Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Television Wireless Networking

NAB Calls For End of ATSC 1.0 (broadbandtvnews.com) 34

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Broadband TV News: The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging the agency to establish a clear, industry-wide transition plan for the full deployment of Next Gen TV (ATSC 3.0). The proposal outlines a two-phased transition while modernizing regulatory requirements to support consumer access and innovation. [...] Under the plan, stations in the top 55 markets, covering 70% of the US population, would transition by February 2028, with all remaining full-power and Class A stations following in or before February 2030. The petition also calls for updates to FCC rules to ensure television reception devices support Next Gen TV, maintain existing MVPD carriage obligations and eliminate regulatory hurdles that could slow adoption. To clarify, ATSC 1.0 is the current standard for free over-the-air (OTA) TV. While ATSC 3.0 (also called NextGen TV) is its intended replacement, it's not backward-compatible, meaning consumers need new equipment to receive it. NAB's petition is to allow a complete shutdown of ATSC 1.0 to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0, meaning older TV setups relying on free OTA signals would stop working unless consumers upgrade their equipment. Their argument is that ATSC 3.0 adoption has been slow, and networks would benefit more from shifting away from OTA broadcasting entirely.

Reddit user bshensky argues that shutting down OTA TV would benefit large media corporations and harm independent stations. It's also worth noting that OTA TV operates on valuable spectrum, which could be repurposed for mobile broadband (this has happened before), benefiting cellular providers.

NAB Calls For End of ATSC 1.0

Comments Filter:
  • DRM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @09:10AM (#65235503) Homepage Journal

    This is all about adding DRM and paid content. This is horrible for consumers. It's an end to the model of being able to watch TV for free with an antenna.

    • Also has the potential to end time-shifting, that is taping or with another words recording on DVR a program.
    • Except that near all existing tvs with digital tuners can accept the new 4k signals. If you have a 4k tv you will benefit. Those free commercial supported broadcast are not going away. This is no different than when the broadcasts went from SD to HD. At worst you will need a new antenna with a builtin upgraded tuner. People were freaking out that everything would be paywalled going forward when the upgrade happened some twenty years ago too. That isn’t what happened and it isn’t what is being pr
      • Re:DRM (Score:5, Informative)

        by Predius ( 560344 ) <josh...coombs@@@gmail...com> on Saturday March 15, 2025 @09:28AM (#65235529)

        Free, as long as you have an internet connection to receive certificate updates to allow you to decrypt it. That's the bit that's driving this.

        • I have a 4k TV, but refuse to connect it to the internet, as I did it once (so I could share a video from my phone), and it decided to update its software and showing me ads on the settings screens

          I'd rather stick with my xbox or a roku for the streaming content, and keep my TV off the internet.

          (iOS won't stream to a TV if you have them both connected on a wifi network that's not connected to the internet... I suspect that Android is the same)

      • by Burdell ( 228580 )

        ATSC 3.0 DRM is already active in many US markets - it is quite different from the NTSC->ATSC 1.0 transition. Stations transition to ATSC 3.0, get everybody comfortable, and then flip the DRM flag. It's the end of antenna DVRs - it's basically reimplementing cable over the public airwaves, with no Cable Card-like mandate (since the Cable Card mandate is also dead).

    • Re:DRM (Score:4, Interesting)

      by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:50AM (#65235679) Journal

      To be fair, there's been DRM in the various TV standards before 3.0, and the FCC has always banned its use. ATSC 1.0 had the "broadcast flag [wikipedia.org]" which prevented recording of a show, the FCC banned it. The FCC can approve ATSC 3.0 while banning the use of DRM, and it would be atypical for it not to given ATSC 3.0's DRM actually involves encryption, and traditionally the FCC has banned encryption on the public airwaves except under for some specific obvious applications (ISM bands and point to point radio links for private parties)

      Conversely of course the current administration's decisions are essentially unpredictable, so it's possible the FCC will let this one through, especially as previous FCCs have not enforced the no-encryption mandate on those stations that were testing DRM.

