Interesting. I prefer to homebrew all my own equipment, if possible. Or, at the very least, put together a kit. But, I guess modulating over one or two varicaps just isn't going to cut it as far as ATSC is concerned, and at 700MHz, my techniques would fail.
Amazing, really, since just a few years ago nothing like this was available with anything approaching a consumer-friendly price. $400-600 plus PC is still a bit steep, but a lot better than the 4 and 5 digit offerings of the past. Add an amp and filter and you're in business. Guess I need to start learning a circuit layout program. Are distributed elements used at this freq? Hmm...
The USRP series was among the first affordable ones. The HackRF is about ~$300.
Well, the KVDO license I was using got surrendered back to the FCC by the licensee, so TVJoe.net is now just a stream.
Curious. How are you running this stream? DO you host it yourself? With pee-to-peer systems like WebRTC coming about, I may consider streaming H.264 720p video along with the broadcast signal.
Speaking of the broadcast signal, I have managed clean 1080p24 over ATSC. It looks very good, and I still had 5.1 sound to boot. Seeing as we are stuck with MPEG-2/AC3, it would be important for aspiring DTV broadcasters to understand how it works. I have been meaning to upload my code, I have a github... I'll post here once I do.
I would love to get NTSC working in GNURadio though, The signal generation isn't the issue at all, it's extracting the information from digital video that is providing to be a PITA.
Some very exciting news. I have been doing some reading, and have managed to get the following working:
- EPG (Electronic Program Guide) with rating, and extended descriptions. - Extended channel information.
I am now working on a web-based front-end to automatically generate EPGs with this info. This should be a huge help not only to my "community" television effots, but anyone else who doesn't want to pay out of the nose for something as simple as this. No professional "PSIP generators" needed here.
Pretty much the only PSIP table missing now, is the time table. As this kind of code and info doesn't seem to be available; I will be posting my findings and code on my github: github.com/jowijo/Opencaster-ATSC