FCC Approves Next-Gen ATSC 3.0 TV Standard (reuters.com) 158
New submitter mikeebbbd writes: "U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more data about viewing habits," reports Reuters. ATSC3.0 will apparently make personal data collection and targeted ads possible. New TVs will be necessary, and broadcasters will need to transmit both ATSC 2.0 (the current standard) for 3 to 5 years before turning off the older system. For now, the conversion is voluntary. There appears to be no requirement (as there was when ATSC 2.0 came out) for low-cost adapter boxes to make older TVs work; once a channel goes ATSC 3.0-only, your old TV will not display it any more.
Goodbye TV (Score:4, Insightful)
" make personal data collection and targeted ads possible."
You can go F yourself right there and then.
Re:Goodbye TV (Score:4, Interesting)
" make personal data collection and targeted ads possible."
You can go F yourself right there and then.
Thankfully I stopped watching TV about a decade and a half ago so I won't have to go 'cold turkey' like some people I know who watch TV anytime they aren't actively doing something that would preclude it. A friend just spent around $3.5-$4K for this huge, curved, super-high-resolution/4K-blah-blah-blah monster "smart" TV that takes up an entire side of a not-small living room. I told him "you should have asked me to help research it for you first", as he knows I'm far, far more tech-savvy and usually does ask with most "tech" things, but he got excited at the store and made an impulse buy.
Not sure I want to be the one to tell him it's already nearly obsolete. He's still in shock about the privacy issues with such an "always listening/watching smart-TV" that I both told him and emailed him links to relevant information about.
Strat
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Re:Goodbye TV (Score:4, Informative)
I don't get it. How is his TV nearly obsolete?
From TFS: "New TVs will be necessary, and broadcasters will need to transmit both ATSC 2.0 (the current standard) for 3 to 5 years before turning off the older system."
Granted, 3-5 years may not exactly be "almost nearly obsolete" depending on how you define it, but somewhere around a $4K investment should, to many people's way of thinking, last longer than their kid's goldfish.
Strat
Re: Goodbye TV (Score:3)
TFS is also full of shit. Your current TV will work with a cablebox-like external tuner just fine. The TV's INTERNAL tuner will be useless, but you can just ignore it.
In theory, an external ATSC3.0 tuner can use the HDMI CEC stream to implement features like "turn the TV on in an emergency"... but it probably will require 6 hours of online research, an hour or two of configuration, and enough luck to have a TV whose mfr. DIDN'T botch its implementation of things like HDMI-CEC (the way AVR mfrs. TOTALLY fuck
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>"(the way AVR mfrs. TOTALLY fucked up HDMI audio passthrough and sold dysfunctional gear advertising support for it for 2-3 years, circa 2009-2012, before finally getting it right)."
I am one of those victims. And my $9,000 gear is only a few years old, so it wasn't solved in 2013 at all, not even 2014, or 2015. High-end Samsung TV, high-end Pioneer amplifier (among the various components). Countless hours on the phone with support with both companies, each blaming each other. Could NEVER get return
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FCC under Ajit Pai has gone completely off its nut, and people should really be up in arms about this kind of garbage.
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I certainly wasn't planning on replacing my own primary TV any time soon and it wasn't even that expensive. I also don't relish the idea of wasting an input either. I already have plenty of stuff hooked up to it.
I certainly don't want to waste an entire input on "emergency TV" viewing.
Some of the controls on newer smart TVs are just insane. They're like the guys at Apple decided to take acid. Very bad attempts at being Apple-esque.
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Eh, it's like DVD and BlueRay. Once content has been ripped to the standard [wikipedia.org] it'll play fine on all your devices won't force you to watch ads and won't collect your data. Think of the groups that do it as like a firewall or something.
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The article was misleading. 1) You wont be required to buy a new TV, at most, a new tuning adapter. 2) The ads targeting is nonsense. Broadcast is not bidirectional. All you need to do is not plug the TV into the internet and it can't happen. Also, you don't think its happening when you use YouTube or Netflix? Think again. The broadcast TV actually provides more privacy because its not bidirectional. So your going to not use broadcast and instead use an internet streaming service where they are gauranteed t
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And think of the jobs that will be created by replacing every TV set in America (again). Of course almost all those jobs except some sales and installation jobs will be in East Asia.
