Meet DTV's Successor: NextGen TV (cnet.com) 135
Around 2009 Slashdot was abuzz about how over-the-air broadcasting in North America was switching to a new standard called DTV. (Fun fact: North America and South America have two entirely different broadcast TV standards — both of which are different from the DVB-T standard used in Europe/Africa/Australia.) But 2022 ends with us already talking about DTV's successor in North America: the new broadcast standard NextGen TV.
This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations, CNET points out — and it won't affect cable, satellite or streaming TV. But now even if you're not paying for a streaming TV service, another article points out, in most major American cities "an inexpensive antenna is all you'll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations" — and often with a better picture quality: NextGen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, is continuing to roll out across the U.S. It's already widely available, with stations throughout the country broadcasting in the new standard. There are many new TVs with compatible tuners plus several stand-alone tuners to add NextGen to just about any TV. As the name suggests, NextGen TV is the next generation of over-the-air broadcasts, replacing or supplementing the free HD broadcasts we've had for over two decades. NextGen not only improves on HDTV, but adds the potential for new features like free over-the-air 4K and HDR, though those aren't yet widely available.
Even so, the image quality with NextGen is likely better than what you're used to from streaming or even cable/satellite. If you already have an antenna and watch HD broadcasts, the reception you get with NextGen might be better, too.... Because of how it works, you'll likely get better reception if you're far from the TV tower.
The short version is: NextGen is free over-the-air television with potentially more channels and better image quality than older over-the-air broadcasts.
U.S. broadcast companies have also created a site at WatchNextGenTV.com showing options for purchasing a compatible new TV. That site also features a video touting NextGen TV's "brilliant colors and a sharper picture with a wider range of contrast" and its Dolby audio system (with "immersive, movie theatre-quality sound" with enhancements for voice and dialogue "so you get all of the story.") And in the video there's also examples of upcoming interactive features like on-screen quizzes, voting, and shopping, as well as the ability to select multiple camera angles or different audio tracks.
"One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits," CNet reported earlier this year, calling the data "information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like companies such as Facebook and Google use today...
"Ads specific to your viewing habits, income level and even ethnicity (presumed by your neighborhood, for example) could get slotted in by your local station.... but here's the thing: If your TV is connected to the internet, it's already tracking you. Pretty much every app, streaming service, smart TV and cable or satellite box all track your usage to a greater or lesser extent."
But on the plus side... NextGen TV is IP-based, so in practice it can be moved around your home just like any internet content can right now. For example, you connect an antenna to a tuner box inside your home, but that box is not connected to your TV at all. Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV, be it your TV, your phone, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV....
This also means it's possible we'll see mobile devices with built-in tuners, so you can watch live TV while you're out and about, like you can with Netflix and YouTube now. How willing phone companies will be to put tuners in their phones remains to be seen, however. You don't see a lot of phones that can get radio broadcasts now, even though such a thing is easy to implement.
But whatever you think — it's already here. By August NextGen TV was already reaching half of America's population, according to a press release from a U.S. broadcaster's coalition. That press release also bragged that 40% of consumers had actually heard of NextGen TV — "up 25% from last year among those in markets where it is available."
This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations, CNET points out — and it won't affect cable, satellite or streaming TV. But now even if you're not paying for a streaming TV service, another article points out, in most major American cities "an inexpensive antenna is all you'll need to get get ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS stations" — and often with a better picture quality: NextGen TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, is continuing to roll out across the U.S. It's already widely available, with stations throughout the country broadcasting in the new standard. There are many new TVs with compatible tuners plus several stand-alone tuners to add NextGen to just about any TV. As the name suggests, NextGen TV is the next generation of over-the-air broadcasts, replacing or supplementing the free HD broadcasts we've had for over two decades. NextGen not only improves on HDTV, but adds the potential for new features like free over-the-air 4K and HDR, though those aren't yet widely available.
Even so, the image quality with NextGen is likely better than what you're used to from streaming or even cable/satellite. If you already have an antenna and watch HD broadcasts, the reception you get with NextGen might be better, too.... Because of how it works, you'll likely get better reception if you're far from the TV tower.
