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CASE REPORT: CATV Video Data System



  
  Just a comment here amidst the torrent, apropos of Curtis PriestUs
  question:
  
  >If cable modems are a fraud, why is it that LANCity:
  >1.  Sold 100,000 frauds to Continental Cablevison
  > 2.  And contracted for manufacture of 1,000,000 of these frauds?
  
  and Wayne WedemeyerUs reference to:
  
  >R.a Cable TV system that can carry 'data' and videoS,
  
  thought you might like a case history report:
  
  I built such a system in 1984 for a planned community in Tucson, Arizona
  called Cobblestone that covered about 5 sq. miles.  Our engineer 
  was Roy Knappenberger and our company  was The Icon Corporation 
  and we just did what seemed logical.  Solving the analog-digital 
  coexistence problems was quite possible even that long ago.  
  
  General Instruments was so proud to participate that they put our system 
  plan on the cover of their parts catalog.  I managed it until 1989 when I 
  sold the company.  It purred along well, providing (at that time) 17 
  channels of TV, continuous data survey of individual home security 
  systems, an interactive database about emergency health concerns and 
  security instructions for each individual resident, voice (private phone) 
  communication between all homes and the front gate and an upstream-
  downstream community video conferencing system, allowing each
  household to have full voice/video communications with their 
  neighbors if they wished. 
  
  For us, a small group of analog-digital pragmatists who didnUt know it 
  would take 13 years for the idea to shake kingdoms of capital, it was just 
  a logical way to run an information utility.  So we did.  
  
  Our heart was really into producing interactive television accompanied
  by interactive digital data information, and once you solve those 
  problems, spreading out geographically is mainly a business organization
  issue.  I donUt think it is technology that has hindered proliferation of
  these services.  It has to do with market turf, capital and vision.
  
  Patric Hedlund
  Computers, Freedom & Privacy Video Project
  cfpvideo@well or hedlund@forests.com
  www.forests.com/cfpvideo
  Dendrite Forest, Inc.
  310 455-3915 * P.O. Box 912
  Topanga, CA 90290