# NextGen TV (ATSC 3.0)



## thyname (Dec 27, 2010)

I read something today about NextGen tv being available in my market (Washington DC metro area) by this summer, and obviously thought about TiVo. I have an antenna in the attic with my Roamio OTA for many years now, which works flawlessly, and I get all channels available locally.

Does anyone know if TiVo is planning to launch a ATSC 3.0 compatible DVR?


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## janitor53 (Jun 9, 2016)

I know nothing but I can't imagine they're going to release new OTA hardware despite there being a market for it. Tivo as a dvr seems to be dead.


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## wizwor (Dec 18, 2013)

janitor53 said:


> Tivo as a dvr seems to be dead.


You could be right. I have not heard any rumors. Could be that their R&D has turned to OTA and OTT as premium providers move on from TiVo/physical DVRs. We don't really know what anyone is doing about ATSC 3.0. So far, we have seen televisions with ATSC 3.0 tuners and Silicondust network tuners. Have to think TabloTV DVRs with ATSC 3.0 tuners are in the works. Same for Sling's devices. Amazon too. I think we are still years from any of this mattering.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

thyname said:


> Does anyone know if TiVo is planning to launch a ATSC 3.0 compatible DVR?


Only TiVo knows, and they are not sharing. That said, they probably have plans. And plans for plans. And plans for plans for plans. But that does not mean those plans will turn into shipping product.

Back in early 2019 there was a proof of concept evaluation of a ATSC 3.0 USB tuner dongle connected to a TiVo, but it was never productized. With the current ATSC 3.0 tuners being rather expensive per tuner any new TiVo OTA product with all ATSC 3.0 tuners likely makes sense only somewhere down the line of wide ATSC 3.0 rollout (in most markets today there is one shared ATSC 3.0 transmitter being used by a group of the local OTAs and they are all experimenting as to what makes sense for them) when not only will the price per tuner likely drop, but there are a lot more ATSC 3.0 transmitters.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

I think the issue with releasing an ATSC 3.0 TiVo would be that many people would buy one and find they can't pick up any channels, unless TiVo can manufacture a hybrid ATSC 1.0/3.0 tuner for this new Tivo like Silicon Dust did. I think ATSC 3.0 is a bridge to far for TIVO.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

shwru980r said:


> unless TiVo can manufacture a hybrid ATSC 1.0/3.0 tuner for this new Tivo like Silicon Dust did


While I am sure you can find exceptions, all the tuner silicon available (which SiliconDust used too) does ATSC 1.0 in addition to ATSC 3.0. However it is (still) a rather expensive silicon offering, which for an (all) ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuner TiVo would increase the BoM substantially. SiliconDust fudged their offering by providing just a pair of ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners in addition to a pair of ATSC 1.0 (only) tuners (so four tuners total, but only two are ATSC 3.0/1,0 capable). In previous years one might expect the 2Q (April-ish) NAB conference for some vendors to announce their new silicon, but NAB has been pushed back to 4Q (October-ish) this year.


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## shwru980r (Jun 22, 2008)

CommunityMember said:


> While I am sure you can find exceptions, all the tuner silicon available (which SiliconDust used too) does ATSC 1.0 in addition to ATSC 3.0. However it is (still) a rather expensive silicon offering, which for an (all) ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuner TiVo would increase the BoM substantially. SiliconDust fudged their offering by providing just a pair of ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners in addition to a pair of ATSC 1.0 (only) tuners (so four tuners total, but only two are ATSC 3.0/1,0 capable). In previous years one might expect the 2Q (April-ish) NAB conference for some vendors to announce their new silicon, but NAB has been pushed back to 4Q (October-ish) this year.


From what I read Silicon Dust retrofitted the 2 hybrid tuners into their existing quatro tuner and they only have 100Mbs ethernet on the quatro box so they don't have the band width to support 4 ATSC 3.0 tuners. Not sure they have the bandwidth to support 2 ATSC 3.0 streams either since I think ATSC 3.0 can use 57Mbs. I think this new box is only $20 more than the previous model.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

shwru980r said:


> From what I read Silicon Dust retrofitted the 2 hybrid tuners into their existing quatro tuner and they only have 100Mbs ethernet on the quatro box so they don't have the band width to support 4 ATSC 3.0 tuners. Not sure they have the bandwidth to support 2 ATSC 3.0 streams either since I think ATSC 3.0 can use 57Mbs.


That is consistent with what they have said. It was done to give them something to offer so that they (and the early adopters) can test out certain ways of dealing with ATSC 3.0. Both the early adopters, and SiliconDust, have found that there are some real world issues as some of the stations have done the most interesting things (HEVC interlaced? Who would have thought? [as I understand it, pretty much no one implemented HEVC interlaced rendering correct (except for LG)]). And while the issues will get understood/resolved, it is still early times.

It should be noted that while an ATSC 3.0 stream is up to ~57Mbps, no single channel is using all that bandwidth (except for certain tests) and as the SiliconDust devices only transport the single (sub) channel selected (not the raw stream except for certain dev modes) the 100Mbps Ethernet tends not to be an issue for these early adopters and tests (although could be for future cases).

It is presumed that SiliconDust will eventually offer some newer pure ATSC 3.0 tuner box with a new design that will be able to support what they are learning, and that will likely include all the other changes necessary to fully utilize the full ATSC 3.0 capabilities (which could include higher network speeds, crypto functionality for stations use of protected content, and likely a faster SoC to manage it all). And while I would imagine that SiliconDust would like to keep the price point reasonable, adding all those features may push the price higher at least in the near term (eventually prices come down, but that would mean you are no where near being a leader in the marketplace).



> I think this new box is only $20 more than the previous model.


Well, $50, so (while perhaps a little profit there) ~$25 extra per tuner over the previous variant.

As I recall the tuner silicon which was expected to be used (AFAIK no one was done a teardown to validate) was a MaxLinear tuner chip that is designed to be a chip that can support every existing terrestrial standard from across the world (one tuner to rule them all), which makes it both attractive (SiliconDust, and others, will be able to design one version of their tuners that work everywhere rather than market specific variants), and somewhat more expensive to manufacture.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

CommunityMember said:


> SiliconDust fudged their offering by providing just a pair of ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners in addition to a pair of ATSC 1.0 (only) tuners (so four tuners total, but only two are ATSC 3.0/1,0 capable).





CommunityMember said:


> It should be noted that while an ATSC 3.0 stream is up to ~57Mbps, no single channel is using all that bandwidth (except for certain tests) and as the SiliconDust devices only transport the single (sub) channel selected (not the raw stream except for certain dev modes) the 100Mbps Ethernet tends not to be an issue for these early adopters and tests (although could be for future cases).


I thought I read awhile back that if two different channels were on the same ATSC 3.0 tower/frequency, then a single ATSC 3.0 tuner in the new Silicon Dust device could record both. And, of course, there's a lot of channel sharing going on. Here in Nashville, we have two 3.0 towers going. The one on UHF 21 hosts three HD channels, our local CBS, Fox and MyTV while the one on UHF 30 hosts 2 HD and 1 SD, our local ABC and CW, plus the diginet TBD. So my thinking was that the Silicon Dust device could record simultaneous shows on, say, the local CBS and Fox using just one of its two 3.0 tuners.


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## Jim1348 (Jan 3, 2015)

I should probably be a little more excited about ATSC 3.0, but I am not. For me, it is sort of like 5G smartphones...meh.

All the 2021 televisions with NextGen TV tuners


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## machpost (Dec 22, 2010)

Jim1348 said:


> I should probably be a little more excited about ATSC 3.0, but I am not. For me, it is sort of like 5G smartphones...meh.
> 
> All the 2021 televisions with NextGen TV tuners


Yeah, at this point it feels like too many promises and too little evidence that they will deliver on these promises anytime soon. It will likely be many years before 4k over the air broadcasts are the norm.


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## snerd (Jun 6, 2008)

machpost said:


> Yeah, at this point it feels like too many promises and too little evidence that they will deliver on these promises anytime soon. It will likely be many years before 4k over the air broadcasts are the norm.


When 4K is commonplace, they will be touting ATSC 4.0 or ATSC 5.0 with *true* HD (Holographic Display) support.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

machpost said:


> Yeah, at this point it feels like too many promises and too little evidence that they will deliver on these promises anytime soon. It will likely be many years before 4k over the air broadcasts are the norm.


And that point many people will ask what's OTA


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

All of the big broadcasters and studios who produce TV in additions to movies don't even want to to go their with all the expense of new equipment that incluses camera, switchers, edititing, etc., and the big 4 don't like the idea of new equipment for the O&O's they own, and then add to that the fact that ATSC 3.0 in NOT mandated, and you will get a patchwork, but if you can't get the UHD content, then from the entities who are cold the idea, then what's the point of ATSC 3.0 in the first palce. Yeah, I know its IPTV and all its advantages and broadcasters being able to gather all sorts of data about what you watch and other goodies criss-crossing on you LAN, but IPTV is not going to motivate people to seek out ATSC 3.0

The only way ATSC 3.0 could be assured of succes is ONLY if it were mandated, and it is not. NAB lost that battle, and NAB does not represent the interests of the big 4 broadcasters and their O&O's, and the big 4 are the majority of new and high quality content on the OTA airwaves. ATSC 3.0 could end up becoming a niche or even simply NOT used by viewers because it matters not that the TV's have the ATSC 3.0 built-in capability to display, but that the DVR's have such capability to record and dispaly, and there seems to be no great interest with ATSC 3.0 as there was with High Definition. Considering the changes with TV watching today, UHD is going to be all about the streaming services--IF you want to pay the the streamers the EXTRA $$$ premium to view it.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

The promise (or at least possibility) of better quality picture and sound will prompt a few consumers (tech/home theater geeks) to seek out ATSC 3.0 but if anything actually drives its adoption to the point that it becomes mainstream, it will be easier, more reliable reception with inexpensive indoor antennas. In other words, making it even easier to cut the cord. But even that won't be enough to get 3.0 to the point where it's successful enough for stations to shut down their 1.0 broadcasts. For that to happen, MVPDs will have to strike deals to carry those 3.0 broadcasts in addition to or in place of their legacy 1.0 broadcasts, plus the great majority of OTA viewers will have to have upgraded to 3.0 tuners. I'm not sure that will ever happen and if it does, it probably won't be until late this decade at the soonest.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

NashGuy said:


> The promise (or at least possibility) of better quality picture and sound will prompt a few consumers (tech/home theater geeks) to seek out ATSC 3.0 but if anything actually drives its adoption to the point that it becomes mainstream, it will be easier, more reliable reception with inexpensive indoor antennas. In other words, making it even easier to cut the cord. But even that won't be enough to get 3.0 to the point where it's successful enough for stations to shut down their 1.0 broadcasts. For that to happen, MVPDs will have to strike deals to carry those 3.0 broadcasts in addition to or in place of their legacy 1.0 broadcasts, plus the great majority of OTA viewers will have to have upgraded to 3.0 tuners. I'm not sure that will ever happen and if it does, it probably won't be until late this decade at the soonest.


Interesting points, but MVPD's are still losing subscribers and it is the streaming services who have the massive numbers today, and keep them for the foreseeable future. Two big hurdles for many who MAY want OTA using an OTA antenna: impossible to get signal due to obstruction; the pain for many to purchase (extra cost), and install the antenna, and the hard time of finding anyone willing to install it for you for a price. I will also add the usual additional cost and implementation of a separate system to handle the OTA stations. This does not go well in many households with multiple users. This is why still today, a big disappointment about some of the MVPD's is that they do NOT offer local channels, the most expensive cost for an MVPD if they are to provide channels to a clear majority of DMA's. OTA viewing from OTA antennas is still a niche that probably never get any bigger than it is today, unless someone can develop a device that can easily integrates streaming, OTA, etc. for a reasonable price--not the overpriced few options today. And obviously, TiVo failed rather miserably at it. Such a device could be a separate device that can integrate it all (with Straming service recording would be nice), not necessarily a "ONE box" concept that TiVo had.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Jim1348 said:


> I should probably be a little more excited about ATSC 3.0, but I am not. For me, it is sort of like 5G smartphones...meh.
> 
> All the 2021 televisions with NextGen TV tuners


You don't need new TVs -- a single HDHomeRun will cover your home network:

https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHomeRun-HDHR5-4K-Connect-NetGenTV/dp/B08MWV7YTV/

D.C. is going 3.0 March 2nd, but it looks like the 3.0 signals will only be on a low-power station that I can't get. Baltimore is launching on the 23rd (pushed back from the 9th), which looks more promising for me. My HDHR is ready.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Series3Sub said:


> Interesting points, but MVPD's are still losing subscribers and it is the streaming services who have the massive numbers today, and keep them for the foreseeable future.


MVPDs are losing subs but they're still in a majority of US homes and way more Americans watch local channels via MVPDs than by OTA antennas.



Series3Sub said:


> OTA viewing from OTA antennas is still a niche that probably never get any bigger than it is today, unless someone can develop a device that can easily integrates streaming, OTA, etc. for a reasonable price--not the overpriced few options today. And obviously, TiVo failed rather miserably at it. Such a device could be a separate device that can integrate it all (with Straming service recording would be nice), not necessarily a "ONE box" concept that TiVo had.


Agreed. But network-connected "gateway" ATSC 3.0 tuners -- similar to HDHomeRun's line of OTA tuners -- could be the answer. Connect your OTA antenna and then connect it to your home network. Optionally plug in a storage device for DVR service. Then all the devices on your home network can access live (and DVR'd) OTA TV. That's the concept that the group behind ATSC 3.0 has been touting for years (in addition, of course, to tuners built into TVs). But if such devices are going to take off with the general public, then it will take a concerted effort on the part of OTA broadcasters to advertise (and maybe even subsidize) them, and perhaps join together to produce a single standard free "NextGen TV" app for all the main platforms (Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, iOS, Android, Samsung TV, LG webOS, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.). It remains to be seen whether that will happen and, even if it does, to what degree US households will bother with it versus just getting the same content via MPVDs and/or streaming apps like Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, PBS, CW, etc.


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## Series3Sub (Mar 14, 2010)

NashGuy said:


> MVPDs are losing subs but they're still in a majority of US homes and way more Americans watch local channels via MVPDs than by OTA antennas.
> 
> Agreed. But network-connected "gateway" ATSC 3.0 tuners -- similar to HDHomeRun's line of OTA tuners -- could be the answer. Connect your OTA antenna and then connect it to your home network. Optionally plug in a storage device for DVR service. Then all the devices on your home network can access live (and DVR'd) OTA TV. That's the concept that the group behind ATSC 3.0 has been touting for years (in addition, of course, to tuners built into TVs). But if such devices are going to take off with the general public, then it will take a concerted effort on the part of OTA broadcasters to advertise (and maybe even subsidize) them, and perhaps join together to produce a single standard free "NextGen TV" app for all the main platforms (Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, iOS, Android, Samsung TV, LG webOS, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.). It remains to be seen whether that will happen and, even if it does, to what degree US households will bother with it versus just getting the same content via MPVDs and/or streaming apps like Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, PBS, CW, etc.


That's all fine for you and me, but not for the vast majority of the population, IMHO. I have NO ONE in my entire two sides of the family who could do ANY of the steps you provided in your reply, nor have ANY idea that ANY of this stuff (like HD Homerun) exists and have NO CLUE how to go about instlling it. Yes, they really CAN NOT do all that easy stuff--for you and me--to get it all to work. It is just about impossible for even find anyone who installs OTA antennas. It took me months to find ONE guy who did (at the time I could not dare go on the roof--now I can). Also, some of these prospective users are older and do NOT go on roofs anymore no have the younger brain power to "figure out how to connect and set stuff up."

Getting a connected device set-up is about the limit these people can do--along with selecting the app to launch the streaming service--let's not even get into them setting things up to record streaming content because that requires a degree for them. Even adding an external HDD is WAY beyond their capacity, or even a USB OTA tuner. Yes, simple for you and me, but not for them. So, until the installer man comes into their homes to make all this possible, it aint happening in the necessary numbers to produce a tipping point. . People find things like HDHomeRun and even the Fire Recast (which did not sell as well as Amazon was hoping likely because the install process was way beyond who most people can handle) are just too complicated for the vast majority, so they don't get it even if they know it exists.


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## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

Series3Sub said:


> That's all fine for you and me, but not for the vast majority of the population, IMHO. ...


This is so true. Hell, a lot of senior citizens have problems with cell phones, even the simple cell phones. What is second nature for a kid or a young adult, and what becomes an acceptable task in figuring out for an middle aged adults, is totally impossible for older adults. Not because they're stupid, but because the technology just isn't ingrained in their minds. We senior citizens long for the days of just picking up the phone hanging on the wall and dialing a few digits, turning on the TV and tuning in one of 13 channels. No, not really, I'd never want to go back to the old days, and I'm sure most of my peers agree. But all of that's second nature to us. All that stuff, at least what we choose to remember of it, was very user friendly. Before you get a chance to retort, yea, I know, fine turning the TV, turning the antenna, replacing tubes, the list goes on, it really wasn't always as convenient, but when it was working, it was simple. OTOH, most kids today wouldn't know how to deal with a dial on a phone, or use a manual transmission and choke in a car.

TiVo was unique, because it did take the most modern technology and devise a very easy to use interface that even my mother could grasp when she visited my home on occasion, or when we bought her one of her own. The next generation of television delivery systems, whether it be ATSC 3.0 or all these streaming channels, need to find a good common simple interface that works, no matter what "channel" or source you are viewing, so that one doesn't have to fumble phoook through a dozen or more interfaces, let alone difficult technical setups.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Series3Sub said:


> ... It is just about impossible for even find anyone who installs OTA antennas. ...


Used to be anyplace that sold TVs also sold and installed outside antennas. That all started to change in the 1980s and now no one local even sells outside antennas (Radio Shack was the last place) and finding someone to install one is - as you said- nearly impossible. My brother who lives in rural MN had a tower and antenna installed back in the late 90s, which works great for him, he get channels from 3 markets. I live in rural NY and have reception problems with good deep fringe antenna I installed on my 1 store house. My neighbor has no issues with a similar antenna on their 2 story house. So I thought I would put up a 30-40 foot tower, really easy to buy one over the internet impossible to find someone to install it and re-setup my antenna. I can not even find someone to come and check my current setup to see if there is an issue they could fix.


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## WVZR1 (Jul 31, 2008)

atmuscarella said:


> Used to be anyplace that sold TVs also sold and installed outside antennas. That all started to change in the 1980s and now no one local even sells outside antennas (Radio Shack was the last place) and finding someone to install one is - as you said- nearly impossible. My brother who lives in rural MN had a tower and antenna installed back in the late 90s, which works great for him, he get channels from 3 markets. I live in rural NY and have reception problems with good deep fringe antenna I installed on my 1 store house. My neighbor has no issues with a similar antenna on their 2 story house. So I thought I would put up a 30-40 foot tower, really easy to buy one over the internet impossible to find someone to install it and re-setup my antenna. I can not even find someone to come and check my current setup to see if there is an issue they could fix.


I have a friend whose 'neighbor' was having some roofing done by a contractor that had a 'aerial lift platform' truck on site. They moved the truck to his property bolted a 'mast mounted' antenna to the platform put it I believe 30 or so feet in the air with 'him' and confirmed signal that made him happy as he!!. He bought a used tower locally and pretty much engineered his install.