The short version is: NextGen is free over-the-air television with potentially more channels and better image quality than older over-the-air broadcasts.
U.S. broadcast companies have also created a site at WatchNextGenTV.com showing options for purchasing a compatible new TV. That site also features a video touting NextGen TV's "brilliant colors and a sharper picture with a wider range of contrast" and its Dolby audio system (with "immersive, movie theatre-quality sound" with enhancements for voice and dialogue "so you get all of the story.") And in the video there's also examples of upcoming interactive features like on-screen quizzes, voting, and shopping, as well as the ability to select multiple camera angles or different audio tracks.
"One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits," CNet reported earlier this year, calling the data "information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like companies such as Facebook and Google use today...
"Ads specific to your viewing habits, income level and even ethnicity (presumed by your neighborhood, for example) could get slotted in by your local station.... but here's the thing: If your TV is connected to the internet, it's already tracking you. Pretty much every app, streaming service, smart TV and cable or satellite box all track your usage to a greater or lesser extent."
But on the plus side... NextGen TV is IP-based, so in practice it can be moved around your home just like any internet content can right now. For example, you connect an antenna to a tuner box inside your home, but that box is not connected to your TV at all. Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV, be it your TV, your phone, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV....
This also means it's possible we'll see mobile devices with built-in tuners, so you can watch live TV while you're out and about, like you can with Netflix and YouTube now. How willing phone companies will be to put tuners in their phones remains to be seen, however. You don't see a lot of phones that can get radio broadcasts now, even though such a thing is easy to implement.
But whatever you think — it's already here. By August NextGen TV was already reaching half of America's population, according to a press release from a U.S. broadcaster's coalition. That press release also bragged that 40% of consumers had actually heard of NextGen TV — "up 25% from last year among those in markets where it is available."
bugs (Score:5, Funny)
And in the video there's also examples of upcoming interactive features like on-screen quizzes, voting, and shopping, as well as the ability to select multiple camera angles or different audio tracks.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?
Re:bugs (Score:5, Insightful)
Multiple camera angles? Like the thing no one ever used on DVD?
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Sometimes a presenter's face is so ugly you've got to switch to the behind-the-back camera angle.
Seriously, it might be kind of useful for some sports for some people. Maybe somebody wants to watch a full field view all the time instead of closeups.
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or stock ticker while the talking head is shoved into a postage stamp in the corner.
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Do they still do multiple cameras for sports? I remember some time ago Sky (UK satellite broadcaster) was touting the ability to select a camera in their Formula 1 coverage. You could have the normal edited feed, or you could watch one of two car mounted cameras to get a driver's eye view.
I don't know if they still do it. Probably didn't prove very popular.
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I imagine it depends on the sport - at least here in the US for football, basketball, and baseball there are many cameras about the stadium on both collegiate and professional levels for broadcasting the games.
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Anything useful you can think of will not exist.
Not on PBS it won't (Score:2)
PBS's music and travel programs should benefit quite a bit from the improved video and audio capabilities of ATSC 3.0, without the ads.
Or will it allow PBS to find new ways to pester viewers about fundraising? Hmm....
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Or will it allow PBS to find new ways to pester viewers about fundraising? Hmm....
This. I would put money on this.
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I agree it's not very useful. In Saturday's goal for the USA it's interesting to have the option though... https://www.srf.ch/sport/resul... [www.srf.ch]
he says, linking to where he has the option :-)
The issue here is that this works well in replay. Few people are going to sit and flip through different angles while the game is on, and precisely no broadcaster is going to give you the option of not playing ads while they reset the ball.
In this case an internet stream is a far more watcher friendly option.
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All content is not created equal. Having the ability to see multiple camera views during a sports broadcast would be awesome.
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Wish I had mod points, that had me laughing out loud.
Thanks for that.
on-screen quizzes just text quiz-con at $0.99 and (Score:2)
on-screen quizzes just text quiz-con at $0.99 per text and you may be an winner!
