Capitol Connection Blog

“Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.”  Those were the words of now Chief Justice John Roberts as he introduced himself to the nation at his 2005 confirmation hearings.  The statement was a follow up to his analysis that, “judges are like umpires,” meaning that they [judges] do not make the rules, they simply apply them.  In the fall of 2012, however, Robert’s insights lose a bit of traction.  Okay, so maybe baseball fans still don’t watch the umpires that carefully, but we all now realize how valuable those professional football refs are! 

For those of us who are familiar with SWOT analysis, the exercise may seem rather simple; list the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with an existing service or new venture and voila! You’re able to make an insightful decision.  That’s it, right?  Not so fast.

While last Friday’s derecho storm left many of us sweltering in the dark without any means to phone or email, The Capitol Connection TV transmit system remained intact.  Our faithful engineers were able to check and monitor the signals immediately reporting that everything was working just fine.  Due to the strong winds and lightening, however, some buildings may have experienced damage to the roof equipment resulting in a loss of the individual signal to those properties.  With the 4^th of July falling in the middle of the week, we suspect many of our customers had already arranged time off and have not yet checked their service.   We have reached out to customers in some of our larger buildings and have so far not found any problems.  We have also, however, heard from a handful of customers in other buildings who report a loss of signal and we have sent technicians out to repair the damage.

As many building owners, managers and engineers already know, The Capitol Connection offers our TV service via a “line of sight” microwave system that utilizes roof top antennas.  When installing our service into a new or re-designed building, we are often asked how our roof antennas work with “green roofs.”  The answer is, PERFECTLY! One shining example of the partnership between The Capitol Connection and green roof technology is the Washington DC headquarters of our patron, The World Wild Life Fund located at 1250 24^th Street, NW.  The secret to our successful green roof integration is the usage of non-penetrating mounts as well as compact receive-only antennas that unobtrusively grab out signal.  In many instances, we can also attach our antenna to the side of a building, thereby avoiding the roof altogether.  For more information about how our installations work, please visit our website at http://capitolconnection.org/cable-propmanagers/ or call our offices directly at 703-993-3100 and ask for Danelle Springer or Dave Reininger. 

Since June 13, 2009 all full power television broadcasters have been beaming their programming via a digital format. That format, which replaced the analog NTSC signal, is called ATSC. ATSC is an acronym for Advanced Television Systems Committee. Learn more about the ATSC at www.atsc.org. All televisions sold in recent years incorporate an ATSC digital tuner. A second digital format, QAM, is the standard for cable television.