You win some, you lose some.
But that's the price of progress, right. Where is it that we are "progressing" to?
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If you think a Hillary administration would have don't any different, I have some beach front property in the Caribbean to sell you.
gee wizz (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder who the real beneficiaries of this policy really are...
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The Russians??? Just sayin'.
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Looks a bit like another step toward "Big Brother"; where corporations will continue to develop more tools to manipulate mankind.
It's the data collection thing that bothers me. Providing better over-the-air TV tech is great; may prompt more peoples to "cut the cord".
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Actually, its primaraly to benefit users. There are technical advantages to the new standard. OFDM modulation allows for 1) Multipath interference resistance 2) Repeater stations 3) Mobile TV (Finally) 4) HEVC compression will mean that the channel capacity will be doubled on the same 6 mhz channel.
Also 1) Broadcast is not bidirectional. Just dont plug the TV into the internet port and there will be no tracking of any kind. I bet most of the people who are getting riled up use netflix or Youtube. So your go
Just great. (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.
One step to closer to the world of Max Headroom [wikipedia.org] where TVs are required to be on all the time ("off" switches are banned) and the country is run by an oligarchy of television networks - enabled by their butt-boy FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said the new technology “contemplates targeted advertisements that would be ‘relevant to you and what you actually might want to see.’
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the new technology would force consumers to buy new televisions. “The FCC calls this approach market driven. That’s right — because we will all be forced into the market for new television sets or devices.”
Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard “the Holy Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.
I'm too annoyed to even comment on these, but I'm not buying a new TV so I can be more easily spied on.
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“That does it. He’s a freakin’ nerd.”
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The writers of Max Headroom read that idea in the telescreens of Orwell's 1984. Only members of the Inner Party were allowed to have off switches.
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I think you mean, President Max Headroom.
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There's got to be a way to poison the data that the advertisers hope to reap from this technology. Presumably the TV will be able to tell if it's a real-live person watching, and not a blow-up doll.
I think I'll order one of those Nexus-9 replicants.
"Joi, when I'm at work, I want you to sit and watch {vapid daytime TV}. Show interest in {ads for stuff I'll never buy}. Turn it off when I get home, then we can go for a walk and discuss philosophy."
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"There's got to be a way to poison the data that the advertisers hope to reap from this technology."
There probably will be some sort of equivalent to Internet Browser adblocking. But the data they are getting probably isn't very useful anyway. It tells them that their ads are being displayed. But they already know that. Unless the ads are funny or otherwise interesting somehow, 90% of the viewers tune the ads out anyway. And even if the ads are attention getting, my guess is that almost all viewers ign
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From TFA: The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.
I first learned of these alerts 5-6 years ago, when I was woken up at 3 AM to some godawful noise my phone was making. It was an Amber alert, for some kid that went missing in the bay area. 500 miles from where I live. Dafuq, you think I'm gonna get up in the middle of the night and drive around looking for a sketchy picture with a kid in a car you think is a 90's K-car?
I've disabled these emergency alerts on every phone I've owned since then. If you can't use common sense when sending an alert, I c
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What kind of fearful hell do you live in where you're always thinking of the extreme eventuality?
Have you seen who "we" (meaning an actual minority of the population and not me) elected as President? :-)
Do you have a cell phone? Then the government can send you emergency alerts already and last I checked, almost everyone is obsessed with keeping their cell phone always on.
Ya and I've been woken up in the middle of the night by an Amber alert and a tornado alert (for a nearby town, but not mine) on my phone (the Amber alerts have since disabled on my phone), but those alerts cannot turn on my phone if it's actually off. The first time I got an alert (at 3am) I didn't know what the fuck was going on and can't imagine how disorienting one on the TV would be - especially
Re: Just great. (Score:2)
or keep the same TV, and buy a new tuner box. ATSC 3.0 is a superset of ATSC 1.0's codecs & hardware, so any new 3.0 box will be 100% compatible with ATSC 1.0.
