[QuadList] DTV Express & Sarnoff experiences (was 'Re: Sarnoff Corp--DTV Express-Ping James Snyder')

[James Snyder]

A little off our usual subject of quads & old video, but here are a 
few memories:

Actually I was working for Harris Broadcast as part of the Harris/PBS 
DTV Express.  I worked for Sarnoff on a variety of projects involving 
DTV from 1995 to 2002 (working mostly with Jeremy Pollack), mostly 
demonstrations of digital television for the Congress, network 
engineering meetings (NBC at the Willard Hotel comes to mind), local 
TV station demonstrations, MSTV demonstrations, and as part of the 
Model HDTV Station WHD-TV project (I also worked with the model 
station when I was working for John Turner, fellow list member and 
owner of Turner Engineering, and while at the PBS DTV Group at 
various times).  I had gotten to know the folks from Sarnoff 
(including Jeremy and Norm Hurst, fellow list member) originally as 
part of their work with the Grand Alliance proposed digital 
television system (which is now the ATSC standard) when I worked for 
the Advanced Television Test Center in Alexandria, VA.  The early 
days of digital TV were fun and a lot of hard work.  I also got to 
work for the PBS Advanced Television Field Test Project (where Ed 
Williams from PBS was my boss) and the CEA (with Ralph Justis) in 
addition to Sarnoff and Turner Engineering.

DTV Express:
The truck was decommissioned at Harris Broadcast in Mason, Ohio 
(within eyesight of the WLW tower!) in July, 1999.  Sometime in early 
2000 it was refitted as a production truck and from I understand is 
still on the road.  I don't recall with whom at the moment, but it 
was one of the first HD trucks ever built.

I do miss the truck dearly.  Not only did I work with a remarkable 
group of people at Harris & PBS, and met an amazing number of people 
as part of the education component of the DTV Express, but we had an 
amazing asset in the first full double expanding trailer ever built. 
It was a real bitch opening and closing it manually!  I pulled more 
than a few muscles.

The truck had two sections: the 'station side' and the 'home side':
The home side was a small living room type setting with a number of 
flat panel (which were quite rare at the time) and tube sets, plus 
examples of devices that could decode multicasts or ancilliary data 
as well.  We could decode our own ATSC transmissions using the 
internal RF network fed from the exciters, or from an off-air antenna 
if the market had stations on the air.

The station side was the first end-to-end, fully integrated digital 
television facility ever built.  We had digital SD and HD cameras, 
5.1 audio mixing system, digital recording and playback both on 
server and tape, SD and HD ATSC encoding (our Philips SD encoders 
could do DVB-T encoding as well), transport stream recorders, 
production-model ATSC exciters (we were the first DTV station in at 
least one market I can recall) and ATSC decoders as well.  I recorded 
a collection of transport streams (on Sencore servers) as we went 
around the country (ask me about 'broom-tenna' and 'stair-tenna' if 
you ever meet me in person), and still have some of the earliest 
off-air DTV recordings from that time (WRAL, WKPT, KHOU and others) 
on hard drive.  The Harris Flexicoder was the first encoder to encode 
compliant EIA 708 captions at NAB 1999, and decoded them live with a 
Panasonic DTV receiver with a fresh software rev written and debugged 
just for the purpose that served as the basis for 708 decoding from 
then on (ask Gerry Field of APTV, who was working for NCAM at the 
time, about that funfest!).  We experimented with many of the video 
and audio multiplexing changes that became common place in DTV today, 
along with many that didn't because they just didn't work.

I taught the DTV Studio Technology course, a 1 1/2 day introduction 
to everything starting with cameras and microphones all the way 
through the production process to encoded MPEG-2 and AC-3 in ATSC 
transport streams presented to the 8VSB exciter.  Ed Williams took it 
from there with the RF course.

