[HN Gopher] Why Channel 37 Doesn't Exist ___________________________________________________________________ Why Channel 37 Doesn't Exist Author : jonathankoren Score : 58 points Date : 2021-03-17 07:07 UTC (15 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vice.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com) | KoftaBob wrote: | "Channel 37 is an intentionally unused ultra-high frequency (UHF) | television broadcasting channel in the United States, Canada and | Mexico and some of Eurasian region. The frequency range allocated | to this channel is important for radio astronomy, so broadcasting | is not licensed. " | sedatk wrote: | TLDR: Because it was allocated for radio telescopes. | orf wrote: | tl;dr the band channel 37 would have used overlapped with a radio | telescope built after WW2. | 908087 wrote: | It's impressive that, as a species, we once chose science over | additional infomercials. | cbanek wrote: | (And What It Has to Do With Aliens) | | Hint: nothing. | | Why the need to bring aliens into it? I like how this isn't in | the topic here, because it's really clickbait. I didn't find one | mention of any talk about aliens in the whole thing. But it is a | great article about radio astronomy. | tantalor wrote: | It's never aliens. | [deleted] | Jtsummers wrote: | > Somehow the news got around that here was this new way of | listening to _little green men on Mars_. This is what radio | astronomy seemed to the ordinary public. And the FCC was | preventing it from being developed in the United States. We got | rumors, George particularly from friends he knew, that | gradually a huge accumulation of letters arrived at the FCC, | protesting against this nonsupport of this new science, | whatever it was. And that this finally persuaded the FCC that | they'd better give in. Nobody knows. [emphasis added] | | That's the part about aliens. McVittie's perception that the | popular understanding of radio astronomy (listening to | Martians) influenced the FCC decision (which, at least | officially as described in the next quote, was not the case). | [deleted] | the_mitsuhiko wrote: | Even odder is that central Europe had no channel 1. Everything | started offset at channel 2. Additionally in some countries a | channel 2A existed. | hollerith wrote: | The US, too, had no channel 1. (And my current cable TV | service, from Comcast, also has no channel 1.) | jedberg wrote: | There was a channel 1 briefly in a few places, but it turns out | that it wasn't a good spectrum for TV so it looked awful, so no | one wanted it. They didn't bother to renumber all the channels | though, so channel 1 just didn't get used (although it's | available as a virtual channel now). | beefman wrote: | Original story: https://tedium.co/2021/03/05/channel-37-radio- | telescope-hist... | beervirus wrote: | The first sentence of the article links to that. | minikites wrote: | >The tale of channel 37 reflects one thing: Without resistance, a | commercial use case will usurp a noncommercial use case for a | given resource. | | Capitalism needs a check in the form of a strong government | because without one, it will consume every available resource in | service of privatizing and charging for resources that used to be | available to all, like an economic plague. The joke can of | "Perri-Air" from Spaceballs will be our actual future if we don't | stop it. | causality0 wrote: | You could think of it that way. You could also think of it as | denying hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speaking New Jersey | residents programming in their native language in exchange for | the discovery of one new type of Active Galactic Nucleus and | two supernova remnants, from a telescope that only operated for | ten years and which the scientific community cared so little | about they didn't even bother fixing it when it eroded away in | 1970. | somehnguy wrote: | That seems like a particularly inflammatory way of looking at | it.. | | Why couldn't they use one of the other channels? Was there no | demand for such programming? Who was denying those options, | if anybody? | causality0 wrote: | _Because of FCC rules and limitations elsewhere, the city | of Paterson had no other options to bring a TV station on | air other than channel 37._ | | _The fun part about this is that McVittie, who helped to | set the wheels in motion for the blanket ban of channel 37 | in the U.S., never learned exactly why the FCC made the | decision to flip its mindset on this issue._ | | Racism? Against Latinos in 1963? Nah, couldn't be. | Jtsummers wrote: | The ban was precipitated by a case that happened to be a | Spanish language channel, but not all channel 37s would | have been in Spanish. The result was that a channel was | barred across the entire country. It's a big leap to say | that the official rationale is bogus and go to "FCC is | racist against Latinos and decided to bar the channel for | everyone". | quink wrote: | No one is bothering to fix Arecibo... | causality0 wrote: | https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/news/story/8-million- | appr... | | http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf | Falling3 wrote: | Sounds like a beautiful example of a