The big difference -- this time, a tuner box will cost about as much as a Roku, not $299-1999 like an ATSC 1.0 tuner did circa 1999-2004.
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There are actually technical advantages to the new standard 1) Mobile TV reception 2) better multipath resistance 3) repeater stations to cover fringe areas 4) better compression so more channels can be offered. I think the ads stuff is mainly FUD. Broadcast TV is not bidirectional. You dont think we you use youtube or netflix that they are collecting data for ads? With broadcast, all you need to do is not plug the TV into the internet
Secondly, you won't be required to buy a new TV, there will be tuning ada
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It's IP driven, which means that you have a single antenna connected to a receiver that multicasts video within your internal network. It also allows unicast traffic to the receiver from devices that are listening, and the receiver can contact the broadcasters over the open internet.
Among other things, they're planning on adding VOD content.
Let me be clear ... (Score:2)
Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said the new technology “contemplates targeted advertisements that would be ‘relevant to you and what you actually might want to see.’
(Although it seems this representative does have the appropriate last name for her apparent level of intelligence.)
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... there are *NO* unsolicited advertisements that I actually might want to see - I am not a target.
By watching broadcast television, you are soliciting ads. In case you didn't know that's their entire business model.
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No, you are not. You are paying for the programming by being subjected to ads. That's very different from soliciting them.
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I am not a target.
If you are participating in advertiser-supported activities, like watching broadcast TV, or using internet search, you definitely a target.
This probably won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
Cable which can barely do 1080i on a good day. I have seen some broadcasts that were less thsn 480
How will the new TV with ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV spy/target ads at me if it isn't on Wifi or ethernet?
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This sounds bogus to me. But really, I just use my TV as a monitor anyway. I don't need the receiver in it.
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Nah, I have an XBMC box hooked to it. I'm actually in control of it.
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Leave it to the people on slashdot to get their panties in a twist without thinking anything through.
Re: This probably won't help (Score:5, Informative)
Shows will be broadcast with a default ad, but if your ATSC 3.0 tuner has internet connectivity and it can fill an ad customized to your interests, it'll download the ad over the internet, then seamlessly replace the default ad with the targeted one.
So, opt in & connect, and see ads for videogames (or whatever else you're into). Do nothing, and see ads for tampons.
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>"So, opt in & connect, and see ads for videogames (or whatever else you're into). Do nothing, and see ads for tampons."
Or refuse to watch live TV *EVER* like I did 17 years ago, and use a DVR/TiVo... unless, of course, they somehow make it so that is no longer possible. I noticed that "Digital Watermarking" was included in this new broadcast standard...
The day I am FORCED to watch commercials is the day I will never watch TV again. Doesn't matter if it is broadcast, streamed, or whatever else they
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The day I am FORCED to watch commercials is the day I will never watch TV again.
The only way I can imagine that anyone could force you to watch commercials is if they treated you like Robot Chicken. That is, strapped you into a chair and held your eyelids open. Otherwise, you always have a choice.
Also, the day my TV wakes itself up to blast some damn "alert" about some thunderstorm 100 miles away or some lost kid is the day I put a REAL power switch on it.
If you know it is a possibility, why would you not install a true power switch before it happens? Are you just looking forward to the day that you can come to /. and bitch about your TV turning itself on and how Someone ought to do Something about it?
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Shush! Ajit Pal has access to this feed, it is NOT A SECURE CHANNEL.
Re: This probably won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
Set up your own in-house "ad server" and intercept the call. Each home-brewed "ad" features only a countdown until it ends, or maybe it gives you 30 seconds of RSS feed. Take the hook provided for the benefit of the advertisers, and use it against them.
Re: This probably won't help (Score:2)
AFAIK, there's one device you can buy to overlay computer-generated content onto HDMI (it uses the leaked HDCP master key if necessary). In the US, its legality is murky... almost certainly illegal (under DMCA) if the source is encrypted... possibly illegal if it's not (HDMI is a superset of DVI, but piles on additional restrictions that *might* apply if actual HDMI components -- including HDMI-to-DVI plug adapters -- are present.)
