This encyclopedic reference appears to do a good job of spanning the tremendous range of technology comprising satellite transmission and reception ("transception"); head-end organization; regional and "last mile" distribution; and set-top box technology, steering (unfortunately) way clear of the hardware, firmware, and software issues associated with providing modern unidirectional and bidirectional digital services atop multiple tuners in home network (including up-and-coming IPTV) environments supporting slavable hard drives. HOWEVER, being an electrical engineer and, therefore, having naturally started with the chapter on modulation and analog detection, I was WOEFULLY disappointed. It is fine to author mathematical treatments with a heavy hand ("It is imperative that one understand ...," etc.), but one had better know what one is talking about. This is clearly not the case. Where mathematics are presented as putative groundwork for some forthcoming exposition, they are erroneous and weak. Irrelevant theorems from high-school trigonometry are cited as if they are the be-all and end-all of signal analysis. The description of run-of-the-mill Fourier analysis is flawed and terminologically imprecise. The Nyquist theorem is casually referred to as "Harry Nyquist's rule" and cited as if it were a side-effect rather than a vital principle--a principle that is clearly way beyond the authors' understanding, insofar as I never saw any development of the sampling theorem or the expansion of bandlimited functions in terms of sinc (no, NOT sync) pulses. Now, when I studied communication systems, it was critical to have a crystalline understanding of how the signal and power spectra morphed as one proceeds from block to block throughout the (analog or digital) system. Yet, the authors are unable to do this, muffing through vague mention of "X Hz of single sideband and Y Hz of double sideband" and obfuscatory, misleading diagrams of time-domain phenomena accompanied with similarly vague notions of orthogonal this or quadrature that but--you guessed it--steering clear of any precise mathematical exposition (a la Hilbert transforms or diagrams that clearly indicate signal spectra, satellite spectra, aliased sidelobes, etc.) while fumbling through discussions of "two layers" of filtering that attempt to lump transmission "filtering" and reception "filtering" into one logical task without asserting or fully executing any conceptual paradigm whereby the one logically inverts the other. Where is the sampling theorem? Where is the fundamental mathematical expression of amplitude modulation? Where is a clear diagram that demonstrates how the I, Q, and L analog TV signals are multiplexed? Why is there discussion of envelope detection without any mention of the Schwarz inequality? "Constellations" of QAM, QPSK, etc., "signals" are diagrammed without the merest mention of what one is actually looking at, viz., message vectors in Kotelnikoff space based upon an eigenvalue expansion achieved via Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization. What really blew me away, though, was--brief though it was--the most nonsensical statement of all: The authors were discussing various directions in digital compression, and I saw a subchapter heading entitled, "Fractals." I said to myself, "Wow! That's great! I wonder what they've managed and how." Well, the "explanation" was nothing more than, "Fractals are really useful; the only problem is in figuring out the equations." That's like a math student telling his teacher, "I've got the solution to the problem! The only thing I'm missing is the detailed algebraic expansion!"

Well done compilation that is approachable while covering a lot of ground. If you need one book that touches on all the technology aspects of the cable industry and can fit on your bookshelf, this is it. I highly recommend it.

This book is a remarkable survey of a very broad field. It is necessarily somewhat superficial in its coverage of some of the more abstruse topics, but provides the necessary essentials an engineer needs to operate in the cable television environment. Unlike mere compendia of archival publications, this book has a consistent pedagogical viewpoint and notation. It is oriented towards practicing engineers, providing just enough theory to support successful problem solving. I recommend it to anyone working in the field.

In a quick growing market, and with daily technological improvements like cable television, the lack of a thoroughly comprehensive compilation was being noticed. This book, a kind of Bible for that specific area of telecommunications engineering, could approach a vast variety of technical and operational issues for the CATV industry. A vade mecum (lat. ýgoes with meý, means essential) for every CATV engineer or technician.

The text covers the subject of cable television from an introductory level up to engineering levels. I particularly liked the coverage of current issues in cable, such as Impulse pay per view. The chapter on modulation was informative. With my physics background I was happy to see the book has a good scattering of equations. An equation is indispensable in many situations.