idea of wiring my toaster
up, while it might be a good thing to do for fun in the dorms, is totaly
stupid. I still got to get up and go get it out of the toaster! Put a
freaking buzzer on it. Make a battery backed temperature alarm for your
fridge. Why do you need a CPU in it??? I'm a microcontroller nut. I love
'em. I like to experiment with them. I like to wire and program them. I
think CPU's and remote sensing/control applications are cool, but I
still don't see the point for this kind of crap. What is the deal?
(Sorry for the rant, and the spelling)

Shannon

-----Original Message-----
From: Igor Izyumin Jr.
To: EMAIL:PROTECTED
Sent: 12/1/01 8:16 AM
Subject: Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Re: [MLUG] People Hate 802.11b > Why ?

> That makes more sense. However my question was how much it might help
to
> have full legal access to ALL the spectrum and use a common method for
> communication across all the spectrum. You may be right about how
little
> bandwidth you'd actually gain from that extra spectrum. That is more
what
> I was interested in.
It's not practical to use digital modes on anything that doesn't need
them, 
especially on the lower parts of the spectrum.  When the frequency gets 
lower, the bandwidth also gets lower.  That's why people use SSB (single

sideband AM) and CW (morse code) instead of packet or something on HF -
there 
isn't much room.  Packet is also used, but not as a replacement for
regular 
AM modes, since the power is inherently smaller and it takes a lot more 
bandwidth than SSB.
As for the VHF bands - they are used for things like commercial radio 
stations, TV, police/fire/other communications, cordless phones, toy
cars, 
etc - it just doesn't make sense to have digital walkie-talkies when
ordinary 
ones work just fine.  The UHF bands are also occupied with various 
communications, TV, and other crap.  Once again, there's no need to do 
regular communications stuff over digital.  And 2.4 GHz and higher bands
make 
much more sense for that.   Now, switching over TV and radio over to
digital 
would make more sense, but then everyone would be very pissed because
they 
couldn't use their $5 radio crap radio to listen to them.  Just look at
how 
half-assed NTSC is because it was backwards-compatible with
black-and-white 
TV - and they probably realized that it would be half-assed when they 
developed it.
-- 
-- Igor
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