AFAIK, there is NO consumer-priced hardware (legal or otherwise) that can ove
Re: This probably won't help (Score:2)
So... to answer your question more fully... I've NEVER seen a TV that could do PiP with ANYTHING besides its two internal tuners... and MAYBE analog NTSC/PAL from composite-video inputs. Component video? Never. HDMI/DVI? Never. PIP appears to be implemented entirely within the tuner subsystem, so it would have to be done within an external box (regardless of whether the display is a monitor OR a TV)
Re: This probably won't help (Score:2)
Update... I think my TV (Mitsubishi wd62627, circa 2006) can overlay content from an OTA channel from its internal tuners over component video, but not over HDMI, DVI, or VGA... and not vice-versa. It's not well-documented, and only certain permutations are allowed. In other words, let 'X' be the subset of video sources that can be full screen. Let 'Bx' be the subset of video sources that can be overlaid over each X.
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The ATSC 3.0 boxes broadcast info back along portions of the TV spectrum that the channel you are watching owns and has licensed to you for that purpose.
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Cable which can barely do 1080i on a good day. I have seen some broadcasts that were less thsn 480
How will the new TV with ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV spy/target ads at me if it isn't on Wifi or ethernet?
Don't know for sure, but my guess is that ATSC 3.0 tuners will not work without some form of Internet connectivity. It may not need to be 24/7, but probably at least once a week to upload viewing habits and download targeted ad specifications.
Feasible (Score:2)
That's not really feasible. TV transmission antennas are not designed to receive, and OTA TV antennas are not designed to transmit. That's not to say it's impossible, but you're going to have to push out a LOT of power on the TV side to get signal back to the TV tower. I don't think TV manufacturers are going to squeeze in 100W linear RF amplifiers in their nice, slim LCD televisions.
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So it's going to need an internet connection to transmit viewer data back to advertisers. Unless you sign some sort of contract when you buy the TV, there's nothing they can do to force you to connect it to your internet wi-fi router/modem.
Of course, advertisers might decide that it's a good investment to pay for a 4G SIM and cellular modem in the TV itself.
Not really (Score:2)
TV transmitter antennas are optimized to transmit on one frequency. For synchronous two-way, you'd have to receive on a different frequency, which the transmitter antenna wouldn't be optimized for. It would have to be something weird, like an eighth-wave or something, which would probably be out-of-band for TV.
TV reception antennas are designed to receive a range of frequencies. Wide-band reception antennas don't make very good transmission antennas, except maybe at the center of the frequencies they are tu
Internet Connected (Score:1)
According to this article
https://www.cnet.com/news/atsc-3-0-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-future-of-broadcast-television/ [cnet.com]
They will be able to send you targeted ads because "most devices will be Internet-connected". That is, they're using the internet connection to identify each individual viewer. Smart TV's for everyone!
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Since no TV set will ever have my wifi password, this sounds like a potentially good thing.
ATSC 2.0? (Score:5, Informative)
Broadcast TV? So Fred Flintstone... (Score:2)
It has been years since I have watched TV (cable or broadcast), but as far as I am aware there remains now only one broadcaster still actively transmitting within a 100 miles of here to even receive anyway, and they are exclusively a 24/7 advertising platform. I think broadcast TV already died, so how relevant is this?
Re:Broadcast TV? So Fred Flintstone... (Score:5, Informative)
Broadcast television is far from dead. I live in a "fringe reception" area for the Los Angeles broadcast area, and still receive in excess of 100 channels including subcarriers.
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That's an unusally large number of channels to have OTA. Last I checked I had like 20 including the subchannels and I'm living in a major city. Cities where there's more than that have to be extremely large to justify that many channels.
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I live in the DFW area, (fourth largest metro in the US, LA is second,) and get 88, including subcarriers. A listing I was able to google shows that Kansas City MO has nearly a hundred. Even Rochester, (hardly a "major" city,) gets eight.
If you're in a major metro area and only get 20 channels, you either have some very odd topography in your surrounding area, or your antenna is broken.
