FCC approves ATSC 3.0, a TV technology with better pictures but less privacy

The whole notion of owning a TV is becoming ridiculous. The cost of ownership is simply not worth it. Fist, you have the cost of the screen itself. You buy a TV, spend lots of money on it, and then it simply spies on you. We&#x27;ve seen this already on Vizio and Samsung TVs already. This is another feather in the cap for this trend.<p>Then there is the cost of cable, which is absurdly expensive. To get all the channels you want, you end up spending a couple of hundred dollars per month.<p>Want to do the cord cutting route? Well that is trending to be even more expensive as each service charges about 10 dollars per month. That doesn&#x27;t even account for live sports.<p>The TVs themselves seem to be going obsolete every two years. First it was HDTV, then 3DTV, then HDTV 4K. On the tech side it was LED, LCD, ULED, now OLED. Remember when your CRT TV lasted 10+ years?<p>Edit: Also they don&#x27;t get updates after six months. Apps stop working as people have mentioned. But more importantly, they don&#x27;t get security updates. So your Smart TV morphs into a Creep TV where hackers have their way with it to do their bidding.<p>Overall, it is easier to just not do the whole TV thing. You will save a ton of money and be much happier at the same time.

One of the components (not yet finalized) of ATSC 3.0 is an entire web browser that runs as an overlay in front of the video [1]. Which itself supports LocalStorage, XHR, and all the goodies you&#x27;ve come to expect - and EME DRM, of course.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atsc.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;A344S34-230r1-CS-Interactive-Content.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atsc.org&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;A344S34-230r1...</a>

&gt; Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard “the Holy Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.<p>This doesn&#x27;t tell us much about the &quot;how&quot;. I assume how this works is that the TV set connects to your home network and phones home with information about what you&#x27;re watching right now. If your TV set were to skip the part where it phones home, is it still possible to watch the show? Or do you have to divulge your location in order to get a key to decrypt the show? Will there be DRM preventing you from recording?

&gt; The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.<p>Uggh. I&#x27;d be very annoyed if, say, the TV turned itself on and woke my toddler from his daily nap because of something like an amber alert.<p>Honestly, stuff like this is part of why I&#x27;m still using an ancient CRT-style TV and haven&#x27;t bothered replacing it yet. I think I prefer my TV &quot;dumb.&quot;

I fail to see the use case for street by street emergency or weather broadcasts. The weather forecast is unreliable enough at city level, let alone street level. And what emergencies would be so serious as to warrant turning on TVs on just my street or in my area? Seems like a thin veil for giving broadcasters more control over end user devices.

What the article skipped over is that your TV will require an internet connection to watch broadcast channels. This proposal is terrible for freedom, consumer cost and privacy.<p>Also, it&#x27;s a stupid reason to get every American to throw out their TV AGAIN (digital tv transition being first) to give the consumer electronics industry a revenue boost.<p>The industry has run out of features consumers will pay for (3-D tv, screen size, 4K, HDR) during a significant market maturity price erosion - taking 65&quot; TVs from $2,500 down to $1,000 well equiped in only a few years. To reset the pricing scheme, they get the FCC to create a new mandatory feature so they can reset the pricing and sell millions of devices needlessly.

&gt; U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more data about viewing habits.<p>I don&#x27;t understand. The article talks about a new TV broadcast standard, ATSC 3.0. Most mobile phones and tablets do not include a TV tuner, so how is this going to improve quality on mobile phones and tablets?

In fairness, that&#x27;s the same data that Netflix, Youtube, and others have access to when we watch online. The broadcast system is just transitioning to more of a network model as well.<p>Not that I agree with this decision, but it&#x27;s not a huge change in the state of affairs really.

So many of the questions in this thread are &quot;but how??&quot; Folks, this is a Reuters article. It&#x27;s not technical. If you want to know how it works read the standards:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atsc.org&#x2F;standards&#x2F;atsc-3-0-standards&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atsc.org&#x2F;standards&#x2F;atsc-3-0-standards&#x2F;</a><p>Perhaps the standards themselves are worthy of a HN post, so folks can ask deeper questions on that thread.

Compare me to <i>Don Quixote</i> if you like, but this kind of crap is what makes clicking on that little magnet icon so damn satisfying.

---<p>The system uses precision broadcasting and targets emergency or weather alerts on a street-by-street basis. The system could allow broadcasters to wake up a receiver to broadcast emergency alerts. The alerts could include maps, storm tracks and evacuation routes.<p>The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.<p>Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard “the Holy Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.<p>---<p>Another nail in the coffin of traditional broadcasting.<p>I find it amusing that these (evil) corporations are so brazen that they are not even coating their glee at these 1984-esque surveillance in the usual rosy corporate speak.<p>I do not know who FCC works for, but it&#x27;s certainly not for the American people.

This article just made me more confused instead of explaining what the technology is and how it works.<p>&gt; would allow for more precise geolocating of television signals, ultra-high definition picture quality and more interactive programming, like new educational content for children and multiple angles of live sporting events<p>What?? What does multiple camera angels have anything to do with the signal quality? What type of educational content is possible that&#x27;s not possible with current TVs? Don&#x27;t current TVs already support 4k? So what type of picture quality is it talking about? What type of interactive programming is it capable of that&#x27;s not possible with current TVs?<p>Someone please explain!

This strikes me as an attempt by the broadcasting industry to get into that cool internet stuff the kids are all talking about. I doubt it really means anything. Most of this stuff will be ignored.<p>The ultimate problem for advertising supported broadcast media is and has been for some time the DVR&#x2F;PVR. There is nothing preventing people from recording ATSC 3 to a hard disk so this ultimately changes nothing important for the industry.

That&#x27;s really cool. So you can detect if someone hasn&#x27;t seen an advert for a couple of hours then remotely turn their TV on the next time their TV sees them and play the advert at max volume. Awesome.

Something left out in the article is ATSC 3.0 supports digital watermarking of the audio signal and video signal...

What does a standard mean ? Other than connecting an antenna, does any signal directly reach a TV ? Isn&#x27;t it all dominated by set top boxes anyway, which can do whatever they please ? Some TVs don&#x27;t even have tuners any more.

&gt; <i>The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned off to send emergency alerts.</i><p>Just what the world needs: the resurrection of Max Headroom.

How does this play into cord cutting though? I haven&#x27;t had &quot;cable&quot; television since 2005, and I haven&#x27;t owned a TV ...well since then. I tried OTA with a Mac Mini for a bit, but it was just awful in general. So no TV.

Cut the cord works