26 Jul
2001
26 Jul
'01
6:04 a.m.
Ethan Dicks wrote:
[snip]
There is a transmitter in Colorado, but I am not aware
of any hobby
projects
to take advantage of it. They did start building VCRs
that could set
themselves off of a time signal broadcast over PBS stations, but I think I
heard something about that being a failed program and being discontinued
at some point. When I heard about it, it suggested to me that if the
atomic clock radio signal had good propgation characteristics, they would
have used that instead of a time signal from a TV station, but perhaps
it's
more an issue of Daylight Savings Time.
[snip]
Actually, it's an issue of local time; having to enter a timezone or
timezone offset would have defeated the concept of a VCR that "set itself".
I believe the signal was (as with everything else) tossed somewhere in the
VIR and was broadcast by both commercial and PBS stations -- although by
far PBS had the greatest number of stations.
The system was problematic for two reasons: (a) oftentimes the stations
didn't maintain the timekeeping equipment (as in "the box is dead",
must less that the time had drifted and (b) much more subtly, in many
parts of the US the VCR would select a reference that was in a different
timezone than the user. This would result in the clock being off by an
hour (or for some folks in Arizona, off by an hour for part of the year).
--
Chris Kennedy
chris(a)mainecoon.com
http://www.mainecoon.com
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97