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Live sports would be about the only reason I would want to have cable or satellite TV. Baseball works well enough on the radio, but hockey? Not so much.
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Analog broadcast is dead. Digital is working great in my neck of the woods. DB4 antenna and a RadioShack pre-amp. Dropped cable 4 years ago when they wanted to encrypt the broadcast channels. I'm not paying multiple monthly fees just to watch the broadcast channels. We haven't regretted it.
Re: Broadcast TV? So Fred Flintstone... (Score:2)
Same here. Sky went dark in 2004. The promised digital translators never were installed I suspect because the stations decided that spending money to install, operate, and maintain transmitters is less optimal than charging Dish or Direct fees to carry the broadcast on their hardware.
By the way, there is no cable here either. Itâ(TM)s satellite or quiet. Iâ(TM)ll take the quiet, but I do occasionally wonder if something might be happening outside of sight radius that the internet is not reporting.
And it continues (Score:2)
The FCC makes another move on its quest to empower major corporations at the expense of the American people.
If this FCC approoved it (Score:2)
If this FCC signed off on it then it must include a mechanism to charge people for higher than color 240i video.
Re: If this FCC approoved it (Score:2)
I believe the correct wording is that it's a mechanism to charge people *of* color
It's not all bad (Score:2)
"ultra-high definition picture quality and more interactive programming, like new educational content for children and multiple angles of live sporting events."
There are some benefits. Besides, I watch so little network TV that it really won't affect me. Plus, I'm pretty sure my TV is going to have a really hard time connecting to the internet for some unknown reasons.
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I'm pretty sure my TV is going to have a really hard time connecting to the internet for some unknown reasons.
What might those be? What stops Samsung from, say, putting the baseband of a low-end Galaxy phone in each TV and leasing airtime from some MVNO for the uplink?
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What stops Samsung from, say, putting the baseband of a low-end Galaxy phone in each TV and leasing airtime from some MVNO for the uplink?
Nothing stops them from paying the money to try this, but a pair of dikes will stop it from working.
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but a pair of dikes will stop it from working.
is that like "two girls, no transmission" or something?
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To which "dikes" do you refer? The literal meaning, "a long wall or embankment built to prevent flooding from the sea," doesn't appear to apply. If you mean in a more figurative sense of something that prevents the signal from reaching the tower, watch the TV get stuck on an activation screen if it has not connected in the past 30 days.
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To which "dikes" do you refer?
Diagonal cutters. But you probably knew that.
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This is not over the internet. If you are watching channel 40, the box will broadcast back over the air on channel 40.X, owned by the transmitting channel and sublicensed to you for that purpose. You cannot just disconnect it.
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"the box will broadcast back over the air on channel 40.X, owned by the transmitting channel and sublicensed to you for that purpose."
I don't think so. At least not that way. Problem is that your TV station jams maybe 100KW into its antenna in order to get a usable signal to all it's potential listeners. Near the transmitter, the listeners can get by with a random length of wire antenna, but further out, they will need a directional antenna to get a weak signal with an adequate signal to noise ratio. Pr
I call bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
1) We are currently on ATSC 1.0 (which replaced NTSC). There was a proposed ATSC 2.0 (although ATSC 1.1 might be a more appropriate name) with incremental improvements, and backwards compatable. It was abandoned before being implemented. Version 3.0 is a radical re-write, done from a clean slate, and hence incompatable.
2) My condo, north of Toronto, has an unobstructed view of the CN Tower, where the Toronto local TV stations all have their antennas. It's 17.5 km (almost 11 miles) distant. The properly-tuned TV transmitter antennas are cranking out hundreds of kilowatts ERP, and they don't always come in on my digital indoor antenna. (Silver Sensor log periodic). Does anybody competent really believe that a wide-band log-periodic table-top antenna, outputting a few milliwatts, will be received properly by the transmitter 11 miles away? Especially if tens of thousands of other antennas are watching the same show? bwaaahaaahaaahaaa
I also have a direct view to Grand Island, New York, where most Buffalo TV stations have their transmitter antennas. That's approximately 80 km (50 miles) distant. But from my 6th floor window, the reception is quite decent. We go from the ridiculous to the sublime, claiming that an antenna 50 miles away can recieve my few milliwatts sent back over a log periodic table-top antenna.