We were on the road for three weeks, with one week home every month. 
We would arrive in each city on Sunday night/Monday morning.  We 
would set up the truck on Monday, hold our courses on Tuesday and 
Wednesday in a classroom (usually the large TV studio of the host 
station), teach in the station side of the truck on Thursday and wrap 
up by noon.  If we were in a state capital or at an industry 
function, we would host VIPs M-Th, and wrap up the truck on Thursday 
or early on Friday (if we were doing any tests).  We hosted quite a 
few governors, legislators, and commercial and public broadcasting 
managers.  For those of us who went home for the weekend (folks with 
families mostly) they departed on Friday.  Some of us stayed on the 
road for the weekend, and I usually toured other stations in each 
market or met vendors or station folks.  Sometime I toured local 
tourist sites if I had the time.

We also had a cramped but wonderful tour bus.  We would many times 
ride between tour stops on the bus, share its 3 sleeping bunks, and 
the small cramped office in the back.  Bud Cort was our tour bus 
driver.

Some of the wonderful folks I worked with on the DTV Express:
Graham Jones (my boss for DTVE, and just retired from the NAB and 
enjoying retirement)
Jud French (the project manager for Harris)
Ed Williams (a PBS engineer at the time, and the teacher of the 8VSB 
transmission course)
Bob Diehl (the lead engineer on the tour, I think still at the Golf Channel)
John Merli (teacher of the business course, now a columnist for TV 
Technology & others)
Brett Farmer (crew leader)
Galen Collins (crew member)
Tim Frederick (crew member)
Kelly Chmielewski (from PBS, doing tour & site PR)
Joaly Alcala (tour leader and site people wrangler, now with L'Oreal in NYC)
Holly Dunton (office manager)
Jerry Butler (project manager for PBS)
Bea Morse (from PBS)
Mike Simon (a guest lecturer, then with Harris, now with Rhode & Schwarz)
Michel Proulx (a guest lecturer, now CTO of Miranda)

I'm sorry to say I don't remember everybody without looking them up 
anymore!  Funny how memories fade over time.

It was a sigularly wonderful experience that has shaped my career and 
work since then.  I still teach an updated version of the original 
DTV class to people several times a year.  While it was tough being 
on the road for long periods of time, it was worth it for the 
experiences I gained and people I met on the project.  I'm glad to 
say that a number of our tapes and transport stream recordings 
survive today at my current employer, the Library of Congress.  I had 
just as wonderful time working for Sarnoff, Turner Engineering, the 
PBS FTP, the PBS DTV Group, CEA and the ATTC, and consider myself 
very lucky to have been a participant in the development and rollout 
of digital television in the United States.  On this Thanksgiving 
day, I thank everyone who made those experiences possible and hope I 
get to see them again soon!

In the meantime, I'm off to have turkey with my family.  Happy 
Thanksgiving to everyone else!

James

>James Snyder can regale us with stories as he has time. He was 
>working for Sarnoff as part of the DTV Express.
>
>Ted
>
>On Nov 25, 2010, at 12:43 PM, Dennis Degan wrote:
>
>>
>>		On Nov 24, 2010, at 7:08 PM, Norman Hurst wrote:
>>
>>>  The Sarnoff Museum was dismantled and removed.  I believe it was 
>>>moved to TCNJ, the College of New Jersey.
>>
>>		I offer:
>>
>>	The last I saw of the museum was in 1999 at the Sarnoff facility.  
>>The 'DTV Express' was staging its "Get Acquainted With Digital TV" 
>>Tour.  We travelled down Route 1 to Sarnoff just to see the mobile 
>>unit which had been touring the country.  Sarnoff Labs was open to 
>>the public that day as well and we also explored the museum.  Among 
>>other artifacts, I saw on a shelf an experimental color CRT most 
>>likely made in 1952 or so.  It was fun seeing the old equipment 
>>while just outside in the parking lot was the future of broadcast 
>>TV.  I wonder what happened to the 'DTV Express'?
>>
>>			Dennis Degan, Video Editor-Consultant-Knowledge Bank
>>	 					NBC Today Show, New York
>>
>>
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>
>Ted Langdell
>Secretary
>
>
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