From the Trenches

3D, Mobile TV and Teletext
by  Mark Schubin  4.20.2009
 Standards do not a business make. More...

NAB: Why Go? You Never Know…
by  Mark Schubin  4.9.2009
Some things you can’t learn from the Internet  More...

Chop Phooey
by  Mark Schubin  2.11.2009
Cable, satellite, and telco retransmitters can’t afford to have someone watching each program segment and adjusting aspect ratio control on the fly, so they’re basically just setting ATSC receivers for one setting and leaving  More...

On the Verge of...
by  Mark Schubin  12.23.2008
PREDICTIONS | One Born Every Minute More...

Expecting the Unexpected
by  Mark Schubin  11.25.2008
The Value of a Master Control Operator More...

Business Abhors a Vacuum
by  Mark Schubin  9.27.2008
Opportunity knocks. Once upon a time, all television broadcasts were analog and live, and there were no cell phones. Today is different. Once upon a time, jet fuel was inexpensive, and the field was strictly regulated. With  More...

And Then There Was Berlin
by  Mark Schubin, JULY TVB  8.5.2008
Mark Schubin revisits the launch of Olympics TV coverage... in 1930s Berlin... with television canons... More...

3D Or Not 3D, That Is: The Question
by  Mark Schubin  7.5.2007
Sfumato is a lovely word. Nausea is not. Both are associated with human perception of imagery in depth. It’s commonly thought that two eyes are required for the visual sensation of distance, but that’s not entirely true. We  More...

The Magic Instant
by  Mark Schubin  5.30.2007
This much is known about February 17, 2009. It will be the 51st anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s naming St. Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television. Whether it will be the last day certain Americans get to watch the  More...

NAB2007: Why Bother?
by  Mark Schubin  4.5.2007
Next month, more than 100,000 people will converge on the Las Vegas Convention Center to attend the 2007 convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. Why? The NAB show is certainly the world’s largest exhibition of  More...

Standardizing Standards
by  Mark Schubin  2.15.2007
A show is being sent around the world. Everyone has agreed on the transmission standard. But in one country there's no audio, in another the picture goes black periodically and in a third the equipment says it's failing because  More...

Sorry, Wrong Number
by  Mark Schubin  1.11.2007
A couple of questions: Might it be possible for all of the electronic processing functions of a complete television studio to be reduced to a single chip? And, if so, might that chip also be able to implement the “ultimate  More...

Not Ready? Not Set?
by  Mark Schubin  12.19.2006
Twenty-five years ago, at the SMPTE Winter Conference in San Francisco, the modern form of HDTV was introduced to the United States. Not quite 20 years ago, the FCC began an inquiry into how to transmit it. Ten years ago, the  More...

The Ultimate Video-Compression System
by  Mark Schubin  11.10.2006
There have been many mentions in the press recently of a laser-based video display said to be so good, so inexpensive and with such a small appetite for power that it will render obsolete all other large-screen technologies,  More...