I'd think it pretty easy to find an individual that owns such a lift truck to do a test. I wouldn't think that difficult to get a tower installed. Watch the purchasing of used tower components, there are though businesses that actually do and 'certify' condition of what they sell.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Series3Sub said:


> That's all fine for you and me, but not for the vast majority of the population, IMHO. I have NO ONE in my entire two sides of the family who could do ANY of the steps you provided in your reply, nor have ANY idea that ANY of this stuff (like HD Homerun) exists and have NO CLUE how to go about instlling it. Yes, they really CAN NOT do all that easy stuff--for you and me--to get it all to work. It is just about impossible for even find anyone who installs OTA antennas. It took me months to find ONE guy who did (at the time I could not dare go on the roof--now I can). Also, some of these prospective users are older and do NOT go on roofs anymore no have the younger brain power to "figure out how to connect and set stuff up."
> 
> Getting a connected device set-up is about the limit these people can do--along with selecting the app to launch the streaming service--let's not even get into them setting things up to record streaming content because that requires a degree for them. Even adding an external HDD is WAY beyond their capacity, or even a USB OTA tuner. Yes, simple for you and me, but not for them. So, until the installer man comes into their homes to make all this possible, it aint happening in the necessary numbers to produce a tipping point. . People find things like HDHomeRun and even the Fire Recast (which did not sell as well as Amazon was hoping likely because the install process was way beyond who most people can handle) are just too complicated for the vast majority, so they don't get it even if they know it exists.


The concept I have in mind is more like Tablo. I set one of those up myself and it was super simple. No more difficult than setting up an OTA TiVo. It had a single fold-out instruction page with big pictures.

As for installing an OTA antenna, part of the promise of ATSC 3.0 is that it will increase the number of folks who can reliably get reception with simple indoor antennas (thanks to 3.0's lack of multipath interference and also the possibility of single-frequency networks with multiple smaller towers spread around town).

I don't think complexity is the issue, it's awareness of the product and the value of what it offers versus the entry price. Setting up an indoor antenna and installing a gateway tuner (with the option of plugging in a USB hard drive or flash drive for DVR) is definitely do-able for most Americans if the software and installation instructions are user-friendly (such as with Tablo). Sure, there will always be folks who can't or won't do that, just like there are folks who use an iPhone but won't initially set it up and instead rely on the folks at the Verizon store to do it. But those folks could get a grandson or neighbor to do it or, assuming there was sufficient public demand for OTA TV, hire someone such as Best Buy's Geek Squad to do the set-up.

I don't think Europeans are smarter or more tech-savvy than Americans but they use free and subscription OTA TV to a far greater extent than we do. The difference is that it's a well-known and understood option there. So again, I don't think technical complexity is the main barrier for ATSC 3.0 adoption, I just think it's public awareness of it combined with 3.0 being a sufficiently compelling offering in the first place.

As for installation of outdoor OTA antennas, I doubt that becomes all that common again. But a big chunk of US households, maybe even a majority, should be able to receive their local 3.0 stations with an indoor antenna. Those are really the targets for OTA adoption, not the folks who have to put a big antenna on their roof.


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## lman (Nov 14, 2006)

The way the government describes the economic state of this country, you would think everybody would be dropping cable and streaming to go with OTA and antennas would be flying off the shelves. Of course around here we can't find people to fill jobs. I guess they are all at home waiting for their government money to pay their streaming bill.


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## mikey1273 (Nov 6, 2017)

I switched to OTA this February after years of paying for limited basic from crapcast. I was only able to get one channel good with indoor antennas.
As to companies to install antennas there is one that I found in my area but they wanted $600 to install a small to medium size VHF-hi/UHF combo antenna. I ended up doing my own install and selected two antennas, a Stellar Labs Deep fringe VHF-hi Yagi and an antennas direct bowtie for UHF. Cost me almost half and I got bigger more powerful antennas. I would recommend the ANtenna Man from youtube if you need help with what antenna will work best for your location.

I am looking forward to the change to ATSC 3.0 just for the better reception that's possible. We have Baltimore, MD that went live with it last month. that market is a neighboring one to me but nothing in my area. being this change is not mandatory the roll out is going to be slow. Full power stations have to keep the 1.0 signal up for at least 5 years after they start broadcasting 3.0 and low power stations can cut directly over with out that requirement.
I did ask Tivo via email about an ATSC 3.0 device and their response was that it was in development for the future, no timeline given and thanks for expressing interest in future products. Any device they put out in the next 5-10 years will likely be a hybrid 1.0/3.0 tuner like silicon dust since even in markets where 3.0 has went live already 1.0 will be a thing for 5 years or more. 

As far as 4k content I think we will see very little, like special events, major sports events and such, mostly likely nothing like South Korea has that I was reading about. We will likely see more HD and more subchannels for the rest of this decade.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

mikey1273 said:


> Any device they put out in the next 5-10 years will likely be a hybrid 1.0/3.0 tuner like silicon dust since even in markets where 3.0 has went live already 1.0 will be a thing for 5 years or more.


The SiliconDust quad tuner (two ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners, two ATSC 1.0 only tuners) was a compromise due to pricing at the time of design (they could have gone 4 ATSC3.0/1.0 tuners, but the device would have been close to double the price). These days, I would expect any newly designed devices to be only the combined ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners given the availability, at a cheaper price point, of such universal tuners (in fact the newest tuner silicon is universal across both the US and other world delivery systems (DVB-T/T2), just needing the appropriate firmware to be loaded into the tuner for the country to be used in, so one tuner to rule them all).

As to when TiVo will get the message and start delivering actual product is anyone's guess (ATSC 3.0 program delivery has other complexities than just a tuner demod).


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

lman said:


> The way the government describes the economic state of this country, you would think everybody would be dropping cable and streaming to go with OTA and antennas would be flying off the shelves. Of course around here we can't find people to fill jobs. I guess they are all at home waiting for their government money to pay their streaming bill.


Ease of OTA reception is greatly exagerrated. Millions of people will never get OTA because the signals have to follow the laws of physics. Signals don't reach in deep valleys and don't go through mountains. People who live in towers have no outside antennae options. In many urban areas OTA is D.O.A.


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## mikey1273 (Nov 6, 2017)

tenthplanet said:


> Ease of OTA reception is greatly exagerrated. Millions of people will never get OTA because the signals have to follow the laws of physics. Signals don't reach in deep valleys and don't go through mountains. People who live in towers have no outside antenna options. In many urban areas OTA is D.O.A.


Yes the signals do have limits. some areas are remote and don't receive any signals or require large antennas. as far as OTA being dead in urban areas I'm not sure how, you would need to give an example situation. 
for people in towers and apartment buildings that don't have windows facing the right direction or something there used to be a thing called a shared building antenna and a connection in each apartment. I'm sure with the rise of cable many of them systems were replaced or not maintained. If they existed before cable they can again if renters would express interest in that building owners would maybe install them again.

I think we are moving to a time when OTA tv is going to continue to see growth in use for years to come. In other countries like Britain, Italy and most of europe antenna TV and FTA satellite is still what people use more then cable tv.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

tenthplanet said:


> Millions of people will never get OTA because the signals have to follow the laws of physics.


While Scotty famously said "Ye cannae change the laws of physics" he always found a way to side step those laws later in the episode.

Similarly, SFN (Single Frequency Networks) can help solve the geographic challenges of some locations, and with the ability of ATSC 3.0 to combine all available sources of the bitstreams (from possibly multiple SFN transmitters, and even the Internet), coverage *can* be quite a bit better. Of course, not all areas will need, or benefit from, all those options, and not all stations will spend the money needed to do the build outs, but IRT ATSC 3.0 capabilities, "it's in there".


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

The possibility of improved reception with ATSC 3.0 is real, but not guaranteed. In D.C., there's a low-power station that I had never, ever received when it was broadcasting in ATSC 1.0. They switched to 3.0, and now it comes in rock-solid. (I don't _think_ they increased their power or anything.)

In Baltimore, though, there's a new 3.0 station carrying multiple channels, that fails to match the strength of the 1.0 versions. AFAICT, that's mainly because it's using higher data rates, so more channels will fit, but it makes the signal less robust.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

wmcbrine said:


> The possibility of improved reception with ATSC 3.0 is real, but not guaranteed. In D.C., there's a low-power station that I had never, ever received when it was broadcasting in ATSC 1.0. They switched to 3.0, and now it comes in rock-solid. (I don't _think_ they increased their power or anything.)


COFDM is in general far more robust, but as with all else, your reception will vary (and while COFDM is in general more robust, there are a couple of cases where it can perform poorer than 8VSB).


> In Baltimore, though, there's a new 3.0 station carrying multiple channels, that fails to match the strength of the 1.0 versions. AFAICT, that's mainly because it's using higher data rates, so more channels will fit, but it makes the signal less robust.


ATSC 3.0 allows (but does not require) a broadcaster to offer multiple PLPs (Physical Layer Pipes) which can transmit streams at different robustness/bitrates, allowing (say) a high bitrate "4K" quality stream and at the same time a low bitrate "SD" quality stream, and a receiver that can only reliably receive at the lower bitrate can, at least, see something. The initial lighthouse stations around the country are often still experimenting with what will work best for their situation(s), but it is not uncommon they all start with single high(er) bitrates (especially when as a lighthouse station they have lots of stations trying to fit into the same stream), and only later may start experimenting with additional PLPs or additional SFN transmitters.

In the end, ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) is still a work in progress.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

mikey1273 said:


> Yes the signals do have limits. some areas are remote and don't receive any signals or require large antennas. as far as OTA being dead in urban areas I'm not sure how, you would need to give an example situation.
> for people in towers and apartment buildings that don't have windows facing the right direction or something there used to be a thing called a shared building antenna and a connection in each apartment. I'm sure with the rise of cable many of them systems were replaced or not maintained. If they existed before cable they can again if renters would express interest in that building owners would maybe install them again.
> 
> I think we are moving to a time when OTA tv is going to continue to see growth in use for years to come. In other countries like Britain, Italy and most of europe antenna TV and FTA satellite is still what people use more then cable tv.


Streaming is the 800 pound gorilla and work from home has become a must. Many people are going broadband only with their cable. Building owners don't like to pay for things they don't have to. Streaming and broadband will crush cable tv and OTA. It's 2021 OTA is on borrowed time. OTT is the future.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

tenthplanet said:


> It's 2021 OTA is on borrowed time.


As long as OTA has the DMA rules (exclusive regional monopoly on "national network" content), they can make money just by sitting on their transmitters, as cable and OTT providers must pay for the re-transmission rights. And as long as the OTAs in the major markets are O&O there will be contractual tie-ins that force the cable and OTT providers to include expensive content in their plans (another way to print money).

So, as Mark Twain was once misquoted as saying: "The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated", so too, is the death of OTA.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

CommunityMember said:


> COFDM is in general far more robust, but as with all else, your reception will vary (and while COFDM is in general more robust, there are a couple of cases where it can perform poorer than 8VSB).


One of the biggest reception advantages that ATSC 3.0/COFDM has over ATSC 1.0/8VSB is that multipath interference does not exist with the former while it's a major problem with the latter. There are millions of Americans who live in urban/suburban areas where they can pick up all their major local 1.0 stations with sufficient signal strength with an indoor antenna but multipath interference often makes certain channels glitchy to the point of unwatchable with major pixellation and audio drop-outs.

I had to spend a ton of time over the years experimenting with different antennas positioned in different spots to minimize multipath on various stations. I've never been able to fully eliminate it but I've gotten to the point where it's only rarely a problem now. Shame there's not more worth watching on the broadcast networks these days, ha.


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

I've been viewing TV from an antenna for a few years now. I have on old Radioshack rotor that works well but there are occasions when drop off occurs
and can't be fixed so that is why I bought into LOCAST for $5/month donations. We use it rarely but it is there as a backup. It's a peace maker as my wife didn't want to give up cable tv even though we hardly ever watched non local TV. Saving hundreds a year.


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## Joe Siegler (May 10, 2000)

thyname said:


> I read something today about NextGen tv being available in my market (Washington DC metro area) by this summer, and obviously thought about TiVo. I have an antenna in the attic with my Roamio OTA for many years now, which works flawlessly, and I get all channels available locally.
> 
> Does anyone know if TiVo is planning to launch a ATSC 3.0 compatible DVR?


Well, there was this in 2019. If the headline is to be believed, this is a dongle that will work with existing DVR's.

As was said above, proof of concept is a long way to being able to buy one ourselves, but at least they were thinking about it.

https://zatznotfunny.com/2019-04/tivo-atsc-3/


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

Joe Siegler said:


> As was said above, proof of concept is a long way to being able to buy one ourselves, but at least they were thinking about it.


The PoC dongle would have been a way to offer existing customers a way to preserve their existing investment in a recent (Bolt/Edge?) TiVo. However, that was then, and this is now, and if TiVo was going to go down that route one might have expected an announcement of a product by now, rather than the (lack of announcement of) staff reductions in the departments that would have been driving such. As I don't see how the PoC dongle would be of interest to the operator market (where TiVo is still investing substantial engineering resources), I would certainly be surprised if such a product gets released at this point.


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## ke3ju (Jan 5, 2004)

tenthplanet said:


> It's 2021 OTA is on borrowed time. OTT is the future.


I disagree, once ATSC 3.0 is the standard, it's streaming and Cable that are going to die. The new found virtual bandwidth will allow OTA broadcasters to compete with Cable and Streaming services like never before.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

ke3ju said:


> I disagree, once ATSC 3.0 is the standard, it's streaming and Cable that are going to die. The new found virtual bandwidth will allow OTA broadcasters to compete with Cable and Streaming services like never before.


See how many people under 40 know what is OTA is, let alone use it. OTA will die with the boomers.


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## Worf (Sep 15, 2000)

All ATSC 3.0 will do is let stations pack more channels into their frequency allocation. Which they will do, because those extra channels will be to sell more ads. 

It's the same premise that HD Radio was supposed to offer to FM stations. Instead, stations used it as a method ot sell more ads.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Worf said:


> All ATSC 3.0 will do is let stations pack more channels into their frequency allocation. Which they will do, because those extra channels will be to sell more ads.
> 
> It's the same premise that HD Radio was supposed to offer to FM stations. Instead, stations used it as a method ot sell more ads.


Some of the public radio stations have made good use of HD Radio, but commercial stations have been


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## Luke M (Nov 5, 2002)

Worf said:


> All ATSC 3.0 will do is let stations pack more channels into their frequency allocation. Which they will do, because those extra channels will be to sell more ads.


The end game is to sell the remaining UHF TV spectrum to the cellular companies. TV can continue to use the VHF channels, and with ATSC3, that's enough.


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## ke3ju (Jan 5, 2004)

Worf said:


> All ATSC 3.0 will do is let stations pack more channels into their frequency allocation. Which they will do, because those extra channels will be to sell more ads.
> 
> It's the same premise that HD Radio was supposed to offer to FM stations. Instead, stations used it as a method ot sell more ads.


Radio=Apples and TV=Oranges


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Luke M said:


> The end game is to sell the remaining UHF TV spectrum to the cellular companies. TV can continue to use the VHF channels, and with ATSC3, that's enough.


I kinda think the end game may be to use most of the ATSC 3.0 spectrum for non-TV uses (e.g. datacasting services contracted out to other companies, including perhaps auto manufacturers). I'm a bit skeptical that there will ever be sufficient consumer adoption of 3.0 tuners to allow them to shut down their 1.0 broadcasts.

I can see local stations and the major networks they carry increasingly offering 4K HDR and Atmos audio to their paying viewers via the cable TV services they work with. We already see this right now, with select NBC affiliates around the country passing on a 4K or 4K HDR version of their linear channel's NBC primetime Tokyo Olympics show to some of their cable TV distribution partners (Comcast, YouTube TV, Altice, etc.). But none of those local NBC stations are broadcasting 4K or 4K HDR OTA via ATSC 3.0. One doesn't depend on the other.

The future of 4K HDR will be via OTT streaming and managed IPTV. _Maybe_ we see some primetime network content done in 1080p HDR via ATSC 3.0 stations in the next few years. Those stations don't generally have the bandwidth needed for 4K given that they're sharing towers, so 1080p HDR is probably the best they can do, assuming the networks even provide it to them for free OTA tranmission. Meanwhile, those stations will pass their signal in full 4K HDR to paying cable TV services capable of handling it (as we're already seeing with this Olympics). The next-day on-demand versions offered through their partner streaming services (Hulu for ABC, Paramount+ for CBS, Peacock for NBC) will offer those shows in 4K HDR too. The broadcast nets have every incentive to give the best picture quality to those outlets since they own them.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

NashGuy said:


> I'm a bit skeptical that there will ever be sufficient consumer adoption of 3.0 tuners to allow them to shut down their 1.0 broadcasts.


Today there are (often one) lighthouse ATSC 3.0 transmitters shared with multiple stations. Eventually(*) it is expected there will likely be (one?) remaining lighthouse ATSC 1.0 transmitters for the DMA to support those that have not yet purchased a newer TV(**), with highly compressed subchannels that may technically be HD, but are not going to have great PQ due to the sharing, and the other broadcasters will move their primary transmitter to ATSC 3.0. The exact transition schedules will, of course, vary by market, but it does look like that is the working thinking.

(*) The current regs require (approximately) the same DMA coverage for ATSC 1.0 to continue as has been the norm. In a few years that same coverage will no longer be required, so sharing a transmitter that has different characteristics becomes viable (all the stations, of course, want to maintain their coverage, but they may be willing to compromise at the edges, especially in locations that have had historically complicated coverage).

(**) While everyone is different, the average replacement age of a TV is around 7 years. The newer/larger/expense sets (that tend to be on the higher end of replacement years) are starting to come with ATSC 3.0 tuners, and the cheaper/smaller sets (that tend to be on the lower end of the replacement years) are starting to transition.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

CommunityMember said:


> Today there are (often one) lighthouse ATSC 3.0 transmitters shared with multiple stations. Eventually(*) it is expected there will likely be (one?) remaining lighthouse ATSC 1.0 transmitters for the DMA to support those that have not yet purchased a newer TV(**), with highly compressed subchannels that may technically be HD, but are not going to have great PQ due to the sharing, and the other broadcasters will move their primary transmitter to ATSC 3.0. The exact transition schedules will, of course, vary by market, but it does look like that is the working thinking.
> 
> (*) The current regs require (approximately) the same DMA coverage for ATSC 1.0 to continue as has been the norm. In a few years that same coverage will no longer be required, so sharing a transmitter that has different characteristics becomes viable (all the stations, of course, want to maintain their coverage, but they may be willing to compromise at the edges, especially in locations that have had historically complicated coverage).
> 
> (**) While everyone is different, the average replacement age of a TV is around 7 years. The newer/larger/expense sets (that tend to be on the higher end of replacement years) are starting to come with ATSC 3.0 tuners, and the cheaper/smaller sets (that tend to be on the lower end of the replacement years) are starting to transition.


Yeah, that's definitely an accurate description of what the NAB has been saying for years in terms of how ATSC 3.0 will transition in. What I'm saying is "We'll see if it actually happens."

AFAIK, there are very few new TV models that have 3.0 tuners built-in. I think it's an open question whether manufacturers will be willing to pay more to include those tuners in their TVs (thereby either increasing the retail price of the TV and/or reducing their profit margins), especially the lower-to-midrange models that account for the bulk of sales, given the following factors:


The vast majority of TVs are purchased by people who rely on cable and/or streaming and do not connect an OTA antenna to their TV
3.0 stations are still unavailable in most markets and, even in launched markets, usually one or more major local isn't on 3.0. (Here in Nashville, for instance, 3.0 launched about a year ago but our NBC and PBS stations are still only on 1.0, with no stated intentions of launching on 3.0.)
Very few 3.0 stations offer enhanced picture quality vs. their 1.0 version yet and there's been no announcements by the major networks with regard to their plans to offer native 4K/1080p/HDR/Atmos formats. I believe a few NBC affiliates on 3.0 may be distributing an up-converted (i.e. fake) HDR feed but I think that's all I've read about so far.

Meanwhile, the only standalone 3.0 tuners available so far are a few models by HDHomeRun starting at $200. And they've had some problems, especially with audio. Seems like the stations and HDHomeRun are still figuring out how to make everything work.