ATSC 3.0 ? Haven't heard of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: ATSC 3.0 ? Haven't heard of it. (Score:3)
Also, the fact that, thanks to the way HDCP was implemented on 99% of display devices, switching modes (eg, 1080p60 to 2160p24 to 1080p120) is clumsy & takes 2-3 seconds, so networks are going to be loath to take advantage of its biggest nominal selling point for consumers. They're still going to force everything into a single one-size-fits-nobody bit-starved box, like nominal 1080p30 at 4kbps.
The FCC's idea of competing channels sharing broadcast transport streams is delusional. It might work somewhere
Re: ATSC 3.0 ? Haven't heard of it. (Score:5, Informative)
There is another even bigger barrier to adoption of ATSC 3.0 - the fact that it uses Dolby AC4 audio that is license-encumbered and essentially forbids you from writing your own code to use it - you must license from Dolby, and then use the Dolby written code. ffmpeg has a branch with some AC4 support in it, but anyone that doesn't want to get sued by Dolby Labs dares not include that in a commercial product for fear of being sued into non-existence.
There are a few devices out there that have stepped up to the licensing plate (Sony TVs are one, NVIDIA Shield TV is another from what I've read) but everything else is either a hacky reverse-engineered implementation of AC4 that only sorta works, or they are waiting for the lawyers to get done doing their thing before they can implement it (Plex DVR specifically for at least a year now, there may be others)
So yeah, the ATSC 3.0 rollout is being severely slowed down due to making poor decisions on what IP to include in the standard, and just how much submarine patent bullshit that device manufacturers are willing to put up with.
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I've somewhat followed ATSC 3.0, mostly watching what Tyler the Antenna Man on YT has presented. However, considering while I have cut the cord with CATV but still with Comcast for internet, I rarely watch OTA TV. It is relentless with commercials every five minutes. The new shows simply don't interest me at all, I'm an old guy who has seen enough reruns to last me a lifetime (exception of series made after 1980 which none of those interest me), local news broadcasts might be of interest but online more con
What if there's no Internet? (Score:3, Interesting)
The FAQ (OMG, I RTFA & FAQ!) states that NextGen TV is aimed to provide an enhanced experience for live events, such as sports & news. What if I don't care about that "enhanced" experience? What if my NextGen TV thing cannot access the Internet - will I stop being able to watch FTA TV?
While the story touts having a single device per house for TV watching that is all then over IP, you can still only watch + record as many FTA stations as there are tuners in the device. How many devices have more than 2 tuners? How many households have more than 2 TVs you say? Watching 1 station live, recording 2, because peak viewing time programming.
But what I really want to know is what does this give me that LibreElec + HDHomeRun + USB tuner does not? (Apart from a less technically challenging setup.)
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This is probably another nudge for me to finally set up PFSense, or mess with my router/gateway some more, or something, to head off / cut off all the damn advertising and tracking traffic from TVs and to put my smart devices on their own VLAN. If anyone has any suggestions for doing that, I--and I bet others here--would love to hear them. Maybe just a PiHole would be enough?
Why haven't I done it already? I've been reluctant to start on this because in my mind, knowing what I've read about home smart stuff
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"But what I really want to know is what does this give me that LibreElec + HDHomeRun + USB tuner does not?"
Forget the extras mentioned, it gives you 4K. Replace your current HDHomeRun with their 4k version and you have the same thing, only in 4K.
Every pixel will be encrypted. (Score:3)
There was a point at the HDTV transition where I went all in. Got a fancy tuner with a Firewire cable, built a storage server, and had ample storage. But everything that came out of the tuner had some form of encryption. (proto-HDCP, basically) So the firewire cable would go dark when an encrypted show was on. Or the capture card wouldn't take an encrypted stream from the analog ports. I just gave up and largely stopped watching TV altogether.
Ironically, in the last few years I've gone back to an antenna and "appointment TV" for a few shows. It's free (read: Not worth paying Comcast's exorbitant fees for their lower-quality rebroadcast signal), reliable, and works well enough.
