I think this is clever: a TV station in Oregon is delivering on the promises of ATSC 3.0 with ATSC 1.0.<p>They are broadcasting a mix of high-definition channels, including four channels in 4K, two in 1080p, and eight in 720p, all on a single RF channel. Viewers can experience some of the benefits of ATSC 3.0, like higher resolutions, without needing a new ATSC 3.0 compatible TV or tuner.<p>If you click through to the full interview, the owner of the station (who bought the station for a place to test his ideas) says there are even some fringe benefits, like increased effective range.
France is doing terrestrial UHD on DVB-T2, a 2008 standard, with HEVC for the Olympics: <a href="https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=R9&liste=1&live=1&lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=R9&liste=1&live=1...</a><p>There's no major obstacle that I know of that wouldn't make DVB-T possible for HEVC for an even closer analog to the ATSC 1.0 situation, except there's no point as Europe is now broadly speaking on a high level of DVB-T2... it having been a standard since 2008 after all.<p>Here's an application note by a reputable vendor doing UHD with HEVC on DVB-T2 with real products they are shipping: <a href="https://scdn.rohde-schwarz.com/ur/pws/dl_downloads/dl_application/application_notes/7bm90_1/7BM90_0E.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://scdn.rohde-schwarz.com/ur/pws/dl_downloads/dl_applic...</a><p>It dates from 2014. And the main reason it hasn't become popular is because Europe has an extremely high level of cable and satellite penetration. Switzerland no longer has terrestrial television at all for example, with some curious minor exceptions where terrestrial distribution to end-users isn't actually the goal - it's for foreign cable companies to legally rebroadcast a freely received signal on their own networks. That's right, terrestrial television exists solely as a facilitator for a legal loophole.<p>The whole ATSC 3.0 discussion and its DRM and personalised ads has set back innovation in technology standards for a decade. That said, the false choice between either expensive paid cable or terrestrial is probably just as much to blame.
Slideshow "UltaHD over ATSC 1.0" from station owner Anton Kapela.<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hysslJsp6rTYkWuOmDBKfLXK-wl_8WrGCc0Bk2sF9IE/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hysslJsp6rTYkWuOmDBK...</a>
Interesting to see cloudflare TV on the list. <a href="https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=259" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=259</a><p>I thought cloudfare only did online steaming.<p>There is an little screen recording too. <a href="https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=277" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=277</a>
ATSC is a North American modulation standard for transmission of Transport Streams over RF signals. Transport streams can carry any kind of a payload, including data. When the spec came out it was mandatory to use mpeg-2 for video encoding because that was the popular codec at the time. However there is nothing in the spec preventing broadcasters using other video/audio codecs (many already do). This is what this tv station did. You have approximately 19mbps of bandwidth to pack in as much payload in there as you can fit. ATSC3 brings about other features such as higher bandwidth, improved RF signals transmission efficiency (lower costs), error correction, etc…
I remember there being a fairly strict set of encoding tools and formats within the ATSC standards for broadcast video. I did a little searching (Wikipedia and atsc.org) but could only find mention of extensions to add H.264 and then only up to 1080p (in A/72), but nothing about H.265 of any resolution.<p>This is pretty cool but I'm wondering if it's compliant?
digital TV never worked as well as analog. in my opinion, the switch should have never been justified until it could be qualitatively proven that digital > analog. by "greater than" / better I mean not interrupting the viewing experience, especially the audio. This test would be done using stock antennae within reasonable distance from the transmitter. or even better, actually ask users which they prefer: UHF analog or digital. don't switch until 2/3 or more prefer digital. I've never consistently watched DTV, because inevitably a disruption will come and block the audio for about 1.5s, and completely freeze the video. It's simply a waste of time.
Is OTA TV even relevant anymore, except for the specific content that OTA has that isn't (yet) available over the net for free / ad-supported?<p>I believe it's a waste of valuable spectrum to burn it on TV. It would be better to allocate TV's spectrum to cell services (for example).<p>Radio should be used when things are moving relative to each other; AM and FM Radio make sense as receivers are often in cars. People don't watch TV in cars.<p>If the communications is point-to-point, run the wires/fiber and hook up. If you're in a car, boat, airplane, or train -- fine, use 'wireless'. Yet, even today, wi-fi / 5G + some wide-area services for special cases (planes, boats) gets you there.<p>TV is a vast wasteland (of spectrum).