Also, keep in mind that no device (TV or standalone tuner) is shipped with only 3.0 tuners. If it has 3.0, it has a 1.0 tuner too. So those viewers can continue to fall back on 1.0 signals as long as they're available.

It's cliche to say, but seems to me that 3.0 adoption is suffering from the ol' chicken and egg problem without an FCC mandate. Who knows, maybe a decade from now, we'll see all OTA stations (including popular subchannels) on 3.0, with so few viewers still relying on 1.0 that stations start pulling the plug on those signals. But I think it's also quite possible that the whole thing sort of fizzles out and station owners end up using their 3.0 towers mainly for non-TV uses, to bring in additional income, while they continue to broadcast on a reduced amount of 1.0 spectrum indefinitely with diminished PQ. As I understand it, stations are free to do pretty much whatever they want with their 3.0 bandwidth at five years after the law was passed. Until then, their 3.0 station has to feature at least the same main channel as they have on their 1.0 station.

For the current voluntary transition plan to work, we'd really need both the station owner groups and the broadcast networks to be all-in in a way that would create significant consumer demand for 3.0 tuners (or those groups subsidizing the cost of 3.0 tuners to make them very cheap and easily accessible). Maybe we'll see that materialize by, say, 2023, but we're certainly not seeing it yet. Remember that it's always been the station owners (especially Sinclair) who have touted 3.0, not the network owners (Disney, Comcast, ViacomCBS, Fox) who have their own streaming apps as well cable channels. Frankly, I've never really seen how it's in the networks' interests to support 3.0.


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## rivertranced (Aug 10, 2021)

Hi all - this may be a dumb question, but I read that NextGen / 3.0 will leverage the same spectrum (6Mhz) as historical OTA broadcasts. As such, would it be possible to use a 1.0 DVR, such as the Roamio, and then run the live or recorded broadcast through a converter or to a 3.0 compatible TV (which I have - a 2021 Sony) in order to get the 3.0 quality video? Put another way, if the TVs / converters are already converting or upscaling the feed as part of the 3.0 rendering, could they not do so once it's run through a 1.0 DVR? Thank you!!


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## CurtJester (Apr 1, 2021)

rivertranced said:


> Hi all - this may be a dumb question, but I read that NextGen / 3.0 will leverage the same spectrum (6Mhz) as historical OTA broadcasts. As such, would it be possible to use a 1.0 DVR, such as the Roamio, and then run the live or recorded broadcast through a converter or to a 3.0 compatible TV (which I have - a 2021 Sony) in order to get the 3.0 quality video? Put another way, if the TVs / converters are already converting or upscaling the feed as part of the 3.0 rendering, could they not do so once it's run through a 1.0 DVR? Thank you!!


No, this won't work. Tivo and other ATSC 1.0 DVRs already have decoded the signal and record that data. They do not record the raw signal (which is what would be needed to extract 3.0 from the frequency, ignoring any sampling issues etc.).


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

rivertranced said:


> Hi all - this may be a dumb question, but I read that NextGen / 3.0 will leverage the same spectrum (6Mhz) as historical OTA broadcasts. As such, would it be possible to use a 1.0 DVR, such as the Roamio, and then run the live or recorded broadcast through a converter or to a 3.0 compatible TV (which I have - a 2021 Sony) in order to get the 3.0 quality video? Put another way, if the TVs / converters are already converting or upscaling the feed as part of the 3.0 rendering, could they not do so once it's run through a 1.0 DVR? Thank you!!


Your DVR would need an ATSC 3.0 tuner in it, or somehow connected to it (via wifi, ethernet or USB), in order to record the 3.0 signal. There's really no way to do it the other way around as you propose (i.e. capturing the signal then feeding it through a 3.0 tuner in your TV). Sony TVs run Android TV as their OS. It would be easy enough for Sony (or a third party) to create a DVR app to run on your TV and record from its internal 3.0 tuner. No idea if we'll ever see that though.


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## Kleeberg (May 22, 2016)

Interesting. TiVo has lowered the price for the All-In plan for the OTA Edge by $150 with use of a coupon through Sept 9. I wonder what that implies?


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I kinda think the end game may be to use most of the ATSC 3.0 spectrum for non-TV uses (e.g. datacasting services contracted out to other companies, including perhaps auto manufacturers). I'm a bit skeptical that there will ever be sufficient consumer adoption of 3.0 tuners to allow them to shut down their 1.0 broadcasts.


I don't see it either. They're already about bottomed out on what is practical for mobile use frequency wise. I think the end game was to try to combine stations to lower broadcast costs while continuing to sell to pay TV (if it exists by then), or through network-centric streaming services like Peacock for NBC, but I also don't see 1.0 going away.

What I think will actually happen is OTA and the networks and affiliates will continue to fade away to lower and lower quality content, eventually just being a repository for low-grade re-run and syndicated content, kind of like the subchannels are today. If we're lucky, they'll keep a little bit of content on OTA to try and upsell to their network's streaming service.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I don't see it either. They're already about bottomed out on what is practical for mobile use frequency wise. I think the end game was to try to combine stations to lower broadcast costs while continuing to sell to pay TV (if it exists by then), or through network-centric streaming services like Peacock for NBC, but I also don't see 1.0 going away.
> 
> What I think will actually happen is OTA and the networks and affiliates will continue to fade away to lower and lower quality content, eventually just being a repository for low-grade re-run and syndicated content, kind of like the subchannels are today. If we're lucky, they'll keep a little bit of content on OTA to try and upsell to their network's streaming service.


He's back! Bigg, where you been, man? Thought maybe Covid had gotten you.

Yeah, I think the picture you paint of where OTA TV is heading is plausible. Although it looks like NFL will remain on the major broadcast nets (as well as their affiliated OTT services like Paramount+, Peacock and ESPN+) at least through 2030, and probably through 2033, based on the new long-term deal that was struck earlier this year. As long as the nation's most popular sport remains on live OTA TV, it can't totally become a low-grade dumping ground. But come 2034, who knows...

EDIT: Corrected "2020" to "2030".


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> He's back! Bigg, where you been, man? Thought maybe Covid had gotten you.
> 
> Yeah, I think the picture you paint of where OTA TV is heading is plausible. Although it looks like NFL will remain on the major broadcast nets (as well as their affiliated OTT services like Paramount+, Peacock and ESPN+) at least through 2020, and probably through 2033, based on the new long-term deal that was struck earlier this year. As long as the nation's most popular sport remains on live OTA TV, it can't totally become a low-grade dumping ground. But come 2034, who knows...


I haven't been around here, AVS, or DSLR much. I just don't care that much about this stuff anymore, it's gotten so commoditized that it's gotten rather boring TBH. ATSC 3.0 seems to be moving very slooooowly in rolling out. My viewing has mostly shifted to streaming, but I still watch a decent amount of OTA on the Roamio OTA.

It depends a lot on cable too, as they have become way too heavily reliant on double-dipping with retrans fees. Cable is on a long, slow decline, but the networks are still raking in billions by double-dipping. Like many other things, COVID accelerated cord cutting (I think, I'm just basing it on people moving and/or tightening their budgets, when they tend to cut the cord, I haven't really dug into the data in detail) that were already going on (supply chain issues, WFH, real estate trends based on demographics, etc). I'm still not sure if cable will eventually lose critical mass and go into a fast implosion, or if the current slow decline and hollowing out of channel content will continue with large numbers of subscriptions supported by aggressive bundling practices by vertically integrated MSOs (ahem, Comcast) and bulk deals.

I think the more interesting question might be what is the end game for cable and cable networks? As you described at one point, channels with brands can go out on their own, what about ones that don't have strong brands or a loyal following? Do they just disappear? YouTube TV as a well targeted, lean package disappeared a few years ago when they added a bunch of junk channels to justify jacking the price up because the content providers were trying to wring every last cent out of Google for carriage fees. Now we're basically back to a $65/mo cable package via streaming, that's totally out of whack with the value proposition of even having several OTT SVOD services. The interesting part is that the numbers show a very low recapture rate for vMVPDs, which has probably gone down now with vMVPDs getting almost as expensive as MVPDs, as well as a relatively low recapture rate for moving to OTA, and I've always been skeptical of the OTA numbers, as I think most OTA users are either very occasional viewers or only tune in for a few large sporting events.

So to loop back around to the NFL, I don't think having the NFL alone will keep OTA at it's current level. It could become a pretty low-grade dumping ground on nights that aren't football. Maybe the big events and some local news viewers are enough to keep OTA as a relatively workable business. Some major changes in the financial relationship between the affiliates and networks is going to have to happen though, as there is a declining amount of money in primetime programming.

As for ATSC 3.0, I see the transition continuing at a glacial pace. If we're very lucky, maybe we'll get 1080p HDR feeds of the major networks, if not, at least better quality than MPEG-2 on ATSC 1.0, although even those have improved quite a bit in spite of reduced bandwidth, due to advances in software encoding.

I keep thinking that I need to stay on topic, and then I remember where I am again.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I haven't been around here, AVS, or DSLR much. I just don't care that much about this stuff anymore, it's gotten so commoditized that it's gotten rather boring TBH. ATSC 3.0 seems to be moving very slooooowly in rolling out. My viewing has mostly shifted to streaming, but I still watch a decent amount of OTA on the Roamio OTA.


Fair enough. I feel somewhat the same. My viewing has been predominantly streaming (SVOD and AVOD) for a long while now, with a dwindling amount of OTA, either live (Channels app) or recorded (MythTV).



Bigg said:


> I'm still not sure if cable will eventually lose critical mass and go into a fast implosion, or if the current slow decline and hollowing out of channel content will continue with large numbers of subscriptions supported by aggressive bundling practices by vertically integrated MSOs (ahem, Comcast) and bulk deals.


Well, some analysts believe that the cable bundle has a floor of maybe around 50 million households that are very much into the live sports and/or news/opinion content exclusive to cable nets and unavailable on streaming. But then we're now seeing the NFL available on both platforms and it looks like the RSNs, which carry the bulk of regular season MLB, NBA and NHL games, may follow suit. And as entertainment content continues to be hollowed out from the bundle and shift to streaming, it's an open question if there really is a cable bundle floor anywhere close to 50 million. Supposedly Disney's current thinking on the ESPN channels is that their live content won't become available OTT direct-to-consumer (via a standalone ESPN app) unless and until the bundle sinks "well under 50 million US households."

As for MSO support for bundling TV, I really think that's dying, even with Comcast. I think we're nearing a point, if we're not there yet, where Comcast and Charter see mobile as their no. 2 product behind broadband, not cable TV. And smaller MSOs are actively pitching vMVPDs and DTC SVODs to their customers, either as alternatives to their traditional cable TV service or because they've completely stopped selling it.



Bigg said:


> I think the more interesting question might be what is the end game for cable and cable networks?


I think we're looking at a long slow decline for cable TV but I'm skeptical that the concept of linear channels will ever go away. Maybe at some point they only exist as psuedo-channels like Pluto TV has. The expectation is that broadband providers will evolve toward selling bundles of streaming services. It wouldn't surprise me if at some point we see the media titans begin tying distribution of their remaining linear cable channels to their DTC apps, e.g. to get the various Warner Discovery linear nets, you also take HBO Max; to get the Disney channels, you also take the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle, etc. Maybe we see something like that in the back half of this decade.



Bigg said:


> So to loop back around to the NFL, I don't think having the NFL alone will keep OTA at it's current level. It could become a pretty low-grade dumping ground on nights that aren't football. Maybe the big events and some local news viewers are enough to keep OTA as a relatively workable business. Some major changes in the financial relationship between the affiliates and networks is going to have to happen though, as there is a declining amount of money in primetime programming.


Aside from the NFL, which is the highest-value content the broadcast nets air, I suspect that the rest of their primetime line-ups are increasingly about giving exposure to shows also available on their DTC services, e.g. Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock. It's hard for shows to break through the media clutter and get noticed. Being on an outlet with the reach of the broadcast nets definitely helps a show get noticed and drive viewers to it on streaming (in the same way that a pop song getting used in a TV commercial can help it break through and become a hit on Spotify, etc.). But I can imagine the broadcast nets following Fox's lead and making fewer scripted live-action shows (which are more expensive) and shifting toward cheaper-to-produce stuff that's more compatible with live drop-in viewing (i.e. no continuing story line) such as competition, reality and talk.



Bigg said:


> As for ATSC 3.0, I see the transition continuing at a glacial pace. If we're very lucky, maybe we'll get 1080p HDR feeds of the major networks, if not, at least better quality than MPEG-2 on ATSC 1.0, although even those have improved quite a bit in spite of reduced bandwidth, due to advances in software encoding.


Yeah. I think the jury is very much out as to whether ATSC 3.0 survives long-term or ends up being abandoned in a few years. Not sure that the broadcast nets, TV manufacturers, or MVPDs are going to support it to the level necessary to make it really take off and supplant ATSC 1.0 with an FCC mandate, which doesn't exist and I suspect won't ever.

I can imagine a middle scenario where most markets ends up with just one or two 3.0 stations that are profitably used mainly for non-TV uses such as datacasting, assuming that the Nexstar/Sinclair-owned BitPath initiative succeeds in landing major automakers as clients, using 3.0 receivers in cars to deliver infotainment services and perhaps even help with self-driving cars through Enhanced GPS.



Bigg said:


> I keep thinking that I need to stay on topic, and then I remember where I am again.


Topic, schmopic. This is TCF!


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Fair enough. I feel somewhat the same. My viewing has been predominantly streaming (SVOD and AVOD) for a long while now, with a dwindling amount of OTA, either live (Channels app) or recorded (MythTV).


Nice. I didn't even realize MythTV was still around!



> Well, some analysts believe that the cable bundle has a floor of maybe around 50 million households that are very much into the live sports and/or news/opinion content exclusive to cable nets and unavailable on streaming. But then we're now seeing the NFL available on both platforms and it looks like the RSNs, which carry the bulk of regular season MLB, NBA and NHL games, may follow suit. And as entertainment content continues to be hollowed out from the bundle and shift to streaming, it's an open question if there really is a cable bundle floor anywhere close to 50 million. Supposedly Disney's current thinking on the ESPN channels is that their live content won't become available OTT direct-to-consumer (via a standalone ESPN app) unless and until the bundle sinks "well under 50 million US households."


I think it depends a lot on price. If they keep getting greedier and greedier, then they're going to drive the whole market into a death spiral. If they can get the costs down and get rid of some of the forced bundling of channels, cable bundles could go on for a long time.



> As for MSO support for bundling TV, I really think that's dying, even with Comcast. I think we're nearing a point, if we're not there yet, where Comcast and Charter see mobile as their no. 2 product behind broadband, not cable TV. And smaller MSOs are actively pitching vMVPDs and DTC SVODs to their customers, either as alternatives to their traditional cable TV service or because they've completely stopped selling it.


Interesting, that makes sense, as cable's margins in those aggressive bundles are near zero. I do wonder how much they're actually making on those MVNO plays though, as they're targeting parts of the market that don't really use a lot of mobile data. I always thought of those as stickiness plays in competitive markets.



> I think we're looking at a long slow decline for cable TV but I'm skeptical that the concept of linear channels will ever go away. Maybe at some point they only exist as psuedo-channels like Pluto TV has. The expectation is that broadband providers will evolve toward selling bundles of streaming services. It wouldn't surprise me if at some point we see the media titans begin tying distribution of their remaining linear cable channels to their DTC apps, e.g. to get the various Warner Discovery linear nets, you also take HBO Max; to get the Disney channels, you also take the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle, etc. Maybe we see something like that in the back half of this decade.


I do think there's a place for a few linear channels, particularly for news content, but that doesn't necessarily mean that cable bundles will really exist in their current form. I suppose there has to be something for airports and hotels and such. I could see MSNBC being bundled with Peacock, and other channels with their respective owners to get more streaming memberships.



> Aside from the NFL, which is the highest-value content the broadcast nets air, I suspect that the rest of their primetime line-ups are increasingly about giving exposure to shows also available on their DTC services, e.g. Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock. It's hard for shows to break through the media clutter and get noticed. Being on an outlet with the reach of the broadcast nets definitely helps a show get noticed and drive viewers to it on streaming (in the same way that a pop song getting used in a TV commercial can help it break through and become a hit on Spotify, etc.). But I can imagine the broadcast nets following Fox's lead and making fewer scripted live-action shows (which are more expensive) and shifting toward cheaper-to-produce stuff that's more compatible with live drop-in viewing (i.e. no continuing story line) such as competition, reality and talk.


Agreed. We've already seen a wave of dance shows and game show sorts of things that are relatively cheap and easy to produce. It's also hard to compete for quality on scripted content when you've got platforms like Netflix that aren't boxed into 22 minute episodes, and have highly granular data to go with them.



> Yeah. I think the jury is very much out as to whether ATSC 3.0 survives long-term or ends up being abandoned in a few years. Not sure that the broadcast nets, TV manufacturers, or MVPDs are going to support it to the level necessary to make it really take off and supplant ATSC 1.0 with an FCC mandate, which doesn't exist and I suspect won't ever.


I don't think ATSC 3.0 will go away, I just foresee it getting stuck in the first phase for a long time, with one or two ATSC 3.0 stations broadcasting multiple networks, and the rest staying on 1.0.



> I can imagine a middle scenario where most markets ends up with just one or two 3.0 stations that are profitably used mainly for non-TV uses such as datacasting, assuming that the Nexstar/Sinclair-owned BitPath initiative succeeds in landing major automakers as clients, using 3.0 receivers in cars to deliver infotainment services and perhaps even help with self-driving cars through Enhanced GPS.


The datacasting stuff seems dubious at best to me. That and every mention of 5G self-driving cars. I don't really see anything that either technology could do that isn't already possible over 4G or sub-6 5G. Heck, real-time traffic and maps worked fine over 3G.



> Topic, schmopic. This is TCF!


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Nice. I didn't even realize MythTV was still around!


Yeah, MythTV is open-source, so I guess it'll never die (although may cease getting updated at some point). It uses Schedules Direct, an unaffiliated non-profit service, for US guide listings here in the US. One-year subscription is $25. But I now just have MythTV pull in free PSIP guide data embedded in the OTA signals each day to ensure that my recordings work every evening. So it's totally free to me, except for the one-time cost of a $10 client app some guy developed for Apple TV. I love having all my TV on one device via one remote!



Bigg said:


> Agreed. We've already seen a wave of dance shows and game show sorts of things that are relatively cheap and easy to produce. It's also hard to compete for quality on scripted content when you've got platforms like Netflix that aren't boxed into 22 minute episodes, and have highly granular data to go with them.


Saw an interesting article over at Variety today, showing how live-or-same-day viewership in the key 18-49 demo has fallen by more than half among the big 4 broadcast nets between fall 2015 and fall 2021.

Fading Ratings: How Far Broadcast TV Has Tumbled Since 2015 - Variety

And the number of scripted series among the top 25-rated telecasts has declined a lot too. There were 14 back in 2015 but just 6 this fall, and they're all toward the bottom of the bunch. Broadcast viewing, at least in the under-50 demo, is now dominated by sports, specials, reality/competition and 60 Minutes. Which isn't to say that the network scripted shows aren't being watched, it's just that they're increasingly being viewed via SVOD (e.g. Hulu), cable on-demand, or DVR over the following days.



Bigg said:


> I don't think ATSC 3.0 will go away, I just foresee it getting stuck in the first phase for a long time, with one or two ATSC 3.0 stations broadcasting multiple networks, and the rest staying on 1.0.


Yeah, that could happen. But I wonder how long stations owner are going to give ATSC 3.0 to prove itself and become a profit center, rather than cost center, for them. As things stand now, I doubt that simulcasting the major network feeds on 3.0 brings in any additional incremental viewers they wouldn't have had if they only aired on 1.0. In some cases, 3.0 viewers report that the picture quality is better but in most cases so far, it's the same or even worse. And many also complain about problems decoding the new Dolby AC-4 audio codec used on 3.0.