I guess when I get my next TV, it'll have these features too. That'll be nice.
Re:Every pixel will be encrypted... NOT (Score:2)
I had a firewire PC and laptop connected to one of the fancy cable boxes. I never really got the firewire to work reliably with the cable box provided by my cable company.
Note that encryption was on cable/satellite only.
OTA broadcast channels CANNOT be, weren't and aren't encrypted. That's a requirement of being to able to transmit in the US. However, that doesn't mean that some of the cable providers didn't mess up and sometimes "forgot" to enable the broadcast flag on broadcast channels relayed over th
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You were lucky to not have been on Time Warner Cable with your CableCard setup then, as they encrypted literally every channel on basic cable except what was an OTA feed. Which meant that if you want to use your CableCard setup, it MUST run Windows 7/8 and MUST run Windows Media Center - a now discontinued product - because that was the only available software that could decrypt the streams if you did not buy a self-contained network-attached box like HDHomeRun stuff from SiliconDust.
They really screwed me
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Cable card was a real pain as well, but worked well enough with my silicondust ethernet enabled tuner to record even pay channels like HBO.
I had a CableCard with my Tivo and that worked great. I had dabbled with offloading some shows using something that used Python or Java, and that had worked pretty well too.I think it was Tom's Tivo To Go, or something tlike that?
I've since moved to a OTA silicondust tuner after ditching cable and it's NEVER had any problems sending OTA channels to be recorded by my media server unencrypted.
I've heard good things about those. A friend of mine has one. I don't know if it's OTA or cable TV or both, but last I heard, it worked well for him with Plex.
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I just pirate everything. I might subscribe or buy the disc, but I'll still download a pirate version.
Saves so much hassle. No DRM, no ads to skip over, no setting timers.
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It's mostly true -- except instead of FW, it's USB3. My 2022 Samsung will allow you to record shows, but only will put the signal out on a USB socket and only to a USB HD (no memstick''s) formatted in FAT, exFAT or NTFS! Any show stored on the HD can only be read by the *same* TV. So, no signal out via HDMI to be recorded by any HDMI compatible device. Nope, recorded streams are only recorded to a local USB hard disk.
Also, "time shifting" that allows you to pause & continue "live TV" (like some DVR'
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At one point, FireWire was part of the digital TV standard - I remember getting a set top box from a cable provider back in the day that had a FireWire port on it, which all the content was available through if you had a piece of software that could "tune" it which several people made PoC software for. Unfortunately, Apple didn't give up on their per-port licensing of FireWire, so it died in the cradle and then Intel came up with Thunderbolt.
But as a transport for streaming video applications it was really
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Firewire was a staple of the early 2000s Apple ecosystem. I can plug my old MiniDV camcorder into my iBook G4 with a firewire cable, and it still Just Works. This came in handy a few years ago when we decided to rip all our old MiniDV tapes to burn to DVD.
Broadcasting TV? How much longer? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're at home then you almost certainly have some sort of cable broadband (fibre to the premises here) which you could stream TV over. If you're not at home then you have the likes of 5G to your phone.
I agree that for some very popular live programmes (e.g. big sporting events) there might currently be capacity problems, particularly if many people are want to watch with slight - and different - delays due to having connected after the start time as this would prevent the use of multicast. However, internet bandwidth both to consumers and in the backbones continues to increase, so this limitation can't last.
I agree that broadcast allows anonymous viewing (at least if you don't connect your TV to the internet), but I can't help feeling that one day - and not too far in the future - TV companies are going to start looking at the percentage of their viewers who still use over the air broadcasts and the cost of running their transmitters and come to an obvious conclusion.
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Needed for eas warnings and other things so for an (Score:2)
Needed for eas warnings and other things so for an long time just like AM radio
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I don't have cable broadband to the home. I can get it but it's absurdly expensive. I have relatives with no cable hookups either, and a major cost just to start with that.