      The major impetus for ATSC 3.0 is ATSC 1 was already obsolete when it finally went live, relying on MPEG 2 and as a result only really allowing one medium quality HD channel - 720p60 or 1080i30 (seriously) per channel. Some TV stations squeezed in a couple of lower quality HD channels but most have a basic HD stream augmented by 1 to 3 low quality SD streams. ATSC 3.0 allows HEVC encoding, 4K video, 1080p (not just 1080i),

      In theory, if the FCC bans DRM, it's a good idea. If the FCC doesn't ban DRM, well, there's a good chance they wouldn't if the major stations asked to add it to ATSC 1.0, so I'm not entirely sure it makes much difference.

      • by Burdell ( 228580 )

        The ATSC 3.0 DRM parts were already approved and are already active in many markets. It's not a proposal, it's in use... the only proposal here is to force the end of ATSC 1.0 (probably hoping for another handout for set-top boxes for all the TVs that don't support ATSC 3.0).

        LG (IIRC) included ATSC 3.0 tuners in one generation of TVs, then dropped it over the licensing fees. TV makers don't mind the Internet requirement - they'd like for you to hook that up so you can get THEIR ads, not the broadcasters'.

        • Approved by whom? The FCC hasn't approved ATSC 3.0 for anything other than experimental use - existing TV stations are still mandated to carry an ATSC 1.0 stream, so it wasn't by the FCC. Are you confusing the FCC with the ATSC?

          The ATSC 1.0 broadcast flag is also approved. It's just the FCC doesn't allow it to be used. But that doesn't change that it's part of the ATSC standard.

          • by Burdell ( 228580 )

            It's not just approved for experimental use, it's fully approved for use. It's voluntary, not mandatory, and stations must still maintain an ATSC 1.0 signal, but they can satisfy that by getting together and compressing multiple primary channels (e.g. the major broadcast networks, leaving out public and independent broadcasters) into a single ATSC 1.0 channel. Broadcasters get together, put the ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC primaries on one or two over-compressed ATSC 1.0 signals. Then they can each move all their

  • I for one will never buy a TV with 3.0's DRM enabled.

    Here's an idea. Make a 3.1 version that is identical to 3.0 except all DRM is stripped out.
    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      So there are people around that watches TV still?

      • by hwstar ( 35834 )

        People looking for "Zero Cost" entertainment.

        a. Low income retirees living on social security alone.
        a. The chronically unemployed.

        The problem is, this entertainment isn't really "Zero Cost" because over-the-air TV needs advertising to remain profitable, and the ad loads are very high. A lot of the advertisers prey on these low income folks with ads for payday loans, bail bonds, prescription drugs etc.

        Obnoxious advertising was one of the main reasons I disconnected cable TV back in the early 2000's (Along wi

      • The sky went dark in 2004 here. The broadcaster's promise to replace the translator stations never happened. Dish raised their price unreasonably high, and so no, there is no TV to watch.

        I had a Roku for awhile, but that went to crap. Netflix no longer has a DVD service, so the library is the sole source now.

      • Yes, and people ride horses, walk, use pencils to write words, grow gardens, and knit sweaters. What's your point?
  • I last watched OTA regularly in the mid-1970s because it's push content pabulum which has never been different.

    • by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:36AM (#65235647) Homepage

      I still watch, but it's mostly PBS stations and NHK World... stuff like This Old House, woodworking, cooking shows, science shows, etc. WETA-UK has comedies and mystery shows. And I used to watch a couple hours of foreign news (BBC, DW, F24, NHK) each day. NHK also has some disaster preparedness type shows (and PSA type clips between shows, especially back in 2020-2023)

      Of course, I'm going through long covid, so there was a year or so during 2020/2021 where Sesame Street was about the limit of my ability to follow. I tried catching up on the DVDs that I had collected, but it's exhausting not being able to follow it so taking 2 hrs to watch a 25min episode as you have to keep backing up to figure out what's going on.

      Sometimes I'll watch ION (Bones, NCIS), MeTV (old school shows), Grit (westerns), but I miss when ION used to have cooking shows instead of just 'we'll show a full day of the same stuff' trying to appeal to binge watchers but forgetting that we'd prefer to be able to set our own schedule for that.

  • I am surprised that there are people that still care...