The big question is when will the broadcast nets begin offering an enhanced feed -- if they ever do, most likely 1080p HDR with Atmos audio -- to their affiliates to air via 3.0. Without that, I don't see consumers (and therefore TV manufacturers) showing much interest in 3.0. The only reason I can see right now why one would care about it is that the local 3.0 signal may be easier to receive/more reliable than the corresponding 1.0 signals. But let's face it, not that many folks want to fool with an OTA antenna and those who do, outside of a few middle-aged tech geeks, are just casual network TV viewers who want something free for occasional viewing. If they can't pick up all the main channels, eh, so what, it's free. They're mainly watching Netflix and Hulu anyhow. The whole thing increasingly has the feel to me of 3D TV or maybe HD Radio.

So if by 2024 or 2025, the situation looks largely the same as now, with 1-2 ATSC 3.0 stations lit up in markets across the nation, and only certain higher-end model TVs having 3.0 tuners built in, and little or no premium format content from the broadcast nets, then I could easily see broadcasters withdrawing from the experiment and converting those 3.0 towers back to 1.0. At least they could then support more multicast diginets (with some of them in 720p instead of 480i) to bring in some additional viewers and ad revenue.



Bigg said:


> The datacasting stuff seems dubious at best to me. That and every mention of 5G self-driving cars. I don't really see anything that either technology could do that isn't already possible over 4G or sub-6 5G. Heck, real-time traffic and maps worked fine over 3G.


The much lower latency of 5G is what's supposed to be the key to using it in self-driving cars. Anyhow, yeah, I don't know if Sinclair and Nexstar will end up getting any takers on their joint datacasting service BitPath. But maybe. Striking deals with Ford, GM, etc. to build 3.0 receivers into their cars and offer them a lower-cost way (vs. 5G/4G) to distribute car software updates, maps and traffic data, and subscription entertainment services (music stations, on-demand video, etc.) is, I'm told, what they're really hoping for. If something like that came to fruition, then I could imagine 3.0 being profitable for those two broadcasting groups (the two largest in the nation), even if the TV side fizzled out. They might just operate one 3.0 tower per market and use it exclusively for BitPath.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

It's weird but one part of adopting ATSC 3.0 maybe getting cable systems to use it. There are people who can't/won't use antennas and don't want to make a hobby of just getting TV. Bitpath will still have to fight dead zones the bane of any form of over the air broadcasting. The dead zones are not going away.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> It's weird but one part of adopting ATSC 3.0 maybe getting cable systems to use it.


There's not really any need... 4K QAM already exists (albeit, barely). And BTW, it already works on TiVo (unlike ATSC3), Bolt or later.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

tenthplanet said:


> It's weird but one part of adopting ATSC 3.0 maybe getting cable systems to use it.


Well, technically, pay/cable TV operators wouldn't be distributing ATSC 3.0. I mean, they don't distribute ATSC 1.0 signals now. They take whatever raw feed the local stations give them (often via fiber, although with some smaller stations/markets, the cable operator may actually be capturing the station's OTA signal) and then they recompress/transcode that audio/video stream into whatever they deliver to their customers' STBs. ATSC 1.0, for instance, is encoded in MPEG-2 but cable operators usually transcode to H.264. In some cases (e.g. Comcast) they may even down-rez 1080i signals to 720p. Additional features like 5.1 audio and SAP may or may not be retained by the operator in the stream.

That said, it could be that the rise of ATSC 3.0 creates an opportunity for locals across the nation to begin offering cable operators a higher-quality feed, e.g. 1080p HDR Atmos. And of course those locals will want to get paid higher retransmission fees in exchange for the enhanced feed. But it's important to note that, if the broadcast networks and their affiliates wanted to do this, t_here's really no need for them to embrace ATSC 3.0 and offer an enhanced OTA signal._ Local stations can, and sometimes do, encode a different feed for delivery to cable operators vs. what they send to their OTA tower. A good example was this past summer when certain NBC stations offered a 4K live feed of the Olympics to Comcast, YouTube TV and others. Meanwhile, it was the same ol' 1080i signal that got beamed out OTA via ATSC 1.0.

But you're definitely onto something when thinking about the potential connection between ATSC 3.0 and cable. Because if the networks get behind 3.0 and it takes off, part of the thinking will be to get carriage from cable operators for whatever aspects of the enhanced signals that they agree to support. (Better picture and audio quality, of course, although I question whether the targeted advertising and interactive features of ATSC 3.0 will be supported by cable operators and their STBs and apps.)



tenthplanet said:


> Bitpath will still have to fight dead zones the bane of any form of over the air broadcasting. The dead zones are not going away.


Definitely. I think BitPath is positioning itself as an IOT alternative to 5G, but not a complete substitute for it. Basically: "If your target devices can get a decent BitPath OTA signal, then you'll deliver your data payload to the device that way and save money. But if the device can't connect to our signal, then it will need to fall back to 5G/4G and you'll have to pay a higher data transmission rate to Verizon/AT&T/T-Mobile/DISH.


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## series5orpremier (Jul 6, 2013)

I previously posted somewhere that OTA 3.0 and my cable look visually similar and the OTA 3.0 advantage is sound quality. Well, last night The Voice and People's Choice Awards OTA 3.0 looked noticeably clearer and better than cable.


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## djtweed (Mar 17, 2006)

Today in LA our Fox 11 turned on the ATSC 3.0. My TivoHD and Roamio can only watch the KTTV-HD, but that channel has no guide data. 
Question - Do you think the missing guide data will fix itself? I've already forced connection to Tivo, but no luck.


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## ggieseke (May 30, 2008)

djtweed said:


> Today in LA our Fox 11 turned on the ATSC 3.0. My TivoHD and Roamio can only watch the KTTV-HD, but that channel has no guide data.
> Question - Do you think the missing guide data will fix itself? I've already forced connection to Tivo, but no luck.


They probably won't fix it until somebody files a report at TiVo. You might as well start the ball rolling yourself.

Tivo Customer Support Community

Something similar happened here in Houston with KIAHDT (CW39) on Dec 2. They started broadcasting in ATSC 3.0 on their old frequency and switched the ATSC 1.0 feed from RF channel 34 to 35. I filed a report on Dec 3 and it was resolved yesterday.


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## badams888 (Jun 6, 2016)

I noticed the change on fox 11 after it did not record thursday night football. My OTA roamio says that there is no longer a signal on 11-1, however, it appears there is an 11-2 which looks to be the hd signal. Am I correct in thinking that the old 11-1 is now the new atsc 3.0, and if I had a 4k tivo I would be able to see that?

My tivo hasn't quite gotten rid of all the 11-1 recordings it was going to record. I did a rescan as well. I'm hoping it will correct itself soon.


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## pl1 (Jan 18, 2007)

badams888 said:


> I noticed the change on fox 11 after it did not record thursday night football. My OTA roamio says that there is no longer a signal on 11-1, however, it appears there is an 11-2 which looks to be the hd signal. Am I correct in thinking that the old 11-1 is now the new atsc 3.0, and if I had a 4k tivo I would be able to see that?
> 
> My tivo hasn't quite gotten rid of all the 11-1 recordings it was going to record. I did a rescan as well. I'm hoping it will correct itself soon.


TiVo does not have any DVRs (that I am aware of anyway) that will do ATSC 3.0. The Bolt and the Edge will do 4K, but only if the cable company provides a 4K QAM signal.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

badams888 said:


> I noticed the change on fox 11 after it did not record thursday night football. My OTA roamio says that there is no longer a signal on 11-1, however, it appears there is an 11-2 which looks to be the hd signal. Am I correct in thinking that the old 11-1 is now the new atsc 3.0, and if I had a 4k tivo I would be able to see that?
> 
> My tivo hasn't quite gotten rid of all the 11-1 recordings it was going to record. I did a rescan as well. I'm hoping it will correct itself soon.


I saw that 11-2 did not look like SD which it was in the past. I'm just going to change my pending recordings to 11-2 from 11.1 till they fix this.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

pl1 said:


> TiVo does not have any DVRs (that I am aware of anyway) that will do ATSC 3.0. The Bolt and the Edge will do 4K, but only if the cable company provides a 4K QAM signal.


It's going to take something similar to a tuning adapter when the time comes and it will only work with the Bolt and the Edge. There may be a new all in one unit coming from Tivo or Tablo down the line when the actual demand for recording Nextgen TV is large enough.  Of course we could all be dead at that point..


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## Lane007 (Mar 11, 2021)

After the rescan finished on December 9th there were two FOX 11-1 channels in the channel list. The first one listed appeared to be the new ATSC 3.0, the second was the HD channel which my TV was able to decode, however there was no guide data. This afternoon, December 11th, about 3:30 PST I forced my Roamio OTA to connect to the TiVo service (found in the Network Settings menu) and it updated the missing guide data for FOX 11-1. I believe it would have updated on its own during TiVO's next scheduled connect time. Fox LA reception and guide data seem to be back to normal.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> But it's important to note that, if the broadcast networks and their affiliates wanted to do this, t_here's really no need for them to embrace ATSC 3.0 and offer an enhanced OTA signal._ Local stations can, and sometimes do, encode a different feed for delivery to cable operators vs. what they send to their OTA tower. A good example was this past summer when certain NBC stations offered a 4K live feed of the Olympics to Comcast, YouTube TV and others. Meanwhile, it was the same ol' 1080i signal that got beamed out OTA via ATSC 1.0.


Here's my cynical prediction. The broadcast stations are going to get to the first stage of ATSC 3.0, with shared transmitters that do a whole bunch of channels at 1080p, probably fairly heavily compressed, while keeping most of the ATSC 1.0 stations on the air. Then, cable will continue to compress the snot out of their "HD" channels that are barely HD, whether via repackaging ATSC 1.0, or re-encoding to MPEG-4, and then offer 4k versions of the networks as an upsell like they did for the Olympics, so that you have to have pay TV of one sort or another to get 4k. At least the ATSC 3.0 signals will likely be at least a bit better than ATSC 1.0.



series5orpremier said:


> I previously posted somewhere that OTA 3.0 and my cable look visually similar and the OTA 3.0 advantage is sound quality. Well, last night The Voice and People's Choice Awards OTA 3.0 looked noticeably clearer and better than cable.


It's going to depend on the market and the pay TV provider. ATSC 1.0 or QAM can be absolutely stunning given enough bandwidth, but they rarely are...


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> So it's totally free to me, except for the one-time cost of a $10 client app some guy developed for Apple TV. I love having all my TV on one device via one remote!


Interesting. I still like my TiVo, but we'll see what happens with ATSC 3.0. It will be nice for Beijing though, as it was for Tokyo.



> And the number of scripted series among the top 25-rated telecasts has declined a lot too. There were 14 back in 2015 but just 6 this fall, and they're all toward the bottom of the bunch.


What's even more interesting is I saw some statistics that something like the top broadcast show today wouldn't have made 10th place if it had the same viewership numbers a decade ago.



> Broadcast viewing, at least in the under-50 demo, is now dominated by sports, specials, reality/competition and 60 Minutes.


60 Minutes really got on a roll when COVID started, and they've continued to do some really interesting stories. SNL though, sort of went downhill, since their main material got voted out of the White House.



> Yeah, that could happen. But I wonder how long stations owner are going to give ATSC 3.0 to prove itself and become a profit center, rather than cost center, for them. As things stand now, I doubt that simulcasting the major network feeds on 3.0 brings in any additional incremental viewers they wouldn't have had if they only aired on 1.0.


Does it provide coverage benefits in hilly or heavily wooded areas? ATSC 1.0 wasn't a very good standard from a technical perspective. Also, if they all have one transmitter, they can say that they have NextGenTV without really doing much to support it.



> In some cases, 3.0 viewers report that the picture quality is better but in most cases so far, it's the same or even worse. And many also complain about problems decoding the new Dolby AC-4 audio codec used on 3.0.


I'd suspect that it will end up being better once they work the kinks out, as it doesn't take much bandwidth to offer a better quality HEVC feed compared to the super efficient but also super compressed MPEG-2 feeds.



> The whole thing increasingly has the feel to me of 3D TV or maybe HD Radio.


HD Radio is out there and working, and many cars have it, but you're right in that it doesn't generate a lot of buzz. Also, I didn't realize that they have HD Radio on AM until I got it on a ball game, but the range is terrible. I was driving back towards Hartford, and I had AM in MA, finally when I was within sight of Hartford, I picked up the HD Radio feed of the game. That was sort of interesting.



> ...then I could easily see broadcasters withdrawing from the experiment and converting those 3.0 towers back to 1.0. At least they could then support more multicast diginets (with some of them in 720p instead of 480i) to bring in some additional viewers and ad revenue.


Interesting idea. Just grind out some ad money on the diginets. They could get more diginets on 3.0, but with potentially a much smaller audience, so that may not work out. I think ATSC 3.0 is going to stick a little bit more than that, but I don't think it's going to really change the whole market or be that big of a deal to most people. I would have rather just had better quality ATSC 1.0, but no one really cares about VQ anymore on any broadcast or cable.



> The much lower latency of 5G is what's supposed to be the key to using it in self-driving cars.


Color me skeptical. I just don't see where it would make any sense.



> Striking deals with Ford, GM, etc. to build 3.0 receivers into their cars and offer them a lower-cost way (vs. 5G/4G) to distribute car software updates, maps and traffic data, and subscription entertainment services (music stations, on-demand video, etc.) is, I'm told, what they're really hoping for.


It seems way too niche. By the time they get such a contraption up and going, if it even works, the cost per MB of 5G will have gone down even more, and they can just use that, with Wi-Fi for software updates.


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## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

Bigg said:


> 60 Minutes really got on a roll when COVID started, and they've continued to do some really interesting stories. SNL though, sort of went downhill, since their main material got voted out of the White House.


Thank you. I can assure you it was a herculean effort, considering that within a 4 day period in March we did our last show in studio with a smaller than normal crew (people kept out due to possible Covid exposure), and the next Wednesday afternoon we received an email stating that we would NOT be allowed back in our production facility at all. We "crashed" (TV slang for last minute work) most of our pieces that spring with all of the story editing, graphics compositing, and show production being done from kitchen tables, kid's and guest bedrooms, basement rec rooms, and the like. Studio leads did come on green screen from an outside facility but were also composited by our graphic artist at home. We never missed a broadcast, never once compromising on content. To professionals, those first few months of shows must have looked horrendous, there were a ton of technical compromises. Most specifically editors color correcting and mixing their own pieces.

We continued with this till this past September. We now go into the studio solely to record the studio leads. All of the rest of our editing work is still being done at home.


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## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

I should add, my effort was strictly the with the effort of putting the final broadcast together, including figuring out the studio portions, editing the tease, ender piece and credits, as well as working with the senior story editor and the dozen or so story editors. And then the real effort that I had very little to do with, all the correspondents, producers and their camera crews figuring out how to shoot interviews and other material under the most trying conditions of not being able to travel, social distancing, doing remote interviews by zoom with camera crews in both locations so you the viewer wouldn't realize it was a zoom interview.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

MScottC said:


> Thank you. I can assure you it was a herculean effort, considering that within a 4 day period in March we did our last show in studio with a smaller than normal crew (people kept out due to possible Covid exposure), and the next Wednesday afternoon we received an email stating that we would NOT be allowed back in our production facility at all. We "crashed" (TV slang for last minute work) most of our pieces that spring with all of the story editing, graphics compositing, and show production being done from kitchen tables, kid's and guest bedrooms, basement rec rooms, and the like. Studio leads did come on green screen from an outside facility but were also composited by our graphic artist at home. We never missed a broadcast, never once compromising on content. To professionals, those first few months of shows must have looked horrendous, there were a ton of technical compromises. Most specifically editors color correcting and mixing their own pieces.


Wow, that's fascinating. I guess I just figured it was being done in studio, as it is essential work, much like industrial production continued throughout the pandemic in many areas. I didn't notice any technical compromises, but I don't really watch 60 Minutes for the production value, but for the journalism and access to unique and interesting stories. That being said, it still must be a ton of work to sift through the footage and tie it all together into a ~15 minute story.

60 Minutes was one of the few shows still producing, and much needed in that time when everyone was otherwise isolated and wanting to know about the pandemic. I thought the overall quality of 60 Minutes went up during COVID, due to some of the timely reporting being done, as well as the Zoom-not-Zoom interviews when others weren't out doing interviews like that at all.


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## DigitalDawn (Apr 26, 2009)

Bigg said:


> Wow, that's fascinating. I guess I just figured it was being done in studio, as it is essential work, much like industrial production continued throughout the pandemic in many areas. I didn't notice any technical compromises, but I don't really watch 60 Minutes for the production value, but for the journalism and access to unique and interesting stories. That being said, it still must be a ton of work to sift through the footage and tie it all together into a ~15 minute story.
> 
> 60 Minutes was one of the few shows still producing, and much needed in that time when everyone was otherwise isolated and wanting to know about the pandemic. I thought the overall quality of 60 Minutes went up during COVID, due to some of the timely reporting being done, as well as the Zoom-not-Zoom interviews when others weren't out doing interviews like that at all.


Plus, they have Anderson Cooper.


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## Lurker1 (Jun 4, 2004)

Introducing the Tablo ATSC 3.0 QUAD HDMI - A Tablo DVR for NextGen TV


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

series5orpremier said:


> I previously posted somewhere that OTA 3.0 and my cable look visually similar and the OTA 3.0 advantage is sound quality. Well, last night The Voice and People's Choice Awards OTA 3.0 looked noticeably clearer and better than cable.


Here in the DC area the ATSC 3.0 and 1.0 channels look equally as bad. The ATSC 1.0 channels are bitstarved with a bunch of sub-channels. And the five ATSC 3.0 channels are all sharing the same broadcast frequency.

I am using an HDHomeRun Flex 4K to access the ATSC 3.0 channels.


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## tommiet (Oct 28, 2005)

Some may not care... but ATSC 3.0 is just a way for local TV stations to pull data from your TV. They say doing that will help them provide a better user experience. And folks think TiVo is bad to offering ads before DVR events. But hail ATSC 3.0 as the second coming... I may give it a try as long as Pi-Hole blocks the data pulls. It currently blocks Samsung from pulling data from my TV.

TV stations for now will use the extra space to just add more channels. Don't expect a better picture or sound anytime soon.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

Lurker1 said:


> Introducing the Tablo ATSC 3.0 QUAD HDMI - A Tablo DVR for NextGen TV


No storage included ? Good way to turn a 300 dollar device into a 400 dollar device plus guide data costs. Hobbyists are not going to make next Gen TV fly, DVRs need to be turnkey and all in one box. Hmm that remind anyone of a certain device with a TV logo mascot.


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## dishrich (Jan 16, 2002)

tommiet said:


> *but ATSC 3.0 is just a way for local TV stations to pull data from your TV* ...TV stations for now will use the extra space to just add more channels. Don't expect a better picture or sound anytime soon.


Yep:


https://www.nexttv.com/news/nextstar-broadcasters-could-make-as-much-as-dollar15-billion-a-year-from-atsc-30-by-2030




> The U.S. broadcast TV could generate as much as $15 billion a year by 2030 from the provision of datacasting services enabled by ATSC 3.0, according to a deck revealed to investors Wednesday by Nexstar Media.


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## JLV03 (Feb 12, 2018)

How will ATSC 3.0 "pull" data from your TV? I can't imagine television manufacturers would spend a single fraction of a cent to put in a transmitter in addition to a receiver on the tuner board.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

JLV03 said:


> How will ATSC 3.0 "pull" data from your TV? I can't imagine television manufacturers would spend a single fraction of a cent to put in a transmitter in addition to a receiver on the tuner board.