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Those big transmitter towers also have big ongoing power costs. In the US, digital TV broadcasts have a power limit of 160 kW or 1 MW depending on the frequency band (channel number) assigned to the station, with higher power meaning a larger area can receive the signal. The broadcast equipment doesn't have 100% efficiency, and if we take $0.10/kWh as representative of quasi-industrial use, that's tens of thousands of dollars per month in electricity.
Re: Broadcasting TV? How much longer? (Score:2)
But how much energy would be used to run wire to all the rural areas? Not to mention the potential negative impact of long-term wide-spread construction.
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Don't forget that those broadcast watt figures are "Effective Radiated Power", which presumes a simplified "spherical cow" antenna.
In the real world, the amount of power supplied to the actual antenna is typically a small fraction of that number.
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Huge and expensive transmitters reach a hell of a lot farther than broadband does in a lot of areas.
My parents have no problem getting an OTA television signal 70 miles from the transmitter, but their ISP sucks bigtime and can barely delivery 10mbps reliably. And they don't live out in the sticks, they just live in a smaller town that is 70 miles from the largest city in the state.
Huge and expensive transmitters also offer another pathway of transmission that potentially works during power / ISP outages us
hahaha no (Score:2, Insightful)
I literally just hooked up an antenna so I could see if I could get any stations in around here. I guarantee none of them are using this new standard. Even if they were, my whole fucking 55" 4k TV was $299, I'm not spending that much again to watch broadcast TV. That's ignorant. SD broadcasts were actually better at delivering what I actually need out of TV, which is information about emergencies when my internet link is down. They degrade into static gracefully, where DTV just comes and goes, or goes away
"This shit" is the actual motivation. (Score:2)
Google/Facebook/Apple/other spyware and surveillance vendors have been eating all their ad revenue for over a fucking decade now. They're late to the party and want sloppy seconds.
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For what it's worth, ATSC 3.0 does a much better job with signal reflection and multi-path routing, so a lot of the problems experienced at the boundary of reception range gets solved, and actually increases reception range of the transmissions.
The standard on South America is from Japan (Score:2)
Feels like a promise broken (Score:3)
Return path is Internet based (Score:2)
Trying to find information on the ATSC 3.0 return path online is like pulling teeth, and there seems to be little real information on it. But the little I could find seems to point to it operating over an Internet connection - which means that it can be disabled or blocked outright.
The idea of TVs having OTA returns makes no fundamental sense and would either violate the laws of physics, violate FCC laws around transmitter power (no, you can not stick a 1MW transmitter in a TV to talk back to a tower) or re
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TVs having OTA returns makes no fundamental sense and would either violate the laws of physics, violate FCC laws
Given that the return path is highly asymmetric ("I pushed the BUY NOW button" up vs. megabits per second of video stream down) it would be possible to imagine many different "self-contained" scenarios that don't require an Internet link, and don't use the same band for the uplink as for the downlink (hence do not require symmetric Tx power). For example a 4G or 5G modem in the TV. Or even a satellite uplink a la Apple Watch. Yes, yes, there are antenna considerations, but they're solvable.
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Please explain how the antenna considerations are "solvable", because you are hand-waving a huge problem.
- Do you know what an ATSC antenna looks like? In general they are very tiny and indoors.
- Do you think that everyone is going to want a 50 foot antenna on their roof just to send spying information back to the TV station? Why would anyone in their right mind do that? Because the actual Television information is broadcast, you won't actually need a working return path in order to receive it. So where is
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Please see my OP, and also go and read how 4G works.
Very Interesting (Score:2)
Just like current TV broadcasts, NEXTGEN TV will primarily be a free service for viewers. In the future, there may be major events that are available only on a pay-per-view basis.
While you can certainly receive NEXTGEN TV without being connected to the internet, most people who bring home a new NEXTGEN TV will connect it to broadband internet so they can enjoy the most immersive, rich entertainment experience possible. Plus, with an internet connection, NEXTGEN TV will be upgradeable as new features become available.
