ABC X-Digtial Rcvr.

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:12 pm

Who's got their ABC X-Digital receiver installed?

Anyone ready to strangle ABC engineering's New Delhi (help) desk?

Am I the only one?

Just wondering.

(They want the thing installed before the baseball broadcasts, but they haven't even finished the manual yet.)

I wouldn't mind having at least SOME of the functionality of the Starguides considering this is supposed to be its replacement.

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:55 pm

They are changing receivers????

News to me. So who has to change? What services? And who makes this one?

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 9:35 am

Tom Taggart wrote:They are changing receivers????
News to me. So who has to change? What services? And who makes this one?

You didn't get your call from ABC-Bangladesh?
ABC is beginning the rollout for the replacement of their Starguide III receivers with the new X-Digital XDS Pro.
ABC O&Os and ESPN Radio affiliates are getting the first of the rollout.
Within a year, all ABC formats and satellite service channels will be delivered via this receiver. (One of the reasons for the recent AMC-8 transponder power-drop). It has a PAD output but no instructions as of yet. This box reports back to the "mother-ship" via the internet and there's a bit of hush as to what it reports...but there is a built-in off-air monitor.

http://www.xdigital.com/pages.asp?ID=510

To permission the receiver,
1. one has to connect to the satellite dish
2. configure the LAN/WAN port and let it suckle off of your internet bandwidth.
3. enter the serial # and a password generated via ABC/NOC from the recevier,
4. log into ABC's affiliate site, enter these parameters (it sometimes works)
5. review the services in which ABC THINKS you need to be permissioned
6. schedule the services into the receiver
7. map the netcues to 36 closure outputs
8. map and schedule your audio services to one of the four audio ports
9. live in high-technology bliss with your cute little ABC logo.

The recevier has 30 minutes of recording, store-and-forward, and spot-repacement capabilities.

Two problems.
1. There only a "quick start" manual in existance - the ABC techs haven't seen a real technical/operations manual - nor is there one on the web.
2. I'm getting concerned because there is no syntax to get this thing remote-controlled via RS-232. No manual...no commands. It goes live in a couple of weeks.

Wouldn't it be nice to have at least the capabilities of the Starguide III?
There's nothing in print...so who knows?

Quite the impovement.

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 12:49 pm

Looks like the damm geeks are changing things just for the hell of it.

This is the same piece of junk they are sending to the Jones affiliates. Changing the satellite has nothing to do with it. Just some clown in IT who doesn't like it because it is "ancient" technology---more than 2 years old.

Problems already crop up where the program is on AM and there is not enough signal at night to feed the receiver. Some folks are using little modulators fed by the program line to keep the stupid thing happy.

36 closures???? Already have a problem with the bozos at Simian who can't get my Broadcast Tools GPI to work with new version. They want to peddle the little Measurment computing USB device (which is 24 trigger lines) or even the Broadcast Tools box which only has 8 lines.

With 24 I just make it between the 12 used by the ABC AC and Premier's Delilah 9 triggers. The more closures, the more somebody gets overly creative.

genlock · Post by **genlock** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 1:31 pm

If any of you are on the "Pubtech" reflector, you may be aware of the chaos that surrounds the rollout of Content Depot. Content Depot is the new satellite/internet distribution system for NPR. Apparently it was the brainchild of computer/IT personnel who were never in a radio station. They are already a couple years behind in their schedule. As always with government projects, they are over budget.

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 2:43 pm

My question...

Is it too much to ask to get a complete manual before installation?

Those of us on planet-radio-earth would like to interface this puppy with their automation system.

genlock · Post by **genlock** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 3:23 pm

Looks like 24 closures would be enough.
How much is binary 24 anyway?

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:46 pm

The Starguide has 16 closures per "channel" )i.e., stereo program card, via an add-on board. The basic audio card has 4 relay closures.

RE: Genlock's comment--many talk networks just use the basic audio card with the four closures, but ABC's and Premier's music feeds use more closures. Delilah uses 10 closures, while my ABC AC feed uses 12.