They'll pull it via the Ethernet jacks and/or Wi-Fi in your TV set. For separate tuner boxes they'll probably offer solutions and incentives like a better EPG to get you to hook up to your internet. My HD HomeRun tuners all require a LAN and internet connection whether 3.0 or not. And yes it's creepy but there will be hacks to get around it in many cases.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> My HD HomeRun tuners all require a LAN and internet connection whether 3.0 or not. And yes it's creepy but there will be hacks to get around it in many cases.


I'm not sure they do require an Internet connection. But, to be clear -- for those who don't know -- the HDHomeRuns require a LAN connection because that's how they work -- they're network tuners. They don't have video outputs.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

wmcbrine said:


> I'm not sure they do require an Internet connection. But, to be clear -- for those who don't know -- the HDHomeRuns require a LAN connection because that's how they work -- they're network tuners. They don't have video outputs.


If they don't see the Internet you can't even edit their channel lists even though that's local on your LAN. Go figure. And of course various Silicon Dust guide-related features wouldn't work. I think there are other limitations, but I haven't tried that too often, and in fact I normally use them only with Channels DVR. But yes they have to be on a LAN at minimum.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Pokemon_Dad said:


> If they don't see the Internet you can't even edit their channel lists even though that's local on your LAN.


I think that's an app thing rather than a device thing. (And, you don't need to use their app.)



> But yes they have to be on a LAN at minimum.


Right, and I'm trying to suggest that that isn't "creepy". As headless tuners, they could hardly work any other way.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

wmcbrine said:


> I think that's an app thing rather than a device thing. (And, you don't need to use their app.)


[Edited:] Actually now that I think about it we're both right, kinda sorta. You can also access the tuners' control panels via a web browser, but when there's no internet you can't do that following standard instructions, which make you go through the company's website. There is a way around that, but I only know about it from this forum. It's a longstanding complaint that Silicon Dust only tells people to use the internet for this.



wmcbrine said:


> Right, and I'm trying to suggest that that isn't "creepy". As headless tuners, they could hardly work any other way.


When I said "creepy" I was referring to future plans to track viewing habits for behaviorally-targeted advertising and general research via that internet connection. I wasn't referring to the local LAN connection, and I wasn't even referring to premium/pay-per-view OTA broadcasting that would be enabled by the internet connection.


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

aaronwt said:


> I am using an HDHomeRun Flex 4K to access the ATSC 3.0 channels.


I just bought one to try with Plex only to find out after that Plex does not support the Dolby audio yet.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

dadrepus said:


> I just bought one to try with Plex only to find out after that Plex does not support the Dolby audio yet.


I am just using the atsc 1.0 channels here with my flex 4k and Plex DVR right now.. since Here in the DC area the picture quality is basically the same as the atsc 3.0 channels. So hopefully plex gets the ac-4 audio issue worked out later this year.


Sent from my Tab A7 Gray


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

Looks like Louisville has finally made at least one "coming soon" deployment list. Haven't been able to figure out which station(s) has announced, or when. I have one TV with a 3.0 tuner, so I'll be able to keep check it out then it happens.

Eventually, I'll upgrade my DVR. Surely if TiVo had plans for a 3.0 device they would've said so by now wouldn't they?


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

hapster85 said:


> Surely if TiVo had plans for a 3.0 device they would've said so by now wouldn't they?


Probably not, because then some potential customers would not purchase the current products.


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## Tanquen (Jun 1, 2002)

A couple months ago I ended my 30 plus year relationship with the cable company. I got tired of the prices going up and the quality going down. Working from home and setting up new computers and downloading updates. I kept going over the data limit and they could not care less. About 2 years ago they cut the cable TV bandwidth in half. So a half hour program recorded on the TiVo was like half the size and the down grade and quality was quite noticeable. Many years ago I had looked at over the air on the TiVo Romeo and it seemed okay but cable was easier.

I went ahead and set up a larger antenna in the attic and can receive all the local channels, but I was pretty disappointed in the quality. They've all added numerous subchannels so the bandwidth available is pretty low and all the channels are soft and fuzzy barely any better than standard definition. I also moved to AT&T fiber as there's no data overages and for about 30% of the price of what Xfinity/Comcast wanted (not including their BS overages) for data and cable. I get twice the download speed and like 10 times the upload speed. I still use the over-the-air TiVo for some of the prime time and late night shows, but then sign up for a month or two of a streaming service to watch other programs in actual 4K or 1080p.

ATSC 3 sounds cool and all, but isn't it going to have the same problem we currently do, they're going to have a bunch of subchannels and the 4K video is going to look like an upscaled DVD? Streaming beats over the air and cable channels by a large margin but even it gets bested by 4k Blu-ray with a small bump in audio and picture quality.


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## dadrepus (Jan 4, 2012)

Well, I set up my Plex to record some shows with the new standard just to see if video improved. I knew I would have no sound as Plex so far does not have the Dolby License or codec so far to do audio. They say the ball is in Dolby's court but it has taken 1 year and so far nothing but complaints from the masses. Here in the DC/Balt metro all channels are streaming from just 2 antennas, one from each city. They share the bandwidth. Video quality has improved. Is it earth shaking, amazingly so much better? NO! And it may never be. This is the U.S. of A. where private industry does the barest minimum to make the most profit for the longest time until they are forced to change by law. This is the freedom people all scream about. The freedom to be mediocre. So sad.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Tanquen said:


> ATSC 3 sounds cool and all, but isn't it going to have the same problem we currently do, they're going to have a bunch of subchannels and the 4K video is going to look like an upscaled DVD? Streaming beats over the air and cable channels by a large margin but even it gets bested by 4k Blu-ray with a small bump in audio and picture quality.


Welcome to the cord-cutting club. It remains to be seen, there is reason to hope that ATSC 3.0 will bring significantly better picture quality due to the massively more efficient HEVC codec combined with more bandwidth available in a 6mhz channel. OTA varies widely market to market, and while the encoding technology has gotten much better and more efficient, they still cram more than they should on many channels in many markets. The encoding technology is amazing, as today 12mbps looks amazing, probably as good as a full 19mbps channel did 20 years ago, yet the channels have gone down to 6-9mbps per channel in many cases due to sharing channels and then cramming in subchannels on top of that.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

The encoding is much better than ancient MPEG2, but the HEVC encoding ATSC 3.0 uses is already outdated. It came out way back in 2013. Even more efficient codecs are in use now (like AV1) with some of the streaming services.

Although H.266/VVC is the direct successor to HEVC/H.265. But AV1 is royalty free.


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## Tanquen (Jun 1, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Welcome to the cord-cutting club. It remains to be seen, there is reason to hope that ATSC 3.0 will bring significantly better picture quality due to the massively more efficient HEVC codec combined with more bandwidth available in a 6mhz channel. OTA varies widely market to market, and while the encoding technology has gotten much better and more efficient, they still cram more than they should on many channels in many markets. The encoding technology is amazing, as today 12mbps looks amazing, probably as good as a full 19mbps channel did 20 years ago, yet the channels have gone down to 6-9mbps per channel in many cases due to sharing channels and then cramming in subchannels on top of that.


That is the concern though. Regardless of how good the codec is, they're still going to be the incentive for them to cram as many channels in as they can before they get enough complaints. The number of home shopping channels being broadcast to my area is truly depressing. For better or worse, the vast majority of people just don't seem to care. I've never researched it, but I remember many years ago. The service providers got the definition and/or the requirements of HD changed so they could over-compress. The over the air stuff I'm looking at being 1080 or 720 is a pure technicality. It is not HD.



aaronwt said:


> The encoding is much better than ancient MPEG2, but the HEVC encoding ATSC 3.0 uses is already outdated. It came out way back in 2013. Even more efficient codecs are in use now (like AV1) with some of the streaming services.
> 
> Although H.266/VVC is the direct successor to HEVC/H.265. But AV1 is royalty free.


Yeah, that's what I had read, most reviews of AV1 weren't that it looked any better or was more efficient but it's royalty free.


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## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

Tanquen said:


> That is the concern though. Regardless of how good the codec is, they're still going to be the incentive for them to cram as many channels in as they can before they get enough complaints. The number of home shopping channels being broadcast to my area is truly depressing. For better or worse, the vast majority of people just don't seem to care. I've never researched it, but I remember many years ago. The service providers got the definition and/or the requirements of HD changed so they could over-compress. The over the air stuff I'm looking at being 1080 or 720 is a pure technicality. It is not HD.
> 
> 
> Yeah, that's what I had read, most reviews of AV1 weren't that it looked any better or was more efficient but it's royalty free.


There are numerous studies and anecdotal evidence that most people don't care about picture quality, as long as the sound is decent. As long as you can understand the audio and it's without distortion, image quality be damned.

All the zoom interviews on TV over the last 2 years bares that out.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Tanquen said:


> Yeah, that's what I had read, most reviews of AV1 weren't that it looked any better or was more efficient but it's royalty free.


No, AV1 has been found to be 30% or so more efficient than HEVC (H.265), which is the dominant 4K codec in use now.


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## Tanquen (Jun 1, 2002)

NashGuy said:


> No, AV1 has been found to be 30% or so more efficient than HEVC (H.265), which is the dominant 4K codec in use now.


It's been a while since I read up on it, but some of the early testing a while back, people were saying that the claimed improvement in bandwidth savings wasn't really there. Depending on how picky you are its closer to 15% or about the same. It's supposed to have more issues with macro blocking and blotchiness, especially in the background.

Anyone know what the Wheel of Time show was using on Amazon Prime? It looked really bad and made me wonder if it was using a new codec of some kind. I thought they or Netflix was supposed to start experimenting with AV1 soon but then something about no HDR support?

It's getting more and more complicated, the way they're taking advantage of perceived sharpness in areas of the image deemed more important, etc.

That's what I noticed the most in the current "4K" streaming is the blockiness and or dancing fuzzy patterns in the background. In some ways, I think 1080p Blu-ray looks better. Sometimes even sharpness, sitting on the couch about 9 ft from the 77-in TV, it's tough to tell the difference between 4K and 1080p Blu-ray.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> The encoding is much better than ancient MPEG2, but the HEVC encoding ATSC 3.0 uses is already outdated. It came out way back in 2013. Even more efficient codecs are in use now (like AV1) with some of the streaming services.


It's still supposedly 4x the efficiency of MPEG-2, which also allows for larger stat mux groups that provide better PQ in the same relative amount of bandwidth.



Tanquen said:


> That is the concern though. Regardless of how good the codec is, they're still going to be the incentive for them to cram as many channels in as they can before they get enough complaints.


To an extent, yes, but I'm hoping that the better efficiency, slower degradation, and larger stat mux groups that HEVC allows for will result in better VQ.



MScottC said:


> There are numerous studies and anecdotal evidence that most people don't care about picture quality, as long as the sound is decent. As long as you can understand the audio and it's without distortion, image quality be damned.


Yes, unfortunately most people are utterly oblivious to that which is right in front of them, both audio and video. Most people also have TVs running on default settings, are too small to achieve the correct viewing angles based on THX specification (or any other specification for that matter), are too high off the floor, or have a myriad of other problems.


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## DPJohnson (Jan 12, 2011)

Omaha just went ATSC 3.0 today. Can a new converter box be added to my OTA TiVO Roamio to help the NBC station reception in my area as well as to remedy the flyover plane issue here, or will I have to wait t=for TiVo to release a new DVR with 3.0 tuners inside it?


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

DPJohnson said:


> Omaha just went ATSC 3.0 today. Can a new converter box be added to my OTA TiVO Roamio to help the NBC station reception in my area as well as to remedy the flyover plane issue here, or will I have to wait t=for TiVo to release a new DVR with 3.0 tuners inside it?


There's no converter box that will work with a TiVo, and no sign of a 3.0-compatible TiVo but of course they wouldn't announce that too early as people might stop buying current models. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting though.

I know of one product called ZapperBox that will plug directly into your TV's HDMI jack, and another called the HD HomeRun Flex 4K that plugs into your network. There are free HD HomeRun apps for computers and handheld devices that you can use to watch TV from the Flex 4K, and the Flex 4K it can become a DVR with addition of an external hard disk and a small annual fee. It can also serve other TiVo replacement player/DVR software like Channels DVR, Plex, or Emby which also require monthly/annual fees.

I find Channels DVR much better than the HD HomeRun software as a TiVo replacement and I prefer it over the others too, but like everyone else they're still working out the bugs in their ATSC 3.0 implementation — and there are also 3.0 problems and inconsistencies at the broadcasters — so I'm kind of glad 3.0 hasn't yet rolled out in my area.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Yes. I have an HDHomeRun Flex 4K. And use it with my Plex DVR. But because of the AC-4 audio issue. Where the vast majority of devices cannot decode it. And with it also not working with Plex. I don't record any of the five ATSC 3.0 channels broadcast here in the DC area. 

Plus, since they are all sharing the same frequency. The quality is basically the same as their ATSC 1.0 counterparts. So there would really be no advantage for me to be record the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts anyway.


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

Tablo had expected to be launching their 3.0 compatible DVR this spring, but the current status is "delayed because of evolving DRM broadcast rights". Apparently, broadcast station owners have announced their intent to encrypt their signals. Which begs the question, why does a free OTA signal need to be encrypted? Does this signal the beginning of the end for free OTA?


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Yes. I have an HDHomeRun Flex 4K. And use it with my Plex DVR. But because of the AC-4 audio issue. Where the vast majority of devices cannot decode it. And with it also not working with Plex. I don't record any of the five ATSC 3.0 channels broadcast here in the DC area.
> 
> Plus, since they are all sharing the same frequency. The quality is basically the same as their ATSC 1.0 counterparts. So there would really be no advantage for me to be record the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts anyway.


For me, channel 4 (WRC)'s ATSC 1.0 signal comes from a slightly different direction than the other DC stations, and it's always been marginal. But the ATSC 3.0 version is solid.

I use Channels DVR with the HDHR, with Apple TV as the client, and I have no issues with AC-4.


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## Pokemon_Dad (Jan 19, 2008)

hapster85 said:


> Tablo had expected to be launching their 3.0 compatible DVR this spring, but the current status is "delayed because of evolving DRM broadcast rights". Apparently, broadcast station owners have announced their intent to encrypt their signals. Which begs the question, why does a free OTA signal need to be encrypted? Does this signal the beginning of the end for free OTA?


Originally they were only talking about using DRM for premium OTA programming you'd have to pay for (authorized via your local tuner's internet connection) and not for all of their programming. We'll see. There's a lot of potential evil in 3.0, including privacy issues (via that internet connection). The industry and regulators are way behind in developing standards and limits for this.

As I understand it, the Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Flex 4K is ready for that DRM, but only with their own software. I don't have a lot of hope that Channels DVR will ever do the same, given that the HDHR Prime for CableCARD supports DRM channels only with HDHR software while Channels DVR only gets non-DRM channels from that device.


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

What I read didn't indicate if that meant all of their content, or just some of it. And I didn't really dig into it. The only thing Tablo said about it was that they would have bake the decryption keys into the hardware at the factory, and couldn't do it later by firmware update. Thus the delay.

Edit: Spelling


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## Phil T (Oct 29, 2003)

I am using a EVOCA Scout box. I live 14 miles from 4-ATSC 3.0 channels all coming from the same antenna and channel RF34. ABC and NBC are pretty solid. Fox and CW (Nexstar owned) are solid sometime and freeze and lock up at other times. Not sure what the issue is because it happened on two different EVOCA Scout boxes. I believe it might be an issue with the Nexstar stations. I have moved my Televs DigaNova Boss antenna higher and repointed it with little improvement on those two channels.

I think the picture is clearer then ATSC 1.0 but it seems more susceptible to breakup/lockup. Also I notice descriptive audio on Fox ATSC 3.0 broadcasts and no way to turn it off.

It could also be that the Evoca boxes are not as robust as some of the others on the market.

It also could be that ATSC 3.0 is experimental and not ready for prime time yet.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Phil T said:


> It also could be that ATSC 3.0 is experimental and not ready for prime time yet.


I think this is a lot of it. Station engineers are still getting their feet wet with ATSC 3.0 and, to be honest, hardly anyone is watching those broadcasts yet. So this is the time to experiment with the wide range of parameters and features available to them within the 3.0 spec to figure out how they want to implement things long-term.


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

Here's what the antenna guy had to say about ATSC 3.0 and encryption. As I thought, the FCC requires the main station to be broadcast in the clear. That could change, of course.


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## moedaman (Aug 21, 2012)

hapster85 said:


> Here's what the antenna guy had to say about ATSC 3.0 and encryption. As I thought, the FCC requires the main station to be broadcast in the clear. That could change, of course.


Yes, but that main signal could be at 480p. Nothing says it has to be in HD. Then you would need to pay for 1080p/4K.


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

moedaman said:


> Yes, but that main signal could be at 480p. Nothing says it has to be in HD. Then you would need to pay for 1080p/4K.


While it's possible they would charge for 1080 HD, I don't think it's likely. As mentioned in the video, 4k might be another story. 

I think we're down to 2 of the major network locals airing in 1080i here in Louisville. A couple never were. Others have downgraded to 720p in favor of more subchannels. I doubt most viewers have even noticed.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

hapster85 said:


> While it's possible they would charge for 1080 HD, I don't think it's likely. As mentioned in the video, 4k might be another story.


Yeah, agreed. If you really want to ponder a worst-case (yet plausible) scenario for OTA, how about the following. ATSC 3.0 adoption and usage never really takes off among OTA TV viewers. Major MVPDs like Comcast, Charter, DirecTV, YouTube TV, etc. are unwilling to pay more to carry enhanced 3.0 versions of locals, so it doesn't bring in the higher retrans fees that broadcasters hoped for. Broadcasters find better ways to monetize their OTA spectrum than free TV. So they consolidate all their video broadcasts on a couple of 1.0 towers (everything in widescreen SD) and a couple of 3.0 towers (main channels in HD, everything else in SD). They use the rest of their 3.0 towers for commercial datacasting and other non-TV uses (i.e. the stuff that Sinclair/Nexstar joint venture BitPath is trying to do). Meanwhile, we continue to see ever more high-value high-quality content -- eventually even including NFL games come 2033 (when the current broadcast contracts lapse) -- shift from broadcast networks to direct-to-consumer OTT services such as Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, Disney+, etc.


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## hapster85 (Sep 7, 2016)

Yeah that would be a pretty bad use case. I really don't think stations that adopt 3.0 are going to continue broadcasting in 1.0 any longer than they have to, because of cost.


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## jerryez (May 16, 2001)

I have 6 stations in my area broadcasting new gen signals, which include all four networks. What NextGen tuners are even available now?


https://www.antennaweb.org/results


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

jerryez said:


> I have 6 stations in my area broadcasting new gen signals, which include all four networks. What NextGen tuners are even available now?
> 
> 
> https://www.antennaweb.org/results


I've been using an HDHomeRun Flex 4K since the beginning of the year. It has two ATSC 3.0 and two ATSC 1.0 tuners. But, here in the DC area, the 3.0 stations have the same quality as the 1.0 stations. And my Plex DVR can't work with the AC-4 audio yet. Like most devices. So there is no reason for me to record the ATSC 3.0 channels.

I also use three HDHomeRun Prime boxes on FiOS. One with a cable card and the other two without. So it looks like the local OTA stations on the other two. So the Plex DVR has ten tuners to record from for the local content. And then three for cable channels from the Prime I use with a cable card.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

hapster85 said:


> Yeah that would be a pretty bad use case. I really don't think stations that adopt 3.0 are going to continue broadcasting in 1.0 any longer than they have to, because of cost.


But the thing is, they can't pull the plug on those 1.0 towers as long as a big chunk of their OTA viewers are still watching those broadcasts and not the newer 3.0 broadcasts. And there's ZERO chance they would shut down those 1.0 stations so long as any existing retrans contracts with cable providers (MVPDs) remain based on their 1.0 stations. Those retrans fees are how they make the bulk of their money. (It's possible, though, that those agreements might be amended so that, instead of the original 1.0 feed, the stations provide their 3.0 feed or perhaps some feed that doesn't actually exist as an OTA broadcast, IDK.)

