[ale] Wandering OT: Re: Car PC's and internet radio?

[James P. Kinney III]

How does the radio get approved for use? How does it get approved for
any type of subscription reception? What is to stop someone from
canceling their subscription and still using the radio receiver? 

There has to be a mechanism that activates the radio based on a
predefined set of unique identifiers. Or is there a method that can
disable the radio by a satellite signal that is used to turn it off in
the event of subscription non-payment. Or is it required to plug in a
phone line or USB cable from an Internet connected PC?

On Tue, 2007-04-17 at 23:09 -0400, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> Dale Heatherington wrote:
> > Relax.
> > Satellite radio is like AM or FM or TV broadcasting - IT'S ONE->  
> > WAY.  
> Do you know this as fact, or are you presuming it?  Can you point me to
> a specification or, better yet, otherwise demonstrate that it's
> downlink-only?
> > The broadcaster cannot know which programs or channels you  
> > listen to.  
> Ditto?
> > A single datastream from the satellite is received by all  
> > the radios.  Nothing is transmitted back.  The radios are "receive- 
> > only".
> >   
> Ditto, ditto, ditto?  I'm sure they *appear* to be downlink-only. 
> 
> I've never used a satellite radio and I haven't had a chance to examine
> one outside or inside (I might be able to *tell* if it could transmit if
> I took one apart).  I don't *know* if they can transmit; I am simply
> wondering out loud if they do.
> 
> I should point out that there have been satellite phones for years; they
> manage to do two-way duplex voice, using a handheld unit with a battery
> and a tiny antenna.  All the XM radio uplink would have to do is
> transmit receiver identification and channel selection data occasionally
> - and it could take its time doing so.
> > This is much more efficient than any sort of cell phone radio  
> > "broadcasting" with a 2 way datastream for each and every subscriber  
> > - what a massive waste of bandwidth!  
> Again, you're comparing my apple to your orange.  XM radios that act
> like I'm suggesting have a transmission rate profile very unlike that of
> a cell phone.
> > Satellite radios bandwidth  
> > requirement is constant regardless of the subscriber count.
> I propose that if my hypothesis is correct, what you are saying here is
> close to correct; "constant" would be a lower bound.  In practice, if
> different content is shunted to different people on a single channel,
> then the downlink bandwidth would scale slightly with subscriber base
> size.  They would certainly realize that subscriber base size has an
> upper bound, albeit one that has been growing near-exponentially (which
> is clearly not sustainable).
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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