Translation: There will be some very basic OTA options, as required by law. For the most part, you'll be tracked so we can sell your info to advertisers. Our most popular shows and sporting events will be PPV (or at least OTT).
TV stations already come over the air (Score:2)
WTF is this even addressing? You can already pick up the major networks in any major city with a paperclip unbent and jammed into the coax input. As long as you TV was made in the last ten years, it knows how to decode the digital broadcast already.
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If they obsolete the existing ATSC and it makes my overpriced TV roamio obsolete, I am taking down the antenna and giving up on TV. I only really watch live events on the TV anymore, anyway.
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Current broadcasts have a resolution limit of 1080i (and are often lower) and are often quite low quality due to using MPEG-2 to cram multiple feeds into a single channel. The new standard enables higher resolutions (including 4K) and h.265/HEVC compression. Just seen from that perspective alone, it's a big step forward.
However, it's not mandatory, only a few TVs support it (often the most expensive TVs, for example LG's C1 and C2 OLEDs don't support it, only their G and Z series do), and you need to take t
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Oh noes, not again... (Score:2)
DTV Oy. (Score:2)
Now, older TVs require a converter box, which wastes extra power, multiplied by millions of TV sets.
It's almost impossible to use rabbit-ear antennas now because during a "new channel" scan, certain stations require the antenna be oriented a certain way, but you can't manually adjust the antenna while the scan is being done becaus
But⦠(Score:2)
Boooo! (Score:2)
"One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits," CNet reported earlier this year, calling the data "information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like companies such as Facebook and Google use today...
Then remembered
This time the new standard isn't mandatory for TV stations,
And I was like yah! for about two seconds.
Then I realized it will be a matter of time before this is mandatory.
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Sky Q (Score:3)
NextGen TV is IP-based... (Score:2)
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They can try, but it sounds like the talkback channel is just using whatever internet connection you have in your house. So blacklist that device at the router and they don't get shit.
What router? (Score:2)
Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV,
My TV sets don't have access to a network. Because 1) they only have component or HDMI inputs, and 2) I don't have broadband in many places like my cabin or my boat.
If I had Internet access, I'd be streaming content. And skipping all those stupid ads. I think the industry doesn't understand the business case for OTA TV.
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Reality Check: most streaming channels have ads. The major sports channels are every bit as littered with ads as OTA. Main difference is that the ads tend to have slightly better production values - and are not almost entirely scam, medicare supplement (get off my lawn Joe Namath and Bill Shatner!), and lawyers.
*IF* this works better in fringe-reception situations, and will work without internet connection (other than the Roku stick), then I might be interested. When we went digital, I lost access (most of
Don't let the tracking hype fool you (Score:3)
Did Silicon Dust's Kickstarter for their ATSC3 tuner years ago and there still isn't a hint of ATSC3 in my market.
Suppose that's a good thing because they fucked everyone over with the completely unnecessary new audio codecs. Nobody has audio gear that will decode AC4 and the codec has yet to be mainlined into ffmpeg so even if I did have ATSC3 broadcasts it would be a subtitles only.
The good thing is that the broadcasts are still just video streams despite the hype and capabilities of the underlying system. Sure you will have some people try to turn it into an OTA cable subscription service or some kind of OTA packet service like that old MSN thing but I suspect that will surely fail and most won't bother attempting it... so most of it will just be free to air like ATSC with 0 tracking way more range, bandwidth and better video codecs.
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Nobody has audio gear that will decode AC4
That should never hold back the adoption of a better technology. By all means roll out AC4 and make sure that receivers for it downmix or transcode it to something else, but heck if we waited for consumers to have wide spread support for new thing before rolling out new thing we never would have gotten past black and white TV.
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That should never hold back the adoption of a better technology. By all means roll out AC4 and make sure that receivers for it downmix or transcode it to something else, but heck if we waited for consumers to have wide spread support for new thing before rolling out new thing we never would have gotten past black and white TV.
AC4 isn't better than existing audio codecs (Opus, AAC, Vorbis, etc). It brings nothing new to the table other than something to extract patent royalties for the next 20 years. Completely unnecessary.