So the next question, is "How long might we reasonably expect it to take for a sufficient portion of TVs actively used for OTA viewing in the US -- let's say 85% of them -- to have been replaced/upgraded to be 3.0-compatible? Given what I've read about TV replacement cycles, and the relatively slow speed with which TV manufacturers are incorporating 3.0 tuners across their TV model lines so far, my educated guess is that we wouldn't see that threshold hit until maybe 2030. Now, that could potentially be hurried along if the US government got involved by issuing a mandate that all TVs sold _must_ include a 3.0 tuner and also by providing consumer subsidies (as they did in the NTSC to ATSC 1.0 transition) for upgraded external 3.0 tuners to encourage viewers to make the switch. But I don't see either happening.

So my best guess is broadcasters will be stuck running on both 3.0 and 1.0 at least for the rest of this decade. Unless, of course, they just give up on 3.0 before them, which I wouldn't say is probable but I would say is plausible.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

aaronwt said:


> I also use three HDHomeRun Prime boxes on FiOS. One with a cable card and the other two without. So it looks like the local OTA stations on the other two. So the Plex DVR has ten tuners to record from for the local content. And then three for cable channels from the Prime I use with a cable card.


Are you hearing about plans for Verizon FiOS to drop QAM-based TV? They just introduced a new 2 Gig fiber service in NYC and it uses a new ONT and gateway which do not support coax TV or MoCA. Verizon is telling those customers that TV service will become available at a later date but it's not clear whether they mean FiOS TV via IPTV/OTT or maybe just Verizon selling and billing for YouTube TV (although I think that may already be an option). 

One person posting on another forum was under the impression that FiOS TV would switch from QAM to IPTV, although he wasn't sure of that. Also possible, I suppose, that Verizon does like Comcast and operates their cable TV service both ways, via QAM _and_ managed IPTV, with some homes/devices receiving one version and some the other. But given that FiOS TV continues to bleed subs and is now down to about 3.65 million, solidly behind YTTV and Hulu Live (each with an estimated ~4 million), I question whether Verizon would bother doing that. Most other former Baby Bell telcos have stopped selling, or even completely shut down, their own cable/IPTV service (e.g. AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier). And Verizon is clearly hot for third-party national OTT services with their upcoming +Play streaming aggregation/billing platform. Seems the most likely scenario is that they keep selling FiOS TV but only to those addresses that continue to have the old-style ONT. Or perhaps they completely shut down new sales and only allow existing subs to keep it.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> But the thing is, they can't pull the plug on those 1.0 towers as long as a big chunk of their OTA viewers are still watching those broadcasts and not the newer 3.0 broadcasts. And there's ZERO chance they would shut down those 1.0 stations so long as any existing retrans contracts with cable providers (MVPDs) remain based on their 1.0 stations. Those retrans fees are how they make the bulk of their money. (It's possible, though, that those agreements might be amended so that, instead of the original 1.0 feed, the stations provide their 3.0 feed or perhaps some feed that doesn't actually exist as an OTA broadcast, IDK.)


Many MVPDs are getting direct fiber feeds, either of the ATSC 1.0 broadcast, or a different feed, so there's really no connection between ATSC 1.0 broadcast OTA and MVPDs having a feed to broadcast. I don't think broadcasters would purposefully move to ATSC 3.0 as fast as possible just to cut more people off OTA, but if anything that's what the business incentive would be, as they're making a TON of money by double-dipping on retrans fees as opposed to only getting paid once for their OTA feed.



> So my best guess is broadcasters will be stuck running on both 3.0 and 1.0 at least for the rest of this decade. Unless, of course, they just give up on 3.0 before them, which I wouldn't say is probable but I would say is plausible.


I think we could just end up with both for a long time. Although by 2030, I'm not sure there's even going to be much OTA viewership left.



NashGuy said:


> One person posting on another forum was under the impression that FiOS TV would switch from QAM to IPTV, although he wasn't sure of that. Also possible, I suppose, that Verizon does like Comcast and operates their cable TV service both ways, via QAM _and_ managed IPTV, with some homes/devices receiving one version and some the other. But given that FiOS TV continues to bleed subs and is now down to about 3.65 million, solidly behind YTTV and Hulu Live (each with an estimated ~4 million), I question whether Verizon would bother doing that. Most other former Baby Bell telcos have stopped selling, or even completely shut down, their own cable/IPTV service (e.g. AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier). And Verizon is clearly hot for third-party national OTT services with their upcoming +Play streaming aggregation/billing platform. Seems the most likely scenario is that they keep selling FiOS TV but only to those addresses that continue to have the old-style ONT. Or perhaps they completely shut down new sales and only allow existing subs to keep it.


They're getting ready to phase out FiOS TV entirely. It's not economically viable as a relatively small competitive provider. The legacy MSOs have a longer tail to milk with the bulk of the older, less sophisticated customer compared to Verizon FiOS. Verizon also isn't a monopoly with FiOS, so the TV isn't viable in the long term. Their business is selling internet connectivity and bundling it with wireless and maybe home phone for whomever still has that.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

hapster85 said:


> I really don't think stations that adopt 3.0 are going to continue broadcasting in 1.0 any longer than they have to, because of cost.


Today in most markets there is a single ATSC 3.0 lighthouse transmitter (with many/most stations sharing). At some (magic) point, it is expected there will be a transition to a single ATSC 1.0 lighthouse transmitter (with all the stations sharing that). That will offer legacy TV's access to the stations content for any reasonable future, while allowing stations to move towards (glorious?) 4K (or simply more sub-channels). Fitting (say) 5 stations content into a single ATSC 1.0 transmitter will require reduction in quality (you can't fit 10lbs of crap into the 2lbs bag), but in many locations it would provide the ability to continue to serve those with older TV's until they mostly disappear. That tail may be long, but since the average age of a TV is 7-8 years, it is not forever (and in hand-waving terms, the FCC requirement of continued support of ATSC 1.0 transmitters aligns with the expected replacement cycle).


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

Bigg said:


> They're getting ready to phase out FiOS TV entirely.


VZ has nearly pulled the plug on TV service a number of times (first nearly a decade ago), and for years now while the CSR's would still sell you FiOS TV if you asked for it, they suggested one/more of the OTTs first (I seem to recall YTTV was mentioned, but I don't remember if that was an official marketing arrangement, or just a mention).


> It's not economically viable as a relatively small competitive provider.


TV service is not especially profitable for any of the operators, as much of the revenue that comes in goes out to the content providers. While VZ generally cannot get the deals that the larger operators can, even the larger operators are getting squeezed as content providers ask for more and more and more.

What TV service has to offer to an operator is revenue. And that drives market valuation. And that drives lower borrowing and operating costs. And, of course, market valuation drives C level salary and bonuses. As most of VZ's revenue is in other areas than TV service, dropping TV service will not make much of a dent in overall market valuation. To some extent the same would be true for Comcast. Charter, on the other hand, would probably take a larger hit. Eventually all expect to be an ISP first.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

CommunityMember said:


> TV service is not especially profitable for any of the operators, as much of the revenue that comes in goes out to the content providers. While VZ generally cannot get the deals that the larger operators can, even the larger operators are getting squeezed as content providers ask for more and more and more.


Comcast makes money if they break even on TV, as a fraction of the carriage and retrans are going to themselves in NBC.



> What TV service has to offer to an operator is revenue. And that drives market valuation. And that drives lower borrowing and operating costs. And, of course, market valuation drives C level salary and bonuses. As most of VZ's revenue is in other areas than TV service, dropping TV service will not make much of a dent in overall market valuation. To some extent the same would be true for Comcast. Charter, on the other hand, would probably take a larger hit. Eventually all expect to be an ISP first.


The market is rather dumb if they aren't making any money off of it. Comcast is in a much better position than Charter because of NBC. Comcast has incentive to sell TV at cost just to prop up revenue to NBC, which has a massive profit margin, especially compared to the small margins that Comcast makes off of cable TV.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Many MVPDs are getting direct fiber feeds, either of the ATSC 1.0 broadcast, or a different feed, so there's really no connection between ATSC 1.0 broadcast OTA and MVPDs having a feed to broadcast.


Well, a given station's ATSC 3.0 feed is actually broadcasting on a separate station license and so the MVPD carriage contract would have to be for that separate station if they wanted the 3.0 feed. For instance, the local Nexstar-owned ABC affiliate here in Nashville is WKRN. They broadcast their 1.0 feed on that actual station, under their FCC license for UHF 27. But through a complicated station sharing arrangement between Nexstar and Sinclair, WKRN's 3.0 feed of their main .1 (ABC) channel is carried on Sinclair's WNAB, under their FCC license for UHF 30.

There's been talk about MVPDs such as Comcast eventually licensing and carrying local stations' superior 3.0 feeds instead of, or in addition to, their standard 1.0 feeds. But if they did that, the contract would have to be for whichever specific 3.0 station actually carries those feeds (in the example above, WNAB).

Now, all that said, I keep saying that there's really no reason for MVPDs to ever bother specifically licensing 3.0 stations anyhow, because local stations already can and do offer higher quality versions of their main 1.0 feed if they have in agreement in place with MVPDs to do so. During both recent Olympics, in fact, we saw various NBC affiliates offering certain MVPDs, including Comcast and YouTube TV, live 4K feeds! They were NOT sending out 4K on their 3.0 OTA feeds but they were sending it to select MVPDs who had the internal distribution capabilities to offer it to their customers (and who, I'm sure, were paying those NBC affiliates extra $ for the enhanced quality).



Bigg said:


> I think we could just end up with both for a long time. Although by 2030, I'm not sure there's even going to be much OTA viewership left.


I made some long posts recently on the ATSC 3.0 thread over at AVS Forum about where I now see all this going. But to summarize, I think that cable TV as we know it will largely cease to be sold in the latter half of this decade. Existing customers would likely be grandfathered in on their channel bundle packages but what we'll see being sold going forward instead will just be media companies' own direct-to-consumer apps, which will include live streams of their most popular linear channels. So Disney+, for instance, would include live streams of ABC (national feed), FX, Freeform, Disney Channel, Disney Jr., and Nat Geo. (BTW, well before this time, Hulu will cease to exist as a separate app/service and instead just be the adult general entertainment content hub inside Disney+.) HBO Max (or whatever it's called by then) would include live streams of CNN, HBO, TBS, TNT, Discovery, HGTV, Food, and TLC. Less popular/secondary channels might be shut down, with their content concentrated onto the main linear channels, which would then be forced to air fewer reruns.

The on-demand and linear channel content from all the various apps you subscribe to will be commingled on the home screen of whatever streaming OS you use, whether it's built into your smart TV or comes from an external box/stick/dongle: Fire TV, Google TV, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, LG TV, etc. There will be one major OS (currently branded as Flex) owned and operated jointly by the two largest cable broadband operators, Comcast and Charter. Whichever OS you use will allow you to download the apps and subscribe through their app store, with combined billing of all the services you subscribe to (although you'll also have the option of subscribing to those services directly through their own website, perhaps at a discount since that will mean the service doesn't have to give a cut of your subscription fees to the app store/biller). The UI of all these various streaming OSes will include an aggregate channel grid guide that will pull in all the different linear channels you get, both paid and free, from the various underlying apps you have installed.

Now, if you're using a smart TV with a built-in OTA tuner and a connected antenna, yes, its aggregated grid guide will show your local OTA stations, each of which will still have a combination of national network content and local station content (e.g. national news in the morning, local news in the afternoon, syndicated shows after that, then local and national news early evening, followed by national primetime, etc.). But in terms of these new app-originated streaming channels, the national vs. local content will be disaggregated. For instance, there will be a national live stream of the ABC network coming from one underlying app (Disney+) and a separate live stream from Nashville's News 2 (WKRN) featuring their local news and lifestyle content 24/7 coming from their own Nexstar-operated app. The networks need their local affiliates in the traditional TV era. In the direct-to-consumer streaming era, they do not.

Now let's take the logic a step further. Why would Disney keep any of their high-value content on ABC? Actually, even now, they really don't. They moved Monday Night Football from ABC behind their cable and OTT paywalls, ESPN and ESPN+ respectively, awhile ago. I think we'll see CBS, NBC and Fox do pretty much the same thing. (Fox doesn't have an OTT subscription service, so they'll likely just sell off the streaming rights to their live sports to third parties such as Apple TV+, Prime Video, ESPN+, etc.) After that, what's left on the broadcast networks? An assortment of relatively low-cost content. At the high end, cost-wise, you'll see filmed shows with lesser-known actors who don't command big paydays. So even that stuff won't be _too_ pricey to produce. At the low end, you'll see lots of cheap game/competition/reality/talk shows. In between, scripted animation, which is still fairly cheap.

In other words, the big media companies will have restructured the cost basis of their broadcast nets so that they can be profitable as totally free, ad-supported ventures. Which will be necessary, because by that point they'll be receiving relatively little retrans money from their local affiliates, and that revenue source will eventually dwindle to nothing. So we'll see a live national feed of ABC not just in the paid Disney+ app but also in a future FAST (free ad-supported TV) app from Disney. (My suggestion: call it Magic. "What happens when Disney brings some of the world's most beloved content to your home, totally free? Magic.") We'll see a live national feed of CBS not just in Paramount+ but also in their free Pluto TV app. Likewise with NBC and Fox. (Fox will probably never have an SVOD but they'll put their Fox network in their FAST app Tubi.) It will be in those companies' interests to maximize viewership, and therefore ad revenue, of their cheap broadcast content, so why make folks bother with an OTA antenna to watch it? Just stream it for free, live and on-demand, with unskippable ads.

The high-value content, including most sports and filmed series and movies with big stars, will be exclusive to those companies' paid SVODs, e.g. Disney+, Paramount+, etc.

If it does pan out this way, then by the time we get to 2030, who's going to bother with an OTA antenna if all that same content can be streamed, live and on-demand, for free, with equal or better PQ and without reception problems? There will be hardly any US homes by 2030 who don't have broadband service with unlimited data or at least a sufficiently high data cap to allow for all their video viewing.

I think it'll be pretty clear by 2025 to anyone in the industry with a brain that this is the way it's all heading. Which is why ATSC 3.0 will never really take off. By that point, I think you'll see smart TV manufacturers stop paying extra to include a separate 3.0 tuner in their TVs. Consumers aren't really clamoring for them. The broadcast networks aren't ever going to really support the full capabilities of 3.0. But meanwhile, you can already watch select CBS series next-day in 4K HDR on Paramount+. The big media companies, who are the ones who really have the power in this equation, understand that the successor to ATSC 1.0 isn't ATSC 3.0. It's their own FAST and SVOD apps, where they control the UI, where they collect the data, and where they don't have to share the subscription or advertising revenue with local station owners like Nexstar, Sinclair, Scripps, etc.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Well, a given station's ATSC 3.0 feed is actually broadcasting on a separate station license and so the MVPD carriage contract would have to be for that separate station if they wanted the 3.0 feed.


But what does cable carriage of an ATSC 3.0 vs ATSC 1.0 feed even mean? ATSC are OTA broadcast standards, some cable companies take the ATSC 1.0 feed and dump two of them onto a QAM, but they could just as easily take fiber feeds from well before the OTA encoding and transmission process, and do their own encoding, so that they wouldn't be broadcasting either OTA feed, and the whole concept becomes irrelevant. A carriage contract could be contracted for various supersets or subsets of OTA programming depending on what the station and cable company want to do. The only time I'd see it being relevant at a contractual level would be for must-carry stations like PBS, and even then the technical details of OTA broadcasting are largely irrelevant, they'd be carrying a specific set of channels that are broadcast on one license or another, but not necessarily using the encodes for OTA.



> Now, all that said, I keep saying that there's really no reason for MVPDs to ever bother specifically licensing 3.0 stations anyhow, because local stations already can and do offer higher quality versions of their main 1.0 feed if they have in agreement in place with MVPDs to do so. During both recent Olympics, in fact, we saw various NBC affiliates offering certain MVPDs, including Comcast and YouTube TV, live 4K feeds! They were NOT sending out 4K on their 3.0 OTA feeds but they were sending it to select MVPDs who had the internal distribution capabilities to offer it to their customers (and who, I'm sure, were paying those NBC affiliates extra $ for the enhanced quality).


Exactly. Or, more likely, the station will send a big, fat 1080i/720p stream via fiber to the MVPD, who will compress the crap out of it, but the compression is more efficient with the higher bitrate feed.



> If it does pan out this way, then by the time we get to 2030, who's going to bother with an OTA antenna if all that same content can be streamed, live and on-demand, for free, with equal or better PQ and without reception problems? There will be hardly any US homes by 2030 who don't have broadband service with unlimited data or at least a sufficiently high data cap to allow for all their video viewing.


I disagree about cable. I think it will shrink and partially implode, but it has a lot of inertia, and there are many commercial customers that want live channels, so I think at least a handful of the large, well known channels will continue to have linear channels, even if the main property shifts to OTT. I do agree about antennas though, as they are already largely relegated to some live sports and news. I think we'll still have OTA in a decade, but why invest in a relatively dying medium, unless the goal with ATSC 3.0 is just to load up on subchannels of catalog content and grind out a CPM with advertising. I've always been skeptical of 4k OTA becoming widespread, why would the networks spend the money when they can charge MVPDs money for retrans for them, and later move that to their network's OTT services? I think we may just get stuck at the first phase of the ATSC 3.0 "transition" with the 1.0 stations all staying around, and the room that there is available for the first phase of 3.0 either having a bunch of stations sharing channels, or incomplete offerings in a given market with a bunch of extra subchannels crammed in.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> But what does cable carriage of an ATSC 3.0 vs ATSC 1.0 feed even mean? ATSC are OTA broadcast standards


Yes, you're entirely correct. But I do believe that IF an MVPD wanted to distribute a local station's ATSC 3.0 feed --which might be, let's say, in 1080p HDR with Atmos audio and feature certain interactive on-screen elements as well as the AWARN emergency alerting system -- then the MVPD would have to have a specific contract in place with the station to do that. And they would have to agree about which ATSC 3.0 features would be preserved in the bitstream that the MVPD sends over their network to their users' STBs and apps.

But yeah, it still might mean that the MVPD is able to transcode the incoming H.265 stream into a different codec or a more compressed H.265 stream to save bandwidth. Who knows. At the end of the day, it's not really worth discussing because it'll never happen, ha.



Bigg said:


> I disagree about cable. I think it will shrink and partially implode, but it has a lot of inertia, and there are many commercial customers that want live channels, so I think at least a handful of the large, well known channels will continue to have linear channels, even if the main property shifts to OTT.


Let me see if I can explain this a bit better so you can grasp what I envision. Let's say it's 2026. Comcast and Charter, through their joint Flex streaming platform and its app store, announce that they are no longer selling their traditional cable channel packages with their high prices and outrageous broadcast TV add-on fees, which in many areas are now as much as $30 per month.

"Our customers have spoken," they say "and they overwhelming prefer to subscribe to video through direct-to-consumer apps, allowing them to put together and pay for just the package of content that suits them. And we're proud to offer our customers all the popular subscription and free video apps they could want, with convenient unified billing through the same credit or debit card they use to pay for the broadband service we provide. They can download and immediately subscribe to any of these services right on our Flex box and enjoy a unified watchlist that spans all the apps they use. And many of these apps include those companies' most popular cable channels which can be live streamed inside those apps. Our Flex home screen even has a special area to highlight free local apps that feature live and on-demand local news, weather and sports to keep our customers safe, informed and connected to their communities. Our Flex home screen even features a unified channel guide that shows all the live channels, whether subscription or fee, that the user has access to from the various apps they've installed on Flex!"