This is box is an imitation Starguide, at least it uses DB9 connectors for audio and db37 for the relay contacts, instead of those terrible little "euroblock" connectors where you shove the bare wires into the slot and fram on the miniature screws (and hope the wires stay in place when you shove it into the rack).

However, I can put everything I need for my two stations in one Starguide:

2 stereo program feeds with add-on relay card; plus one audio card for ABC news, and a second card for MRN/PRN.

Since I have an extra audio card now, this allows me to swap things around in case of a receiver failure. Question: I assume that ABC is not planning to mess around with its digital encoding format in the near future, so presumably the Starguides should still work? ABC has a bunch of regional nets as well as national contract feeds such as NASCAR, it would not make that much sense to try to buy new boxes for the zillions of 500 watt daytimers that carry NASCAR.

The operative phrases from the web site are"PROFESSIONAL GRADE FOR A CONSUMER PRICE" and--under "Features", the first bullet point: "Low Cost". I'll bet the plug-in radio that they use is one of these "one-chip wonders" that requires a 5 mv signal to work.

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:52 am

Thought...since this new box is supposedly to cure problems caused by ABC's need to cut back their carrier (an obviously bogus explanation, if there ever was one), does this box appear to have any better front end than the Starguide?

With the Starguides, some of the problems come down to set-up. My ABC receivers start to have problems with an EB of 10 or lower, while my Premier Starguide is happy with an EB around 5.

The Premier has been running, despite my best efforts, no higher than 10 because of TI. Premier is on a split carrier at 4.127 ghz, while there is an MCI microwave path aimed right at us on 4.130. I thought that the Premier folks had simply furdiddled the display so that 10 E.B. was equivalent to a 13 or so. But no, we finally got the MCI carrier turned off, and the Premier receiver now sits at 12 like the ABC units.

So I suspect a clever Starguide tech could tweak the ABC units (as needed) to live with lower carrier levels.

genlock · Post by **genlock** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:15 am

Delilah uses 10 closures.
Seems like a lot.
Why so many?

Tom Taggart · Post by **Tom Taggart** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 10:26 am

I just had to re-wire the triggers yesterday, (long story follows).

There's one for the start of a local break.
There's one for the top of the hour ID
There are four different triggers for the 11 second net rejoin.
There is a five second liner trigger
There is a three second jingle trigger
There is a trigger for skipping a 27 second drop (sob story telephone call);
Then there is a clock reset trigger to keep the computer clock on time.

We use nine of the ten triggers, relying upon the ABC clock reset for timing.

Here's the long story:

We've had problems since affiliating with Delilah because of TI on our hill. The engineer from a neighboring station arrived one day last year with a role of 1/2 inch cable that I thought my former business partner had "donated" to the ham radio club.

The other station's STL to their AM is at our site (we sold them the AM), but that's just the second hop, the first hop is off-air from their FM, via SCA. The engineer proposed that he could use the 225 foot length of coax to install an STL receive antenna at the top of our tower. Inspiration struck, and I proposed that we share costs & I put in a hop from their studio as well to back-up Delilah (since they have a Premier receiver for other programs).

Problem: How to get ten triggers 15 miles through an STL. Solution:
Touch-tone encoder and decoder on an SCA on the STL. So I bought the encoder and decoders, and wired them between the Premier receiver and the computer trigger input to see if this would work. It did, so I left it in place.

Meanwhile, the STL project stalled. I got my end ready but nothing happened on the other end. And the MCI TI got worse, blanking out Premier entirely. So Friday I pulled out the encoder/decoders to use on a new project--sending triggers from the XCR Starguide to the 93R computer as a back-up. Lot easier to pull one pair between studios, then to run the triggers directly. Less problem with RF as well. Intended to hardwire the triggers next week while we worked on MCI to kill the carrier. Just after I snipped the last wire, MCI called--they were killing the carrier.

So yesterday I was busy wiring up the Delilah triggers directly into the computer. And in pops the engineer from the other station, wondering if our end was ready for the STL (his off-air feed died on him--bad connection). He gets to work on that next week.