And we haven't even begun to consider a modded tuner that suppresses the return signal.
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You don't need to transmit anything back. The tracking is done entirely by the directionality and selectivity providing different content to different people and monitoring the results.
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You don't need to transmit anything back. The tracking is done entirely by the directionality and selectivity providing different content to different people and monitoring the results.
To "monitor the results" you would need to transmit something back. Of course, "directionality" would not work since there would be too much overlap and the signal would be interfering with itself. 'Selectivity' is a property of the receiver, and one would hope that they are all of about the same selectivity.
Today, there is no spare bandwidth so who will get (Score:2)
Today, there is no spare bandwidth so who will get kicked out of HD when they go to channel sharing?? MAX 2 HD (maybe 3) + some SD subs.
1 HD + 5-6 SD subs.
Some locals may go HD only on cable / satellite tv (unless you have an 3.0 TV)
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ATSC 3.0 [wikipedia.org]
Ultimately, it has been decided that H.264 would not be considered for ATSC-3.0, but rather the newer MPEG-H HEVC / H.265 codec would be used instead, with OFDM instead of 8VSB for modulation, allowing for 28 Mbit/s to 36 Mbit/s or more of bandwidth on a single 6-MHz channel.
tl;dr: They finally really did it. Those maniacs! They blew it up! God damn them! God damn them all to hell!
I sure hope I'll be able to get tuner cards with Linux drivers for my MythTV.
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Oh, you were talking about the "legacy" signal on older transmitters. This is going to be really shitty when it happens. ATSC hasn't even been officially up for 10 years yet, and they're already planning a completely incompatible upgrade, with the only bone thrown to the previous system being lumping a bunch of signals onto a single transmitter that could barely handle five reduced resolution channels?
This isn't exactly the UK 405-line standard here, it's the super-duper replacement for an analog system th
worst case with that is some may lose HD even on c (Score:2)
worst case with that is some may lose locals in HD even on cable / sat systems.
Now what about big markets will pbs be pushed out on 1.0? WGN / FOX / NBC / MyNetworkTV / CBS / ABC / WCIU all in SD on the sole 1.0 channel (no sub channels and no PBS no Spanish and no ION maybe they can the main feed of all at the most shit PQ there is)
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I only have "cable" (actually Uverse TV) part of the year to get certain sports (not NFL, FWIW) for my elderly mother to watch. I otherwise stick to OTA ATSC on my MythTV. One of the local OTA sub-channels (on the ION station) is qubo, but it's on an upper tier to receive over pay TV, and I couldn't receive it that way if I wanted without paying more money.
Cable TV was originally about receiving TV in mountainous areas where a normal antenna wouldn't work; now it has become the no-brain option for five hun
will we get 4K OTA or just HD sub channles? (Score:2)
will we get 4K OTA or just have the sub channels go HD? More sub channels?
It's more subtle than described (Score:1)
The standard allows for multiple broadcast streams and for internet delivery of video. It can allow one of several simultaneously broadcast advertisements to be selected, and an internet connected smart TV can also download an advertisement to display. If your TV isn't connected, it's not very different from existing ATSC, since it doesn't involve your TV sending data back via the TV broadcast (which would be very unlikely to work).
The real issue, not described here, is whether there will be a "broadcast fl
sadly, no native 50fps or 100fps in 60hz-land (Score:2)
Unfortunately, ATSC 3.0 won't support native transmisson in formats like 720p50 in the US, so we're STILL stuck with ugly, lurching judder when watching shows shot at 25 or 50fps.
AFAIK, ATSC *also* declined to require the ability to seamlessly change formats on the fly (so they can't broadcast a football game in 1080p60, then seamlessly switch to 2160p30 for a primetime TV show). Apparently, the blame lies with HDMI... as of 1.4a (not sure about 2.x), switching modes triggers HDCP re-authentication & bl
fox O&O messups local weather and local DD 2.0 (Score:2)
My fox O&O mess-ups often when there is an local weather alerts (just with the on screen over lays) and local shows are only in DD 2.0.