So at this point, those Comcast and Charter customers who still have a traditional style MVPD package, with local channels and their broadcast TV fee, plus a bunch of different channels from various media companies -- some from Disney, some from Paramount, some from Warner, etc. -- they'd still be able to keep that service. It just wouldn't be sold to any NEW customers going forward. And if a customer dropped their traditional cable service, they couldn't get it back.

As for the direct-to-consumer apps which would effectively replace the old cable bundle, I suspect there will just be a few. Who knows what sort of mergers will take place in the next few years, but let's hypothetically say that NBCUniversal and Paramount merge; they keep CBS and sell off NBC to Warner Bros. Discovery. So then we have three major SVODs from old Hollywood: Disney+ (which will have absorbed Hulu), The Max (the result of merging HBO Max, Discovery+, and NBC shows and sports), and Paramount+ (which will have absorbed much of Peacock as well as Paramount's own Showtime, BET+ and Noggin). In addition, Disney will have created a handful of ESPN-branded DTC services focusing on different sports, all of which can be mixed and matched together and viewed inside a single ESPN app. Assuming they haven't been acquired by bigger companies, little ol' AMC+ and Starz will also be available. The old RSNs will have been replaced by various apps featuring either specific sports leagues (e.g. MLB, NBA) or teams (e.g. Cubs, Yankees).

Each of those apps will have by this point in time _completely_ cannibalized their sibling linear channels. So, for instance, there won't be any current content airing on any of the Warner Bros. Discovery channels that's not available same-day in The Max. Moreover, The Max will actually include live streams of that company's most popular linear channels, e.g. CNN, HBO, HGTV, TLC, Discovery, etc. (Actually, by this time, HBO might be an optional premium add-on to The Max rather than a core part of the service.)

In addition, other apps offered will of course include Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, YouTube and PBS. And we'll see free ad-supported apps from each of the big three Hollywood players: Paramount's Pluto TV and whatever WBD and Disney call theirs. (I keep thinking Magic is the obvious name for Disney's. As for WBD, IDK. Maybe MiniMax to go alongside The Max? Or maybe they get the rights to the Peacock brand if they acquire NBC and recycle that as the name of their FAST app.) And there will also be Fox's FAST, Tubi. (As for Fox News, it'll be sold through their Fox Nation app, which will at that time have a live stream of the Fox News, Fox Business and Fox Weather channels. I wish I could say it will be dead by then but who are we kidding?)

So I'm not saying that the more popular linear cable channels disappear. They just get absorbed into the DTC SVOD apps. And then whichever streaming OS you use -- whether that's Flex or Apple TV or Google TV or Fire TV or whatever -- will have some kind of live channel grid guide that aggregates all those channels from the various underlying apps together in one place. Most of them already have something like this in place now.

So we're basically just talking about going from the old MVPD model where content from multiple media companies gets packaged together by the middle-man to a new system where it's all going direct from the separate media companies to the consumers, with the middle-men (the app stores/tech platforms) just providing billing services and UIs that aggregate content together in a home screen that's helpful to consumers.

The big loser, here, of course, will be the local broadcast station owners, who will get cut out of those outrageously high retrans fees they charge the MVPDs. Frankly, in the DTC streaming era, the national networks no longer need their local station affiliates as distribution partners. So why keep cutting them in on the money? The local stations understand the relatively low perceived value of their local news content, which is why pretty much all of them already give it away for free through their own apps. All they charge the consumer is a few minutes of their time in the form of unskippable targeted ads.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Yes, you're entirely correct. But I do believe that IF an MVPD wanted to distribute a local station's ATSC 3.0 feed --which might be, let's say, in 1080p HDR with Atmos audio and feature certain interactive on-screen elements as well as the AWARN emergency alerting system -- then the MVPD would have to have a specific contract in place with the station to do that. And they would have to agree about which ATSC 3.0 features would be preserved in the bitstream that the MVPD sends over their network to their users' STBs and apps.


I suppose, but I don't see this as having much to do with ATSC 3.0, as it could just as well cover a 4k feed that's not broadcast, like was done for the Olympics, or a higher bitrate 1080i/720p fiber feed as has been done for years with DirecTV for some stations, and probably cable as well.



> So I'm not saying that the more popular linear cable channels disappear. They just get absorbed into the DTC SVOD apps. And then whichever streaming OS you use -- whether that's Flex or Apple TV or Google TV or Fire TV or whatever -- will have some kind of live channel grid guide that aggregates all those channels from the various underlying apps together in one place. Most of them already have something like this in place now.


I think that will basically happen- but there will still be linear channels available, at least via DBS for a long time to come, at least for commercial customers, and probably various rural/RV/boat/whatever users as well. It may only be a few dozen channels, not the 400+ channel mess that's out there now, but there's a big market just in hotels, airports, restaurants, and bars to have channels to mindlessly turn on.



> So we're basically just talking about going from the old MVPD model where content from multiple media companies gets packaged together by the middle-man to a new system where it's all going direct from the separate media companies to the consumers, with the middle-men (the app stores/tech platforms) just providing billing services and UIs that aggregate content together in a home screen that's helpful to consumers.


There needs to be some aggregation, but given the choice, I really have to wonder how many people will want Comcast or Charter to be doing this, versus Apple, Roku, Google, etc? The cable companies need a critical mass of users to make this viable, and the way I see things going is that people want to stream how they want to stream, not with some box from Comcast or Charter in the middle.



> The big loser, here, of course, will be the local broadcast station owners, who will get cut out of those outrageously high retrans fees they charge the MVPDs. Frankly, in the DTC streaming era, the national networks no longer need their local station affiliates as distribution partners. So why keep cutting them in on the money? The local stations understand the relatively low perceived value of their local news content, which is why pretty much all of them already give it away for free through their own apps. All they charge the consumer is a few minutes of their time in the form of unskippable targeted ads.


Much like the cable channels, they have been too greedy for too long. If they would get the retrans fees under control so that cable companies could offer basic cable for $10/mo along with internet, they would have far more eyeballs on their ads, but they are too greedy to see cable companies as their partners and doing the work of distribution for them, and instead see them as a vessel to try and extra as much money out of as possible. And it's not even the local station owners, it's the networks who are charging outrageous fees to the local station owners, who then have to pass these outrageous costs on to the cable companies.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I think that will basically happen- but there will still be linear channels available, at least via DBS for a long time to come, at least for commercial customers, and probably various rural/RV/boat/whatever users as well. It may only be a few dozen channels, not the 400+ channel mess that's out there now, but there's a big market just in hotels, airports, restaurants, and bars to have channels to mindlessly turn on.


Well, in the scenario I sketch out, I say that traditional-style commingled cable channel bundles will be grandfathered in for existing customers even after they stop being sold to new customers, maybe around 2027. But yeah, the exception to that will be the single remaining DBS service still going at that point (probably branded DISH, but it will be after having merged with DirecTV years earlier). But I think it's iffy as to whether that service will still even be operational past 2030. Maybe a couple years or so into that decade?

And then once we get a few years into the 30s, and everyone is watching both the major networks as well as local news stations via separate streaming apps, then what's the point of keeping OTA spectrum reserved for those local TV stations? I'm not sure the station owners will even want to spend the money on the power bills to light up those towers at that point, given how few of their viewers will even still be futzing around with OTA antennas. Everyone will have broadband and all that content (and WAY more) can just be reliably streamed online. Better for the local station owners just to put that money toward their bandwidth bills to run their local news video servers.

So at that point, the FCC and Congress will move to reclassify that spectrum as 5G/6G. ATSC 1.0 will be dead. (And ATSC 3.0 will have died in the late 20s, never having reached critical mass among consumers or the broadcast networks.) But I do think the US government will set aside a bit of spectrum (the same bit of spectrum nationwide) so that PBS stations can beam out free OTA signals via 5G Broadcast, which will emerge this decade as the global next-generation OTA TV system, capable of reaching any smart phone, TV or any other screen with a 5G radio chip built into it.



Bigg said:


> There needs to be some aggregation, but given the choice, I really have to wonder how many people will want Comcast or Charter to be doing this, versus Apple, Roku, Google, etc? The cable companies need a critical mass of users to make this viable, and the way I see things going is that people want to stream how they want to stream, not with some box from Comcast or Charter in the middle.


Does it matter? You have to use _some_ software/app store platform "in the middle" between you and your services' video servers. And especially if Comcast and Charter are giving it away for FREE to their broadband customers (who account for nearly 70% of the US market!), then yeah, it'll get used.

"Hey, here's a free 4K Dolby Vision/Atmos streaming box you get with your broadband service! It supports all the apps you want. And if you need more than one, we'll happily rent/sell additional units to you!"

If you're thinking of their Flex platform as a "cable box," you're doing it wrong. It's just another streaming OS/UI/app store, but one that happens to be backed by two of the largest broadband providers in the nation. And it's no longer even just restricted to the equipment that Comcast hands out to their customers. They've already begun deploying it on smart TVs sold at retail under the name "XClass TV." Just as Amazon has done with their Fire TV OS, and Google with their Google TV, and Roku with their Roku OS, all of which power various brands of smart TVs. (Except there have hardly been any Flex-powered XClass TVs sold yet.)









Discover A TV Made For You | XClass TV


The best on-demand entertainment platform. All your favorite apps and all the best movies and shows tailored for you. Discover More.




www.xclasstv.com





I'll be surprised if we don't see them start selling Flex boxes/sticks at retail too. Why not?



Bigg said:


> And it's not even the local station owners, it's the networks who are charging outrageous fees to the local station owners, who then have to pass these outrageous costs on to the cable companies.


Eh, it's both. I think I read that the local stations have to pass along somewhere around half of their retrans fees to their network partners in the form of "reverse comp". But let's be honest, between the national networks, with their live sports, primetime shows, and national breaking news, versus the local news stations, which has the higher value content? It's easily the national networks. And they know it. Y'know how in a couple where one of them is way hotter/smarter/more successful than the other, it usually ends up in a break-up? Yeah, that's what's going to happen here too. The global media companies that own the networks are going to break up with their local distribution partners named Sinclair/Nexstar/Scripps/Gray, etc. The divorce is coming and it's unavoidable.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Well, in the scenario I sketch out, I say that traditional-style commingled cable channel bundles will be grandfathered in for existing customers even after they stop being sold to new customers, maybe around 2027.


I could see MSOs phasing cable channel bundles out at some point, I think they will live on in some form via vMVPDs and DBS for commercial and other uses. There needs to be CNN for airports and hotel TVs and ESPN for restaurants and bars. There are various satellite services out there for other types of specialty distribution, whether audio or video, so something will either continue on, or pop up to meet that need. I do think the days of DirecTV offering 400 channels is limited, although DirecTV as a linear pay TV service could live on in a more limited fashion with fewer satellite positions for decades.



> And then once we get a few years into the 30s, and everyone is watching both the major networks as well as local news stations via separate streaming apps, then what's the point of keeping OTA spectrum reserved for those local TV stations? I'm not sure the station owners will even want to spend the money on the power bills to light up those towers at that point, given how few of their viewers will even still be futzing around with OTA antennas. Everyone will have broadband and all that content (and WAY more) can just be reliably streamed online. Better for the local station owners just to put that money toward their bandwidth bills to run their local news video servers.


That's a good question. It depends on the legal status of either requiring them to broadcast, or using the broadcast towers as a mechanism for carriage on... well, on what if the marketshare of linear pay TV continues to crater. So it remains an open question.



> So at that point, the FCC and Congress will move to reclassify that spectrum as 5G/6G. ATSC 1.0 will be dead.


It may be able to be used for something, but 5G wireless isn't practical much below 600mhz, the antennas for that are already getting comically large. I'm sure someone will find something (or many things) that they want to do with that spectrum.



> Does it matter? You have to use _some_ software/app store platform "in the middle" between you and your services' video servers. And especially if Comcast and Charter are giving it away for FREE to their broadband customers (who account for nearly 70% of the US market!), then yeah, it'll get used.


I just don't see most people wanting their cable company providing their streaming box.



> If you're thinking of their Flex platform as a "cable box," you're doing it wrong. It's just another streaming OS/UI/app store, but one that happens to be backed by two of the largest broadband providers in the nation.
> 
> I'll be surprised if we don't see them start selling Flex boxes/sticks at retail too. Why not?


It's not a cable box, it's a crappy, pathetic, and irrelevant rip-off of a Roku or Google TV. The cable companies have no purpose except to provide a DOCSIS signal and IP address once you get rid of linear TV.

They probably will, it doesn't mean people actually want a crappy overpriced knock-off of a Roku from their cable company that they hate.



> Eh, it's both. I think I read that the local stations have to pass along somewhere around half of their retrans fees to their network partners in the form of "reverse comp". But let's be honest, between the national networks, with their live sports, primetime shows, and national breaking news, versus the local news stations, which has the higher value content? It's easily the national networks. And they know it. Y'know how in a couple where one of them is way hotter/smarter/more successful than the other, it usually ends up in a break-up? Yeah, that's what's going to happen here too. The global media companies that own the networks are going to break up with their local distribution partners named Sinclair/Nexstar/Scripps/Gray, etc. The divorce is coming and it's unavoidable.


I saw some numbers, and it's shocking how much of the money went to the networks. I'm not saying that stations themselves haven't gotten a bit greedy, they have, but the fundamental problem here is the networks wanting absolutely outrageous amounts of money. And for what? They keep producing content that gets less viewership, but charging more for it. It's all short-term thinking. They are milking it for all its worth. Maybe it's smart because it can't survive in the long run anyway, so may as well take it down a little faster by milking the cow as hard as possible, but in the process they're hastening the demise of pay TV and even basic cable, which would be viable for a long time to come with a rational model where cable companies paid little to nothing for the content, and in return provided widespread distribution at a reasonable cost.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I could see MSOs phasing cable channel bundles out at some point, I think they will live on in some form via vMVPDs and DBS for commercial and other uses. There needs to be CNN for airports and hotel TVs and ESPN for restaurants and bars. There are various satellite services out there for other types of specialty distribution, whether audio or video, so something will either continue on, or pop up to meet that need.


Hotels are already moving to a variety of streaming TV options for their guests. I see no reason why _eventually_ we won't see all video presented on public screens, such as in bars and restaurants, also be some form of streaming video (either OTT or managed IPTV).

IDK, maybe there's still enough demand for DBS-delivered live video in 2031, whether from commercial establishments or residential customers or a combination of the two, to make the continued operation of a DBS MVPD profitable. But at some point, the potential customer base just shrinks too small to make the business viable. And that may well happen before the last DBS sat (i.e. DirecTV's T16, launched June 2019 with an expected lifespan until at least mid-2034) goes dark. But there should be no question that there is no plausible business rationale even now to pay for any further DBS sats to be built and launched into orbit. As AT&T said, T16 will be the last one.




Bigg said:


> That's a good question. It depends on the legal status of either requiring them to broadcast, or using the broadcast towers as a mechanism for carriage on... well, on what if the marketshare of linear pay TV continues to crater. So it remains an open question.
> 
> It may be able to be used for something, but 5G wireless isn't practical much below 600mhz, the antennas for that are already getting comically large. I'm sure someone will find something (or many things) that they want to do with that spectrum.


Local TV station operators aren't dumb. They'll know if/when they get to a point where they're losing money by continuing to operate their broadcast towers. And if/when that happens, they'll just notify the FCC that they're giving up their broadcast spectrum and taking their tower dark. I'm sure they'll hope to get _something_ for giving up their spectrum because I have to think that all UHF frequencies will continue to hold _some_ value for 5G/6G transmission. Even if receiving devices need antennas larger than what mobile phones can accommodate, I could still see larger TVs, cars, and industrial IoT devices making use of that spectrum. So I predict that in the 2030s, the FCC will monetize that 470-608 MHz spectrum given up by (and/or taken from) ATSC 1.0 stations by auctioning it off to whoever is willing to pay _something_ for it.

I do, however, foresee the FCC preserving a sliver of that spectrum to be used by local PBS stations nationwide to multicast OTA live video channels through 5G Broadcast, which will be receivable by any device with a 5G radio chip in it, which of course will include all phones and perhaps some/most/all TVs by then. PBS stations/spectrum will be charged with operating a next-gen public emergency alerting system too.



Bigg said:


> I just don't see most people wanting their cable company providing their streaming box.


Were you also one of those folks who thought that a majority of cable TV customers would opt for a TiVo rather than take whatever crappy STB their local operator handed them? Sorry, but never underestimate the power of CHEAP, especially FREE. Comcast gives out one *free* Flex box to their broadband customers. I don't know why Charter won't do so as well. Given their relatively late start in the streaming platform race, I'm not saying that Flex will ever rank first or second but -- given the huge share of US broadband customers that Comcast and Charter have between them -- I have to think that Flex will have enough market share (in fact, _already_ has enough market share) to ensure its profitability and long-term survival.



Bigg said:


> It's not a cable box, it's a crappy, pathetic, and irrelevant rip-off of a Roku or Google TV. The cable companies have no purpose except to provide a DOCSIS signal and IP address once you get rid of linear TV.


VHS beat BetaMax. Windows beat Mac. Cable DVRs beat TiVo. Inferior but CHEAPER options beat out the more expensive, superior options they rip off all the time.



Bigg said:


> I saw some numbers, and it's shocking how much of the money went to the networks. I'm not saying that stations themselves haven't gotten a bit greedy, they have, but the fundamental problem here is the networks wanting absolutely outrageous amounts of money. And for what? They keep producing content that gets less viewership, but charging more for it. It's all short-term thinking. They are milking it for all its worth. Maybe it's smart because it can't survive in the long run anyway, so may as well take it down a little faster by milking the cow as hard as possible, but in the process they're hastening the demise of pay TV and even basic cable, which would be viable for a long time to come with a rational model where cable companies paid little to nothing for the content, and in return provided widespread distribution at a reasonable cost.


Bingo. Milk the dying cow for all it's worth, knowing that you own 100% of the new cow that replaces it. Networks have to share revenues with their local station partners in the original paradigm. In the new DTC streaming paradigm, they do not.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Hotels are already moving to a variety of streaming TV options for their guests. I see no reason why _eventually_ we won't see all video presented on public screens, such as in bars and restaurants, also be some form of streaming video (either OTT or managed IPTV).
> 
> IDK, maybe there's still enough demand for DBS-delivered live video in 2031, whether from commercial establishments or residential customers or a combination of the two, to make the continued operation of a DBS MVPD profitable. But at some point, the potential customer base just shrinks too small to make the business viable. And that may well happen before the last DBS sat (i.e. DirecTV's T16, launched June 2019 with an expected lifespan until at least mid-2034) goes dark. But there should be no question that there is no plausible business rationale even now to pay for any further DBS sats to be built and launched into orbit. As AT&T said, T16 will be the last one.


I think there will be a long tail demand for DBS services, but there probably won't be nearly the broad range of content that there is today, requiring less bandwidth. Boats, RVs, commercial uses, etc, add up to a decent number of subs, and there are specialty services operating today for various commercial uses with far smaller subscriber bases. Many hotels/resorts today use DBS for their distribution, and it works very well for that purpose, but they probably only need 40 channels, not 400. I don't know what will happen to HD LiL service, as that is rather bandwidth intensive compared to CONUS. Installing antennas at sites for locals becomes rather problematic, as some sites just don't have any reception, especially the ones where DBS makes the most sense. De-duplicating SD and HD LiLs will help a lot, as everything can move to MPEG-4 HD, but its still a lot of bandwidth.



> Local TV station operators aren't dumb. They'll know if/when they get to a point where they're losing money by continuing to operate their broadcast towers. And if/when that happens, they'll just notify the FCC that they're giving up their broadcast spectrum and taking their tower dark. I'm sure they'll hope to get _something_ for giving up their spectrum because I have to think that all UHF frequencies will continue to hold _some_ value for 5G/6G transmission. Even if receiving devices need antennas larger than what mobile phones can accommodate, I could still see larger TVs, cars, and industrial IoT devices making use of that spectrum. So I predict that in the 2030s, the FCC will monetize that 470-608 MHz spectrum given up by (and/or taken from) ATSC 1.0 stations by auctioning it off to whoever is willing to pay _something_ for it.


