ATSC 3.0 Is Finally Here
So what’s all the hoopla about?
Advanced Television Standards Committee 3.0 (ATSC 3.0) or Next Gen TV is all about getting TV station over the air (OTA) broadcasts to a point where they can better compete with both cable and internet media delivery. It will support 4K UHDTV, Over The Top (OTT) services and is supposed to be extensible in order to grow, develop and meet new technology demands.
This new OTA broadcast format is to replace ATSC 1.0, the current OTA broadcast standard for digital HDTV. If a station voluntarily opts to broadcast ATSC 3.0 it must also broadcast ATSC 1.0 for a minimum period of 5 years, but they are not compelled to turn of ATSC 1.0 after this period until they decide to. Why is all this important? ATSC 3.0 is NOT backward compatible with ATSC 1.0 so your old OTA TV set will not work with this new standard. Furthermore, during this transition there will be NO government finacial assistance to the public to buy interim tuners, so you have to buy a new tuner or TV set to receive the new standard!
Currently only three TV manufactures have announced the release of TV sets that have an RF tuner that is ATSC 3.0 compliant; LG, Samsung and Sony. These models are all primarily high end, with most of them being 8K.
TV models, pricing and availability to be confirmed:
- LG – ZX/WX/GX series
- Samsung – Q800/900/950TS series
- Sony – X900H series
Remember that you DO NOT need a new antenna, your old one will work just fine. In fact the new digital modulation scheme, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) that is used to convey the digital data to your set on the RF carrier is supposed to be far more robust than the old 8VSB system. This should result in much better reception throughout your home and is supposed to be excellent for mobile TV reception.
If you want to avail yourself of many of the systems new features your TV set/tuner will also need an Internet connection that supports a ‘back channel’ to the TV station you are watching. This connection is supposed to be created automatically when you select the channel. You can defeat the back channel but you will loose most of the OTT services and interactivity. Oh, and yes, the third party logging of everything that you watch and say! Not too much different to cable really!
So if you are seriously interested in receiving this new OTA standard think VERY carefully before buying you next TV set. NONE of the current OTA sets in homes will receive this new standard. If you want it you need a new TV. However, I would assume that there will be a number of low cost external TV tuners that will come to market to ease the financial pain of migration. Currently the two that I have seen are either a three or four figure number!!
External tuner models, pricing and availability to be confirmed:
- OneMedia
- Apollo
- Zapperbox/BitRouter
- AirwazTV
- Redzone – Available now for those that cannot wait – List price $1995.00
Coming To A Town Near You
2020 is the year the largest TV markets will start to roll out ATSC 3.0. Trials have been underway now for several years in Phoenix AZ, Dallas TX, East Lansing MI, Raleigh NC and Santa Barbara CA. These successful trails have resulted in several commercial and public broadcasters taking up ATSC 3.0 this year, to include: Fox, NBCUniversal, Univision and America’s Public Television Stations (APTS).
While these broadcasts will support the new 4K video standard and multi-channel sound, many of the promised features will not be available day one. Also there will be little native 4K material as few stations yet support a 4K production workflow. However many will be able to support 4K pass through from sporting events or movies.
According to the TVTechnology broadcasting trade website, the 40 markets that will begin ATSC 3.0 broadcasting in 2020 include:
- Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX
- Houston, TX
- San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA
- Phoenix, AZ
- Seattle-Tacoma, WA
- Detroit, MI
- Orlando-Daytona Beach-Melbourne, FL
- Portland, OR
- Pittsburgh, PA
- Raleigh-Durham, NC
- Baltimore, MD
- Nashville, TN
- Salt Lake City, UT
- San Antonio, TX
- Kansas City, KS-MO
- Columbus, OH
- West Palm Beach-Ft. Pierce, FL
- Las Vegas, NV
- Austin, TX
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- Philadelphia, PA
- Washington, DC
- Boston, MA
- Atlanta, GA
- Tampa-St.Petersburg-Sarasota, FL
- Minneapolis – St. Paul, MN
- Miami – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
- Denver, CO
- Cleveland-Akron, OH
- Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto, CA
- St. Louis, MO
- Charlotte, NC
- Indianapolis, IN
- San Diego, CA
- Hartford-New Haven, CT
- Cincinnati, OH
- Milwaukee, WI
- Greenville-Spartanburg, SC – Asheville, NC
My 2 Cents
Even though my house doesn’t use cable TV and we only watch OTA broadcasts, I have to say that I have little to no excitement as to what this new standard will offer. Yes 4K for sports and the odd movie will be nice but for the rest of the programming; not so. Just look at how many OTA broadcasts use up converted SD for their HD transmissions now. Up-converting that to 4K will be just awful, its bad enough in HD. As for the OTT services and interactivity, I suspect that those applications and services will be quite some time before they are implemented. For those of you with only cable and/or the Internet, ATSC 3.0 offers no advantages at all.