Mode changes also can mess other sub channels and local cable systems that pass though the local feed.
Re: fox O&O messups local weather and local DD (Score:2)
My main complaint over ATSC 3.0's omission of on-the-fly mode switching is the fact that they could have EASILY worked around the HDMI problem by having the TUNER transform everything into a specific mode (if the user desires).
IMHO, the new standard SHOULD have required that compliant tuners be able to deal with content that freely switches between modes like 720p120, 1080p60, and 2160p30 on the fly as appropriate for the content (720p120 for live-acton sports that need realtime encoding, 2160p30 for primet
what about Canada?? some areas are still on full p (Score:2)
what about Canada?? some areas are still on full power analog will they jump to 3.0 or just move to 1.0 for the TV transmitters slated to transition to digital OTA TV between 2019 and 2022
A/323 (Score:2)
Part of ATSC 3.0, the standard A/323 [atsc.org] defines a wireless uplink transmitter, supporting the Internet Protocol, built into your TV set, operating on a different frequency band than the downlink broadcast signal which contains the video stream.
By implementing this standard, a TV becomes a two-way communication device even if you don't plug it into Ethernet or WiFi.
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By implementing this standard,
The Reuters article that prompted this discussion is absolutely pathetic reporting, since it doesn't bother to link to the rule. The previous discussion at least had this link [fcc.gov].
If you look therein, you will find no mention of A/323, and no mention of any intention to allocate frequency space for the backchannel. There is limited space already, it doesn't seem likely there will be one.
In any case, the use of an amplified antenna would prevent the backchannel. The amplifier is one-way and any outgoing tran
just what I need! (Score:2)
Except for news and reruns of the Big Bang Theory, there's nothing on tv, so if all the channels go dead due to ATSC 3.0, I won't miss much.
No Compatibility? (Score:2)
Analog TV was compatible for 60 years. Even B&W sets could receive color TV.
But since we have gone digital, format rot has set in fast. Now standards change every 5 years, and the old box becomes obsolete. Welcome to planned obsolescence.
Overall, its a benefit (Score:2)
Overall, if you like free TV, its a benefit, and a far better value than spending $10-50 per month on pay TV subscriptions (whether cable or netflix). Using better compression will allow more channels to be crammed in. The new modulation scheme allows for mobile TV use, and better resist multipath interference which is a big problem in cities. Also, the modulation scheme will allow repeater stations to be set up so that they can bring a better signal out to fringe areas. .
I would be pretty sure, tha
ATSC 1.0 was an enforced change from NTSC. (Score:1)
ATSC was an enforced change, ostensibly to free up frequencies for other uses. Will ATSC 3.0 be a required change for all broadcasters?
The majority of people who get their TV are probably paying a cable company to deliver it, so won't be affected by any changes in over the air signals.
I've got a 55 inch TV connected to a TiVo Romio. I watch a wide variety of programs in a wide variety of formats. I've been surprised it how good a 720p video can look on the screen, while also surprised at the differences in
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"I don't even watch local TV because it's also garbage."
Yep, but it's "free" garbage. We fired Comcast last Winter after a snowplow took out our distribution box and we found it pretty much impossible to report the outage. After a few months of investigating the potential of Netflix, Sling, etc we find that we're watching MORE programming on local TV than we expected. The big problem is that the great leap forward to digital TV has left us with very few reliable OTA channels. Six of the eight local broa
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channels. Six of the eight local broadcasters simply can't deliver enough signal for even an amplified indoor antenna. So Sunday, I'm going to tackle the job of reinstalling the amplifiers and wiring for our abandonded whole house TV network and outdoor antenna.
Amplifiers are less than worthless when it comes to digital transmission. Just another source of loss and noise that will only make your signal problems worse.
Much better to pick up a $60 ATSC to Ethernet converter box from your local best buy and plug it in as close as you can to your antenna to keep losses down.