Garbage (Score:2)
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We "cut the cord" a short while ago after realizing we hadn't been watching any of the network channels for quite some time. Why would we care about this new standard?
Because there is no "cord" involved?
Because it's not mostly "the networks"?
OTA pay tv channels may come back with this! (Score:2)
OTA pay tv channels may come back with this!
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Maybe, but there is a whole lot of bandwidth in a cable versus the airwaves. I feel like hanging a wire on the same poles used for power leverages existing infrastructure while supporting a scale of programming that isn't possible over-the-air.
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Not at all true actually. Cable uses RF just like Airwaves use RF; there is just as much bandwidth over the air as there is over cable, it's just with over the air you are limited by the FCC to the frequencies you are allowed to use. With cable you are allowed to use much more of the spectrum with the understanding that it is not allowed to leak from the system. The FCC routinely flies over areas to measure cable leakage and the cable provider is required to correct any issues found. If you are receivin
Re:Well, there's a problem (Score:4, Informative)
If you'd bothered to read TFS, which admittedly isn't easy, you would have found out that this is an OTA system. That means that it has nothing to do with cable or even the Internet.
What it does do is separate the collection of signal from the display device: a tuner not unlike a STB is connected to an antenna, and also to your router. From there any compatible device inside your house can access whatever is being transmitted.
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All of the "Interactive" features are going to require an Internet connection, though.
I'd expect broadcasters to push for that, considering that it gives the ability to monitor your viewing habits. They used to have to rely on a third party like Neilsen to get that information for antenna TV earlier.
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All of the "Interactive" features are going to require an Internet connection, though....
I run an antenna + digital tuner setup (used to be Myth but I gave up and switched to Channels).
In practice, nearly everyone who does this also uses an internet connection because getting programming schedules over the internet is much better than getting them from the over-the-air broadcasts. (OTA scheduling info does not go as far into the future and does not seem to update as reliably).
Of course, these Interactive features will be different order of magnitude of connection. It would be perfectly possib
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https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
2. Will it really work without internet? How much of the content will really be available to TVs that do not supply tracking information? I don't see the big TV broadcasting companies buying in unless they have control.
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What OP is saying is they don't watch any broadcast networks and their commercial airwaves anyway, so none of this matters.
I am in the same boat. We have not watched network TV for 7+ years now and we don't miss it at all. What is more, my 6 year old daughter has been raised in a house where she has never seen TV commercials and IMO that is a very good thing.
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While I applaud no commercials...
How do you get your local news and weather if you don't watch the local new?
I don't watch a ton of it, but when there's tornadic weather in the area, I damned sure watch those local forecasts....or when hurricanes approach, etc.
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My local news and weather is on my phone's home screen in real time.
Why would I ever want to watch outdated information on the television?
TV works during emergencies, phone not so much (Score:3)
Like many Texans, I woke up on February 15, 2021 to a grid outage. I have solar + 1 PowerWall, so my home was still had limited power (1 PowerWall provides 240v @ 30 amps). I contacted my folks to see if they'd like to come over, they declined as the news reported there'd be rolling blackouts and they expected power to return in a couple hours.
Around noon my cellular service had failed, a couple hours later my internet connection went down. Presumably the backup batteries for the network switches and cell
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All this waste of wireless spectrum and it's still hooked to your router to phone home and your TV still watches it via an app over IP. Why not just use the app and stream it?
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If you'd bothered to read TFS, which admittedly isn't easy, you would have found out that this is an OTA system. That means that it has nothing to do with cable or even the Internet.
You're missing my point, although I could have explained it better.