As for TV stations producing in 4K so that you are actually watching native 4K; don’t hold your breath. Several of the networks, larger news organizations and cable sports providers have already upgraded to support a native 4K workflow. However, the cost of upgrading a TV station to operate natively at 4K is very high and the return on investment will be little to nothing. They cannot charge more for a 4K commercial; many stations have enough trouble filling their current commercial slots. As for stations and Networks implementing OTT applications, streaming, directed commercials and interactivity, again, don’t hold your breath. With the upgrade to HD having just been completed by many smaller stations, obtaining another capital budget for a full 4K upgrade looks to be a pipe dream. So what are smaller stations to do to compete with the eventual 4K rollout? Yes you guessed it, buy a 4K video video up-converter and slap on a new RF modulator (exciter) on the output of their HD station. 4K, I think not!
With the number of ‘cord cutters’ rising rapidly as subscribers cancel their cable subscriptions and race to an Internet that now provides a bewildering array of media choices and supports high delivery bandwidths, I fail to see what the rush would be from OTA community to this new standard, despite its ability to EVENTUALLY support OTT services and interactivity.
I am anxious to receive ATSC 3.0, not necessarily for the UHD content, but for some of the many other technological advances. First, the change from 8VSB to OFDM is huge. This should improve multipath distortion that plagues current ATSC 1.0. I frequently get a signal strength of 100% but a signal QUALITY of 65-80%. This is usually workable, but occasionally have lock-ups due to multi-path distortion. This should also allow for mobile reception.
Next, due to not being stuck with MPEG-2, where we either get 1280×720 progressive or 1920×1080 interlaced, I believe most stations can go 1920×1080 progressive. I’m not sure if they can/will but 1920×1080 at 60 progressive frames per second will make sports MUCH better; I believe it will be a more impressive improvement over higher resolution, although taking UHD to 60 fps will be amazing for sports! My guess is that we will not see the UHD at 60 fps for nearly five years because of the stupid requirement for stations migrating to ATSC 3.0 must also broadcast at 1.0. As they aren’t granting the station new broadcast channels, there will be multiple HD channels per ATSC 3.0, meaning they will need to share finite bandwidth on the 3.0 stream. Once this 5-year requirement is met, each station can move back to their own transmitter, allowing more bandwidth for true innovation. As ATSC 3.0 does not require new televisions (like ATSC 1.0 over NTSC) to take full advantage of the improvements, I find that 5-year requirement to be absolutely stupid; a set-top box with an HDMI cable will allow all the functions a new television would provide.
In my current setup, I use several SiliconDust HD Home Run tuners, which allows me to use Plex Media Server as a DVR. This allows me to record up to eight different programs simultaneously. I then can use a Roku or my iPhone to watch any content. This is OK for the most part, but I am hoping that once ATSC 3.0 will have similar devices to my HD Home Run tuners. Storing recorded television shows should take up less hard drive space than the clunky MPEG2.
Ron,
Thank you for visiting my web site.
Clearly you seem to be an avid TV/cable channel viewer.
I fully understand that some will be excited by the thought of getting free high quality 4K programming OTA and that the OFDM modulation will improve all aspects of coverage. I even appreciate the other features that ATSC 3.0 can support. BUT in the end its about content and I do not find that most OTA and cable programming content very interesting or even warrants 4K resolution. I buy those films I want in high quality, my family uses Netflix for the few I won’t buy, and we all watch a lot of OTA PBS.
Having designed and built many HD TV stations and been involved in the design of many of the the new 4K networks and sports facilities, I have a “boots on the floor” knowledge of what is going on and what TV should/can look like. Most stations cannot and will not support 1080P60 (3G). Their infrastructures are not designed to support those high bit rates and it buys nothing for the station. 1080I/720P (1.5G) are the defacto standards and it will stay that way until they re-build their plants to support native 4K. This could be many many years for some stations! The cost of upgrading a TV station to native 4K production throughout is very high, brings a whole host of technical challenges and often requires technical staff with a level of technical knowledge that they do not posses.
Only time will tell how all this will unfurl.
Thanks for your update and commentary on ATSC 3.0. It will be interesting to see it’s impact on improving quality of existing OTA signal and eventual OTT services. Perhaps you can comment further in another blog on the emerging technologies of 5G and HDMI 2.1 and how all of these will impact in home entertainment and information – and of course, make everything I own obsolete.
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for popping by.
I have no doubt that ATSC 3.0 will improve OTA reception and image quality. However, as I say above, its a bit like “putting lipstick on a pigs lips”. If quality programming isn’t there no amount of improved transmission techniques are going to make it more enjoyable (to me). Remember how the lower quality VHS won out over the higher quality Betamax?
I am sure that a brief review of HDMI 2.1 will be forthcoming soon. See here for my previous post. https://fromvinyltoplastic.com/hdmi-2-1-is-here-for-better-or-worse/
As for a post on 5G technology and techniques, we will have to see.