false dichotomy. | is-ought wrote: | If only people would put on their masks and smell the fresh | air, right friend! | 1MachineElf wrote: | >it will consume every available resource in service of | privatizing and charging for resources that _used to be | available to all_ | | Minor nit-pick: I don't think the story is a good example of | your concept here. The radio telescope, regardless of what it | did for scientists, served fewer people than what commercial | use of channel 37 would have. | Pet_Ant wrote: | > The radio telescope, regardless of what it did for | scientists, served fewer people than what commercial use of | channel 37 would have. | | ...because the results of science never end up benefit normal | people? Science is forever whereas a television broadcast is | temporary. | eminence32 wrote: | Is a "strong government enough"? To quote the article: | | > The FCC's attempt to balance science and commerce was not | well-accepted by said scientists, who took their story to the | media. | | This suggests to me that the government had enough strength to | make an enforceable ruling, but very nearly made a ruling that | would have not prioritized science in the way that the radio | astronomers would have wanted. | | It took something else (public attention, persistent outreach | by scientists, etc) for the FCC to come to the ruling that it | ultimately came to. | Spooky23 wrote: | That's why democratic government is so powerful. | | If the VP for Channel Allocation at Marconi made that | decision, you would have no recourse at all. | drorco wrote: | A more recent similar case would be Starlink. Fast forward a few | years and the night sky will be filled with satellites disturbing | astronomers. It would be interesting to see how that one ends up. | My bet, more outer-space telescopes to compensate for all the new | disturbance. | beambot wrote: | That is the bargain... | | IIRC, StarShip will result in something like 1 Million tons of | annual launch capacity -- 3 orders of magnitude greater than | today. Commercial applications are required, and satellites | such as StarLink are a natural start. | | Meanwhile, some of that launch capacity can be used to build | space-based instruments for much cheaper. | | Overall, I'd call it a win. | psim1 wrote: | I remember an old TV set that had UHF channels from 14 to 83. How | is the exclusion of a single channel, 37, a problem for TV | broadcasters? | Jtsummers wrote: | Overlapping broadcast areas. It's one less channel to use for | deconflicting the need for broadcast spectrum and the desire to | have a broadcast channel while avoiding interference from | neighbors. | | They get at this with the New Jersey case, where in order for | the station to get a channel it had to be 37. Presumably this | was because of there being too many other broadcasters in the | area. It's been a long time since I studied radio so I can't | recall the specifics, but if there are 70 channels available | (total) in a specific area perhaps only half or a quarter of | them might be usable without producing interference with | others. | | EDIT: You also see this play out with conventional AM/FM | broadcasting. You typically won't find adjacent stations, like | 91.3 and 91.5, in the same area and when it happens (perhaps | you're on the edge between the two broadcast areas) you'll hear | one station bleeding into the other. | dylan604 wrote: | same principle applies to WiFi routers. That's why you look | at other channels being used in your aread, and then pick a | channel that has the least overlap with your neighbors. | astrange wrote: | Isn't being on the same channel as another network actually | OK-ish with newer standards? The worst is when you | partially overlap another channel. | anonymousiam wrote: | The concept of a "channel" on WiFi bands (particularly | 2.4GHz) is pretty much done. 802.11ac can use 80MHz of | spectrum on the 2.4 band, which is pretty much the entire | set of available channels all at once. | CameronNemo wrote: | Not everyone has an ac chipset. | anonymousiam wrote: | True, but if you live in a congested area, chances are | good that one of your neighbors does. I have a house in a | new community of "smart homes" where each home has two AC | WAPs. Every single 2.4GHz channel has several users. MIMO | helps, but 5GHz (or the new 6e band) are much more | preferable. | ralph84 wrote: | Unless you are in a rural area, trying to use an 80 MHz | channel in 2.4 GHz almost guarantees your radio is going | to spend far more time waiting to transmit because of | interference than doing anything useful. Finding the | least congested 20 MHz channel is likely to give higher | overall throughput. | anonymousiam wrote: | FM has a property known as "capture effect". The result is | that the stronger station will usually "capture" the PLL | (back when they used PLLs instead of SDRs for FM demod) and | you will not hear the adjacent station. It can become a | problem in a mobile environment (car stereo) when the signal | levels are constantly changing, but "bleeding" is a problem | usually associated with other modulation types (typically AM | and SSB). ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-17 23:00 UTC)