So there's two different stories here. One is whether broadcast TV as a business model works. I don't foresee the networks giving it up anytime soon, as having broadcast gives them the legal status of being local channels for that DMA. I think they will just turn into a bunch of low-grade crap channels like most of the subchannels are today. Second is whether the spectrum is worth anything. I just don't see the value of it or what TVs, cars, or industrial IoT would actually do with it. The whole IoT thing is sort of a joke, as most of it is done over Wi-Fi, and the applications for cellular connections worked fine on 3G networks, and in many cases 2G networks, and have been the last things to upgrade to newer technologies.



> I do, however, foresee the FCC preserving a sliver of that spectrum to be used by local PBS stations nationwide to multicast OTA live video channels through 5G Broadcast, which will be receivable by any device with a 5G radio chip in it, which of course will include all phones and perhaps some/most/all TVs by then. PBS stations/spectrum will be charged with operating a next-gen public emergency alerting system too.


The physics don't work out well for mobile phones, but I suppose some sort of 5G broadcast could replace ATSC 3.0, possibly even before it ever really amounts to much. In that cast, it would functionally be a different underlying technology to do the same thing that ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 do today.



> Were you also one of those folks who thought that a majority of cable TV customers would opt for a TiVo rather than take whatever crappy STB their local operator handed them? Sorry, but never underestimate the power of CHEAP, especially FREE. Comcast gives out one *free* Flex box to their broadband customers. I don't know why Charter won't do so as well. Given their relatively late start in the streaming platform race, I'm not saying that Flex will ever rank first or second but -- given the huge share of US broadband customers that Comcast and Charter have between them -- I have to think that Flex will have enough market share (in fact, _already_ has enough market share) to ensure its profitability and long-term survival.


😁 I don't even remember. I didn't think cord cutting would be a big thing back in 2013, but I failed to see how the content and pricing models would evolve. I was thinking in terms of a direct one-to-one replacement for the same shows, which never made any sense. The best content moved to streaming, and the rest is history. It very well could survive if Comcast wants it to, but I don't think it will ever see the mass adoption that Apple/Google/Amazon/Roku has, especially when virtually every modern TV has built-in smart features, often based on Google/Amazon/Roku platforms.



> VHS beat BetaMax. Windows beat Mac. Cable DVRs beat TiVo. Inferior but CHEAPER options beat out the more expensive, superior options they rip off all the time.


I don't disagree with cheaper beating out better, but in this case, if it's $5/mo for a box when a smart TV comes with it for free, or a streaming box costs <$50, then the cheaper argument doesn't work. Plus, people HATE their cable companies. People are lazy and ignorant, so they use the cable company's gateway devices for Wi-Fi, but I really don't think most people want Comcast on their TV if they can avoid it.



> Bingo. Milk the dying cow for all it's worth, knowing that you own 100% of the new cow that replaces it. Networks have to share revenues with their local station partners in the original paradigm. In the new DTC streaming paradigm, they do not.


They own a lot of content and _some_ of what replaces it. But they don't own every streaming platform, or all the streaming content. I suppose the shift is coming anyway, so maybe they figure that they may as well put the pedal to the metal on killing pay TV, since it's going to die anyway, and they'll make much larger profits in the meantime by double-dipping with outrageous carriage fees.


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## jerryez (May 16, 2001)

Once the broadcast networks switch to ATSC3.0, they probably will add scrambled pay channels to the sub channels and we will have to pay for each sub channel that is broadcast as a premium. ie: Showtime, ESPN, USA, etc.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

jerryez said:


> Once the broadcast networks switch to ATSC3.0, they probably will add scrambled pay channels to the sub channels and we will have to pay for each sub channel that is broadcast as a premium. ie: Showtime, ESPN, USA, etc.


That was certain broadcasters initial plans, with dollar signs in their eyes. Now that the federal government has decided that broadband is something to subsidize for many, more people will probably just end up streaming HBO (etc.).

I do wonder how many (non-O&O) stations, knowing what they know now, would have been willing to sell their spectrum during the Auction 1000 group (i.e. take the money and run (invest it in other ways with a higher return)).


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

jerryez said:


> Once the broadcast networks switch to ATSC3.0, they probably will add scrambled pay channels to the sub channels and we will have to pay for each sub channel that is broadcast as a premium. ie: Showtime, ESPN, USA, etc.


OTT makes that unneeded, all can be streamed and most will. OTA -- R.I.P.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

The streaming landscape has been moving much faster than most envisioned even a couple of years ago... I do wonder how long broadcast TV can last in anything resembling it's current form.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

tenthplanet said:


> OTT makes that unneeded, all can be streamed and most will. OTA -- R.I.P.


Yep. I just noticed recently how several free national OTA channels (e.g. ION, ION Mystery, ION Plus, Court TV, Newsy, Buzzr, etc.) stream for free in Amazon's new Freevee app. And a few stream free in other apps (Circle in Peacock and Xumo; Dabl in Pluto TV).

Meanwhile, lots of local stations stream their local newscasts live and/or on-demand in one free app or another. Our local Gray-owned NBC affiliate has their own app that streams their newscasts both live and on-demand. And soon they'll no longer have NBC's last daytime soap, which moved to Peacock, plus they're dropping syndicated stuff, so that means that all they'll air outside NBC network content will be local news/talk, with all that local content streaming via their app.

I still think that the future of the major broadcast networks is to stream for free as part of those media companies' free ad-supported apps (with high-value live sports and better quality series shifted off onto their paid subscription apps).


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> The streaming landscape has been moving much faster than most envisioned even a couple of years ago... I do wonder how long broadcast TV can last in anything resembling it's current form.


Pursuant to our past discussions about how broadcast TV will increasingly lower its cost basis by shifting away from more expensive scripted content and toward cheaper live news/talk plus reality and animation, today I see news that NBC is considering cutting their primetime programming block come fall 2023 down from three hours to only two hours (like Fox and The CW have always done).









NBC Eyes Cutting an Hour of Primetime


The network has discussed turning the 10 o'clock hour back over to its affiliates.




www.hollywoodreporter.com





This would allow local affiliates to have an hour from 10 to 11 PM (9 to 10 PM Central) for local news and/or syndicated programming and would likely mean that NBC's late night block (starting with The Tonight Show or SNL) would kick off at 11 (10 Cen.) rather than the current 11:30 (10:30 Cen.). And the missing half hour of content would likely just be filled in overnight with local infomercials, syndicated content, or national news from the NBC News Now live streaming channel (which will also soon be simulcast by NBC stations nationally for an hour of midday news at 1 PM).

Cutting out an hour of national primetime content would almost certainly mean NBC would spend less on scripted series (although some of the eliminated content might come from the current 2-hr Friday edition of Dateline and the Saturday 10 PM SNL Vintage re-runs).


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> This would allow local affiliates to have an hour from 10 to 11 PM (9 to 10 PM Central) for local news and/or syndicated programming and would likely mean that NBC's late night block (starting with The Tonight Show or SNL) would kick off at 11 (10 Cen.) rather than the current 11:30 (10:30 Cen.).


That makes a lot of sense, as the news and late night programming plays more to broadcast's strengths and moves away from the traditional primetime that has been largely eaten up by streaming.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> I still think that the future of the major broadcast networks is to stream for free as part of those media companies' free ad-supported apps (with high-value live sports and better quality series shifted off onto their paid subscription apps).


NFL and a small number of MLB games may be the last bits of high-viewership content on the networks.


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## mschnebly (Feb 21, 2011)

Smart TVs are getting so cheap that a lot of folks won't even need a streaming box. An app with a good grid guide showing different streaming service shows would be nice though.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> NFL and a small number of MLB games may be the last bits of high-viewership content on the networks.


Yes. And Big 10 college football, which will be spread between CBS, NBC and Fox (as well as cable and streaming) under the next contract. (Looks like SEC football is leaving CBS and going all-in at ESPN after this season.)


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

mschnebly said:


> Smart TVs are getting so cheap that a lot of folks won't even need a streaming box. An app with a good grid guide showing different streaming service shows would be nice though.


Google TV and Fire TV (both used as smart TV OSes) have already laid the groundwork for this in the Live tabs of their home screen UIs. Both feature grid guides into which various third-party apps (e.g. YouTube TV, Philo, etc.) can plug their listings. 

Main problem with them as they currently exist, I think, is that clicking on any channel in the guide just launches you into the third-party app. Instead, they need to function like Google's original (now largely abandoned) stab at this, their Live Channels app, which lets third-party apps like Pluto TV and Xumo TV (as well as OTA tuners) opt in and send their actual audio/video streams into Google's standardized UI. That way, you can actually seamlessly channel surf from a Pluto TV channel to a Xumo TV channel to an OTA channel, all inside the same UI. The on-screen UI during playback could still sport the logo of the underlying app supplying the live channel feed (next to the show title and channel name) and maybe feature a "start over on-demand" button that would, if clicked, take you to the title page inside the underlying third-party app (assuming it offered the currently streaming title on-demand).


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

NashGuy said:


> Main problem with them as they currently exist, I think, is that clicking on any channel in the guide just launches you into the third-party app. Instead, they need to function like Google's original (now largely abandoned) stab at this, their Live Channels app, which lets third-party apps like Pluto TV and Xumo TV (as well as OTA tuners) opt in and send their actual audio/video streams into Google's standardized UI.


I suspect few content and app vendors found the loss of controlling the user experience (and being able to fully monetize it (it is always about the money)) desirable.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

CommunityMember said:


> I suspect few content and app vendors found the loss of controlling the user experience (and being able to fully monetize it (it is always about the money)) desirable.


They're giving up a bit of control but, especially in the case of ad-supported content, it's all about maximizing viewership (and therefore ad impressions, and therefore ad revenue). So as long as Google is allowing the source app's A/V stream to pass through unmolested (e.g. Google is not trying to insert their own ads) -- and I do believe that's the case with their Live Channels app -- then IMO those third-party apps have more to gain than lose by participating. Google gains useful viewing data but the underlying content sources gain additional viewers/viewing time (i.e. more ad revenue) than they would get by exclusively serving that content via their own discrete app silos. As more and more TV viewers leave traditional cable for app-based streaming, there will be growing demand for aggregated UIs as opposed to having all your on-demand libraries and groups of linear channels divided among separate app UIs. The logical provider of the aggregated UI is, of course, the streaming device OS (e.g. Google TV, Apple tvOS, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Samsung smart TV, Comcast/Charter Flex, etc.)

Baking the unified live channel guide into the streaming device/smart TV home screen, of course, is even better for encouraging discoverability and use than having it sit within its own separate app, as Google does with the Live Channels app for Android TV. With Google TV, they have a home screen Live grid guide. But, as I say, it does not (yet) go as far as the Live Channel guide does in terms of pulling in the underlying A/V streams. Perhaps it will eventually.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Yes. And Big 10 college football, which will be spread between CBS, NBC and Fox (as well as cable and streaming) under the next contract. (Looks like SEC football is leaving CBS and going all-in at ESPN after this season.)


I think these cable deals are at the leagues' own peril. A lot of people will just stop watching. It's going to be a big moneymaker for sports bars though.



NashGuy said:


> They're giving up a bit of control but, especially in the case of ad-supported content, it's all about maximizing viewership (and therefore ad impressions, and therefore ad revenue). So as long as Google is allowing the source app's A/V stream to pass through unmolested (e.g. Google is not trying to insert their own ads) -- and I do believe that's the case with their Live Channels app -- then IMO those third-party apps have more to gain than lose by participating.


Other than sporting events that people already know that they want to watch, does anyone actually care about live anymore?


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

Bigg said:


> Other than sporting events that people already know that they want to watch, does anyone actually care about live anymore?


The generic answer is "event television" (verbized as "eventize"), which includes live sports, and breaking news, award presentations, and a few very specific showings (such as "The Day of the Doctor", simulcast across much of the world).

On the other hand, I know of people who record sports to skip through the "boring" parts, which for some sports may be most of it (".... and because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie ....")


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> Other than sporting events that people already know that they want to watch, does anyone actually care about live anymore?


I think there's more to the appeal of linear channels than just the tentpole live sports content. Some folks simply like flipping through pre-programmed content streams, i.e. "Play something for me." It's a different way to access content versus scrolling through long grids of on-demand content posters. Linear channels get you into content quickly and with zero "commitment." It's a good way for programmers to advertise their stuff and a convenient way for viewers to sample it. So even after Boomers and Xers are gone, I'm not sure that linear channels will be. I just think that, for the most part, their future lies inside FAST apps like Pluto TV, Tubi, Xumo, etc. As I've said before, I believe that by the end of this decade, the major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox -- will exist as free live stream linear channels inside those companies' FAST apps (but with most of their live sports blacked out from those free streams).


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

CommunityMember said:


> The generic answer is "event television" (verbized as "eventize"), which includes live sports, and breaking news, award presentations, and a few very specific showings (such as "The Day of the Doctor", simulcast across much of the world).


I don't see that being successful at large scale outside of sports and news, the two remaining pillars of live TV.



NashGuy said:


> I think there's more to the appeal of linear channels than just the tentpole live sports content. Some folks simply like flipping through pre-programmed content streams, i.e. "Play something for me." It's a different way to access content versus scrolling through long grids of on-demand content posters. Linear channels get you into content quickly and with zero "commitment." It's a good way for programmers to advertise their stuff and a convenient way for viewers to sample it. So even after Boomers and Xers are gone, I'm not sure that linear channels will be. I just think that, for the most part, their future lies inside FAST apps like Pluto TV, Tubi, Xumo, etc. As I've said before, I believe that by the end of this decade, the major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox -- will exist as free live stream linear channels inside those companies' FAST apps (but with most of their live sports blacked out from those free streams).


I think Netflix has basically overcome the desire to have something on, and there's no reason that they couldn't make it even easier with a customized feed that starts automatically based on your recommendations, making the concept of live TV outside of live events totally obsolete.

I think there will be some semblance of live TV probably forever, even if just a few sports and news channels to have in hotels and bars and such, but I really doubt that they will comprise any significant part of video viewership in the future.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

CommunityMember said:


> The generic answer is "event television" (verbized as "eventize"), which includes live sports, and breaking news, award presentations, and a few very specific showings (such as "The Day of the Doctor", simulcast across much of the world).
> 
> On the other hand, I know of people who record sports to skip through the "boring" parts, which for some sports may be most of it (".... and because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie ....")


That's me. Since back in the 80s I've been time shifting my TV watching. There is nothing I want to watch live. At least not if there are any commercials included.


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## NashGuy (May 2, 2015)

Bigg said:


> I think Netflix has basically overcome the desire to have something on, and there's no reason that they couldn't make it even easier with a customized feed that starts automatically based on your recommendations, making the concept of live TV outside of live events totally obsolete.


Maybe. Although I think there's a social aspect (whether conscious or unconscious) about linear channels too, in knowing that you're watching the same thing at the same time as many others across the land. But yeah, we might also see customized auto-playing feeds that mimic linear channels. I believe Netflix experimented with such a feature in France, although I don't think they stuck with it.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> Maybe. Although I think there's a social aspect (whether conscious or unconscious) about linear channels too, in knowing that you're watching the same thing at the same time as many others across the land. But yeah, we might also see customized auto-playing feeds that mimic linear channels. I believe Netflix experimented with such a feature in France, although I don't think they stuck with it.


I think there is a social aspect with live events, but not with re-runs or something. If it were a scheduled premiere that's appointment viewing with the streaming available afterwards, sure, but that sorts of upends the whole Netflix model.


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## Jim1348 (Jan 3, 2015)

I didn't realize this until this weekend, but the FCC requirement for a digital tuner means that manufacturers can still produce sets with legacy ATSC 1.0 and leave out the ATSC 3.0 tuner.

Granted, the number of people getting their content over-the-air, much less from an ATSC 3.0 signal may be small, but now I am wondering if ATSC 3.0 will be voluntarily included, soon.

I gather that not all new TVs been sold, currently, have ATSC 3.0.









FCC Modifies Digital Tuner Requirements To Advance DTV Transition







www.fcc.gov


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## ElT60 (May 27, 2020)

Jim1348 said:


> ...
> Granted, the number of people getting their content over-the-air, much less from an ATSC 3.0 signal may be small, but now I am wondering if ATSC 3.0 will be voluntarily included, soon.
> 
> I gather that not all new TVs been sold, currently, have ATSC 3.0.


 All new Sony's TVs do. 

"... Sony is bringing ATSC 3.0 to every TV range announced so far in 2022, following on from considerable support last year. ..." 
Best TVs with ATSC 3.0 tuners | Tom's Guide (tomsguide.com)

Is "NextGen/ATSC 3.0" coming to 'race to the bottom' $100-250 TVs soon? No. 
Is "NextGen" going to be rare for > $1,000 TVs in 2023? Probably not. 

at the moment, about 25 core models (with different screens) listed here 
Shop Devices | Watch NextGenTV


There isn't going to be a mandate to turn off ATSC 1.0 any time in the immediate future. Pragmatically, would need near universal home internet service to go along with it. So it will probably grow organically for several more years. But less wealthy and/or under-served areas probably won't get it for a long time.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

ElT60 said:


> There isn't going to be a mandate to turn off ATSC 1.0 any time in the immediate future. Pragmatically, would need near universal home internet service to go along with it. So it will probably grow organically for several more years. But less wealthy and/or under-served areas probably won't get it for a long time.


I wouldn't be so sure. Poorer markets may have higher OTA adoption. Around here, the rich exurbs seem to get technology last.


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## joblo (Jun 5, 2002)

From AVS Forum ATSC 3.0 discussion:



> I have gotten word WXII has added DNR (Do Not Record) protection on their ATSC3.0 signal and it has caused some TVs to stop decoding WXII 3.0.It is not suppose to do that, only to prevent recording and not lock out the signal all together. They are aware of it and are working on finding out what the issue is. Currently, they are the only station with DNR installed. The Samsung we use here at the station is decoding but some Sony's are not. My HDHomeRun Flex4k is not decoding it either.
> 
> Just so you know.


WXII is the NBC affiliate for Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem, NC market.

FYI


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

joblo said:


> FYI ....


For most stations, ATSC 3.0 is still considered in the "testing" phases of deployment, and I expected more stations to have experimented with various content protection flagging to understand how it will all work than we have seen to this point.

Note that in order to display protected content not only do the receivers/tuners have to support ATSC 3.0 itself, but also the full A3SA (content protection) component (they have to be adopters, and obtain security certificates and keys after device certifications/validations[0]), and have an ability to acquire the needed content licenses (in some cases, perhaps, via a USB stick, but I believe it was sort of envisioned it would be done via access to the Internet from your TV in most cases).

I would expect the major vendors (LG, Samsung, Sony) to update their TV's firmware if needed, but such updates are not always quick.



[0] One might remember that the new Tablo ATSC 3.0 tuner/recorder is delayed (was originally due to ship spring 2022, now, maybe, early 2023 (they are no longer providing target dates)) due to the entire process of obtaining the needed validations for content protection recording (a big embarrassment on their part for not understanding the entire set of requirements during their initial development, but at least they caught it before devices that might not have worked in the future were in the hands of their customers, and they would have had to do a mass replacement).


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## joblo (Jun 5, 2002)

joblo said:


> From AVS Forum ATSC 3.0 discussion:


Please see new infomation on this issue in AVS Forum ATSC 3.0 thread.


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## CommunityMember (May 22, 2020)

joblo said:


> Please see new information ...


This is mostly consistent with the known fact that SiliconDust's ATSC 3.0 tuner has been stated by SiliconDust to not support A3SA content protection at this time (so decoding of the stream is not possible).

SiliconDust has stated it is their goal to support A3SA content protection at some point in the future.


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