  • by kackle ( 910159 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:25AM (#65235615)
    "You know all those converter boxes you got for each of your TVs, not to mention the TVs that went into the landfill because people didn't want to deal with the converters? Do it again, just because we want to. Bonus: All of those converter boxes will go in the landfill, too! And I'm sure the seniors won't struggle figuring it out like they did last time. And our apologies in advance when the signal that was fine before becomes unviewable in certain areas in the future...we won't be sending out any technicians."

    Fuck you.

    I recently saw a baseball game on a big TV and couldn't understand why I couldn't see the batter's face very well--he looked so far away. I wondered why they weren't zooming in as has been normal for decades. Then I realized the batter was surrounded by large ADS on the wall behind him, 4 or 5 of them, that were all readily viewable. Lots of pixels for more advertising; is this the future they're pushing? Whether it's a boot or an ad stomping on my face...
  • I'm still amazed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:33AM (#65235637)

    ATSC 3 is pure evil /w DRM and senseless switch to an incompatible IP encumbered audio codec (AC4). It is at least heartening to see chorus of thousands of anti-DRM comments is still going.

    https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/searc... [fcc.gov]

    There is an increasingly popular alternative in broadcasting h264 over ATSC 1 that at least doubles channel capacity over mpeg2 in a mostly compatible way.

    At least people got something dramatically beneficial in return for their troubles moving to ATSC 1 and converter boxes were at least subsidized. Here the benefits of ATSC 3 are not worth either the disruption associated with another round of forklift upgrades or evil fuckery associated with imposing DRM which has already caused previously working kit to break.

  • I've just looked at my usual supplier of TV tuner cards... and those don't seem to support ATSC 3.0 only 1.0.
    I mean from a technical standpoint I can understand getting rid of ATSC 1.0, it's not well suited for broadcast applications, but the sensible solution would be to go to something normal like DVB-T2 or something.

    • I couldn't get a new OTA TiVo (out of stock) so I canceled service after ~25 years and switched to a HDHomeRun Flex 4K [amazon.com] which supports ATSC 3.0 and I run Channels [getchannels.com] as a DVR.
      • by Burdell ( 228580 )

        That'll work right up until the broadcasters in your market flip the ATSC 3.0 DRM flag, at which point you'll lose all DVR functionality. SiliconDust has said they're "working on" DRM support... for several years.

      • by kriston ( 7886 )

        And TiVo *still* refuses to support any kind of satellite TV. Their massive lawsuit win against DiSH Network saved their company but at great cost to TiVo subscribers.

  • by andyring ( 100627 ) on Saturday March 15, 2025 @10:58AM (#65235697) Homepage

    We watch a decent amount of OTA TV, partly because it is free. Local news, regular broadcast shows, that sort of thing.

    But I've already invested in tuners and infrastructure for watching it. I'm not going to re-invest in stuff yet again only to be ridiculously saddled with DRM.

    OTA DRM can go to hell and never come back.

  • Like all ideas driven purely by corporate greed, this is a terrible idea. Netxgen TV is hard to pick up. My Sony TV has a tuner for it, but half of the antennas I have tried either don't get it at all, or drop the picture frequently. I frequently give up on it and just watch the ATSC 1.0 channels instead. Another problem is that several manufacturers have dropped Nextgen tuners because of licensing fees. No one wants a separate tuner box. We want to use our TV for TV. Use of Nextgen needs to remain optiona
  • ATSC 1.0 is an absurdly bad design.

    They didn't use COFDM, so the signal is very sensitive to radio interference and multipath, and, more importantly, two transmitters can't possibly share the same frequency. SiriusXM, HD Radio, and DVB use COFDM mode and it works better than expected. ATSC 1.0 use 8VSB mode for "rural transmission reasons." Even cable television doesn't use 8VSB--it uses QAM and achieves DOUBLE the bandwidth on the same channel at ATSC 1.0.

    In addition, Doppler shift damages the data stre

  • With internet these days anything that requires new hardware for broadcasting is just ridiculous. Just make sure internet is available everywhere, thanx to satellite internet like Starlink or its competitors which are rising in the next few years. This seems more like a move for some people to make money over something nobody needs thanx to the internet.
  • "We're sorry, the agency you have reached is not in serv...CHAINSAW!! CHAINSAW!1!! ...beep"
    -DOGE

The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm. -- Travis McGee

Working...