Fw: more info on Digital Broadcasting firsts....

[Joseph Pappalardo]

A few weeks back there was a discussion of a "Boston first" in regards to
digital broadcasting.

Someone who has trouble posting to the list sent this to me to be forwarded
about WGBH-FM's involvment.

JP

-----Original Message-----

Subject: more info


Here is some more info, which you can pass along.
I cannot post to that list.

The very first digital broadcast of a live concert from a concert hall to
WGBH Radio was in March 1985, to celebrate the 300th birthday of J S Bach.
It was also the first digital broadcast from behind the iron curtain.  It
originated from Leipzig (East) Germany and was encoded using Sony PCM
technology onto a video land line to West Germany.  Then the signal stayed
digitally encoded and went up to a satellite for reception by the BBC and
WGBH where it was decoded to
analog.

An interesting story is that inspite of political differences and language
barriers, everything went smoothly, except for  the  last mile - the part of
the signal path from
downtown Boston to WGBH...which was fortunately completed literally in the
last minute before air!

Anita McFadden travelled alone to East Germany and actually brought the
digital encoding equipment in her luggage.  It was not known if she would
get it thru customs, until she arrived there and saw what happened.

For the techies, Sony PCM had a competitor in dbx's digital encoding system
that WGBH used in later broadcasts including the Salzburg Festival
mentioned.  The dbx 700 also became the system used on WGBH Radio's digital
studio to transmitter link.