These OTA channels are the same "local" network channels that get carried on cable - matter of fact, several years ago we'd cut our cable subscription down to the lowest tier, where it was *just* the local "OTA" channels (plus, inexplicably, HBO). Like many, many people, we haven't been watching them at all. So why would the introduction of a new OTA standard entice us - or any of the others who've given up on traditional TV channels - to st
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Well, here's an example:
About 3 years ago my cable company pissed me off with their shitty support for CableCard (they encrypted each and every channel they legally could, so the only software you could use was Windows Media Center - a then dying or already-dead product) and I told them to go fuck themselves because I could do youtube tv better and cheaper than their cable offering, and I didn't have to use their shitty DVR, or deal with their draconian and customer-surly CableCard policies. And, the YouTu
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Local news and weather are still important. Your phone is good at some things, but what is the first thing most people do when they get a weather alert on their phone? Either tap 10 or 15 times through a weather app with a shitty interface that hides what you're really looking for, or just omits it altogether; or turn on the local news and have the weather guy explain what's going on in terms normal people understand.
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I don't disagree with you, but I get my local news from a newspaper (which I still subscribe to). And for weather I look to our local university atmospheric sciences department's resources.
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I don't need 4K resolution or wide gamut HDR for local news and weather. Nor do I need any "interactive voting" feature for them. You see the point? TV is going to stay, just like radio is going to stay. But the quality improvement is facing a diminishing return.
The small space I have for TV at home can't even fit a 24". Unless my family move to a significantly bigger home, there won't be a 4K TV for our size. Meanwhile for HDR... there are already a lot complaint of HDR movies look too dark when played
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Cause PBS rules. :)
While true - if you support PBS at the $60/year level or higher (which we do), you can stream their shows through the PBS app. So nowadays I think of PBS as another streaming service.
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I can stream PBS free at standard def. I could hang an antenna but most of the major stations with powerful transmitters are north of me and that's blocked by a mountain range. I'm still technically in their area by raw distance, in the old NTSC days I likely could pick these stations up in the right weather conditions but ATSC is mostly an all-or-nothing once your signal to noise ratio is too poor.
Re:Not mandatory for TV broadcasters, you say? (Score:4, Interesting)
But with the advent of desktop computers, suddenly monitors got higher and higher resolutions, showing that higher TV resolution was possible on CRTs. With the arrival of flat screen panels of sufficient sizes, CRTs were phased out, and possible resolutions and TV set sizes increased much faster within a few years than in the decades of CRTs before. And now new standards were necessary to actually use the new possibilities, because not many people like to watch old NTSC or PAL encoded shows on a 80 inch screen, which are much cheaper than the 24 inch CRTs of the 1990ies.
Re: Not mandatory for TV broadcasters, you say? (Score:2)
Then buy a properly sized television.
The higher resolutions are completely unnecessary. If it matters, you're sitting WAY too close to your TV.
I get it. You can't afford a big enough apartment to sit a proper distance from the TV. But then just buy a smaller TV.
Until you can afford a 20'x20' room to watch in, that 80 inch TV is a waste of money.
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"The only reason why the previous standard remained stable for so long was CRT. "
But CRT is bad, so say the Republicans...
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Or, they could do it like Romania - early adopters of DVB-T, almost all the private/local TV stations started transmitting in DVB-T taking after the national television.
All OTA analog transmissions were soon stopped.
All DVB-T towers around the country in charge of retransmission are run by a state-owned company who was charging retransmission fees.
Then DVB-T2 showed up, the retransmission company decided they will be early adopters again, but this time it will be a cut-over from DVB-T to DVB-T2. At the time
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The problem with DTV is that it didn't really work that well if you were too far from the broadcaster. Whereas with analog you would get a slightly snowy picture, with the digital broadcast you'd get nothing. Even when you got a picture, rain might make it vanish. This doesn't just mean being in the boondocks either, my mother lost almost all broadcast in a town of 30,000, and now she's paying for satellite for essentially 3 channels that are broadcast.
The other big problem with broadcast is that it's not
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Yep, everything is "Next" or "New" right up until they're not. Just ask Captain Picard.
Naming conventions have always been a sore spot for me, for all the reasons you mentioned. Whenever I name something, I keep four things in mind. Eventually:
1. Someone will have to sort it.
2. Someone will have to type it.
3. Someone will have to translate it.
4. Someone will supersede it.