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 6:03 pm

Tom Taggart wrote:I just had to re-wire the triggers yesterday, (long story follows).

So yesterday I was busy wiring up the Delilah triggers directly into the computer. And in pops the engineer from the other station, wondering if our end was ready for the STL (his off-air feed died on him--bad connection). He gets to work on that next week.

O.K. so that got you to 9:05am. What did you do with the REST of your day. Geez, I hope you had a remote or something to keep you occupied.

ABC - Bangladesh called today and asked if we were in posession of our new satellite receiver/toy. I said, "Yes, it's installed; the ABC web-interface site doesn't have any of the permissioning ready and there is no user's manual". "Other than that it looks real cute displaying the EB/NO and the ABC logo with the test-channel playing in the background in all of it's squishy-compressed glory".

She was really sympathetic and empathizes with my concerns. She will pass my concerns on to her supervisor (Raji), and will be calling REAL soon.

I'll get one of the first Pigeon-English manuals printed as soon as the rice-paper dries.

Big Media · Post by **Big Media** » Tue Feb 20, 2007 10:22 pm

EB/NO.... I have see that before. I assume it is a signal strength indicator but what does that mean (stand for)?

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:35 am

fanofbigmedia wrote:EB/NO.... I have see that before. I assume it is a signal strength indicator but what does that mean (stand for)?

The ratio of Energy per Bit (Eb) to the Spectral Noise Density (No).

I mean...come on...get with the program!

Seriously, it's just a catch-all equation that gives you a basic measurement as to how strong a digital signal is.

Each digital modulation type (QPSK, QUAM, BPSK) has an associated optimum Eb/N0 reading. You can plug it in to formulas to calculate satellite link-budget, carrier to noise ratios, desired bit-error rate, ect. At the receiver-end it can loosely be defined as "what you've got - zeroes and ones".

The People's DJ · Post by **The People's DJ** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 9:07 am

Tom Taggart wrote: This is the same piece of junk they are sending to the Jones affiliates.

Don't even get me started on that damn thing.

<threadjack> I just had to say that this

is fuckin' funny.</threadjack>

Rock · Post by **Rock** » Wed Feb 21, 2007 5:55 pm

Well, all this talk will cure me of picking up any ABC programming. It's bad enough with Jones threatening to swap out our receiver. Thank God that most Premiere shows use a 'start break' and 'legal'. Gotta love those 0 and 1 relays!!!!!

djMatty · Post by **djMatty** » Thu Feb 22, 2007 1:01 am

Rock wrote:Well, all this talk will cure me of picking up any ABC programming. It's bad enough with Jones threatening to swap out our receiver. Thank God that most Premiere shows use a 'start break' and 'legal'. Gotta love those 0 and 1 relays!!!!!

Doesnt clear channel own some interest in Starguide? I cant remeber I thought maybe they did but maybe I could be wrong, so at least maybe its less likely that Clear Channel Satellite will move from Starguide to this new cute box. (hey at least Clear Channel has not outsourced their Help Desk to India yet!)

What ever happened to "if it's not broke?"

Rock · Post by **Rock** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:32 am

I'm not exactly sure of their part in it, but it's big. You buy SG3s from CC. Relay cards, etc. too.

Cameron · Post by **Cameron** » Fri Mar 02, 2007 7:53 am

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL MLB AND NBA ON ESPN RADIO AFFILIATES:

In the next six weeksÂ ABC/ESPN Radio willÂ be sending Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio affiliates a brand new state-of-the-art XDSÂ satellite receiver. This receiver is engineered by the same team that brought you the Starguide your stationÂ currentlyÂ uses.Â BenefitsÂ of this new receiver will be; the ability toÂ manage programming needs using a web browser, memory included to record and playback programming right off the receiver, no separate download of spots, handle up to four stations, and very little set up time.

This XSD satellite receiver needs to be installed and operational in time for the start of the 2007 MLB on ESPN Radio season, which begins in early April.

March 2...receiver installed with ABC test-channel blaring. No manual. No permissioning. No indication of the afforementioned before first MLB broadcast on April 1. (No serial-commands for channel-changes either).