[HN Gopher] Video codecs and 4k
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Video codecs and 4k
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2022-06-05 14:31 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (scalibq.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (scalibq.wordpress.com)
        
       | HidyBush wrote:
       | I expected a treatise about how different video codecs perform
       | when dealing with 4k video, not a very good title imho
        
         | NonNefarious wrote:
         | Nor an entirely accurate article.
        
       | Aardwolf wrote:
       | That 320x240 need for speed intro video doesn't look bad at all
       | to me, for having to be rendered on a 486 era computer!
       | 
       | The low resolution pixels are visible, but I don't see many
       | blocking / MPEG artefacts. I've seen much worse 240p videos.
        
         | ogurechny wrote:
         | NFS (on both consoles and PC) didn't have any MPEG-encoded
         | videos. See
         | 
         | https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Cinepak
         | 
         | https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Electronic_Arts_TGV
         | 
         | for 3DO and PC video formats, respectively. You can get the
         | original files (ATTRACT[1-3]) from the first link
         | (ffmpeg/mplayer had a decoder for that) or the reencodes
         | someone made from the second link.
         | 
         | https://ia803209.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/29...
         | 
         | https://archive.org/details/nfsse-videos
         | 
         | Oh, and the video itself seems to be from a PlayStation
         | version, judging by the graphics in the end. Then the title
         | should be "1996", and the hardware decoder for more advanced
         | MotionJPEG-like video could be used.
         | 
         | Edit: Sorry, that's NFS1 Special Edition intro (without
         | Road&Track co-branding).
         | 
         | Before talking about bus bandwidths and video card types,
         | author had to mention that you simply couldn't decode such a
         | complex format on consumer devices at that time, their CPUs
         | weren't fast enough. Back then people used dedicated players
         | with options to trade quality for speed to decode just the MP3
         | audio files. For video, developers relied on simple codecs with
         | integer math, line/block/area/frame copy/movement/discard
         | operations, and reduced bpp data, like Cinepak, Indeo, and many
         | custom ones. Their metric wasn't the quality level, but amount
         | of frame data that could be updated by decoding CPU in a given
         | time. Everything that couldn't fit got dropped. Some of those
         | allowed to decode at arbitrary locations on arbitrary canvas
         | sizes, and implement screen/region scrolling/updating through
         | the same decoder, if needed.
         | 
         | Game designers could cheat by sticking to highly compressible
         | images. Shots with limited color palette and static (perfectly
         | static) CG backgrounds looked better. For example, all of
         | Cyberia FMV sequences only have 15 fps, but most of the time
         | you don't notice that.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | The low frame rate is visible to me, as is the occasional color
         | banding. The spatial resolution looks at least as good as a VHS
         | recording of broadcast TV.
        
         | rasz wrote:
         | https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/Electronic_Arts_TGV loss-
         | less intra frame compression, and block-based motion and VQ for
         | inter frames with ADPCM audio. Pretty neat for something
         | running fine on 486DX2/66
        
       | _gabe_ wrote:
       | This article was amazing! I struggled through learning to use
       | ffmepg as a C++ library, and then I found out how restrictive
       | their licensing was and about mpeg patent laws which was a huge
       | bummer. I'm building a video editor for mathematical animations,
       | it's open source and I wanted to distribute a single executable
       | as a paid option if you don't want to compile it yourself.
       | Unfortunately this is borderline impossible with ffmpegs
       | restrictive licensing.
       | 
       | It looks like AV1 will be a great replacement, and seems like it
       | will be widely supported in the future. The BSD-3 license also
       | seems way more permissive, which is a huge plus. Does anyone have
       | any experience using it as a library? I'll definitely be
       | experimenting with it, but I wanted to see if anyone else had a
       | good experience with it as opposed to ffmpeg or something :)
       | 
       | Edit: I just wanted to add that my mis-capitalization of ffmpeg
       | is completely intentional ;)
        
       | klodolph wrote:
       | > If we want to get a bit retro here, convincing video playback
       | on a consumer PC more or less started when hardware cards such as
       | the Video Blaster arrived on the market.
       | 
       | A bit odd to give QuickTime a snub here, which was released in
       | 1991.
        
         | rasz wrote:
         | Author confused hardware and assumed barebones single frame
         | framegrabber was a video accelerator.
         | 
         | QuickTime Road Pizza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Video
         | was one of the first viable universal video codecs on the
         | desktop. Its not a coincidence Premiere started out on Mac
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Premiere#History
        
       | rasz wrote:
       | 1. As GL1zdA already pointed out in blog comments 1992 Creative
       | Video Blaster CT6000 was a single frame screen grabber and not a
       | video encoding/decoding accelerator. YT "Creative Videoblaster
       | CT6000 in action" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrwSGRflPE
       | shows what it does.
       | http://web.archive.org/web/20000829095056/http://www.ctlsg.c...
       | "converts a standard full-motion video image (composite video
       | source) into a format for display on a computer graphics monitor"
       | emphasis on the _image_. "It can position and scale the video
       | image onto the output display and allows the video image to be
       | merged with computer graphics for interactive multimedia
       | applicaiton." means overlay analog video on VGA monitor.
       | 
       | The first true video decoding accelerator on PC market came out
       | of David Sarnoff Research Center owned by RCA, later purchased by
       | GE, then finally video tech carved out and sold to Intel. Called
       | Digital Video Interactive
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Video_Interactive it did in
       | fact "real time audio and video decompression, 30 frames per
       | second with a resolution of 320x240". Intel repackaged it into
       | one chip i750 and called it Indeo. Creative released a product
       | based on it in mid 1994 - Video Blaster RT300. PCI bus was
       | already mainstream in 1994, as were Pentiums. You most likely
       | blurred those two together into one product.
       | 
       | 2. "so the quality could be very high. Streams of 8 to 12 mbit of
       | data for a single channel were no exception."
       | 
       | SD video DVD bitrate is 10Mbit, and here we have OTA stations
       | pushing 720p/1080i at same or lower bw using same codec (US
       | mpeg2). Whole multiplexer in ATSC offers ~20Mbit, and then TV
       | stations cram 3-4 signals in there. Lu Goughs "DRW2022 - Pt5:
       | Digital TV (DVB-T), Digital Radio (DAB+) & FM Radio Analysis"
       | https://goughlui.com/2022/06/05/drw2022-pt5-digital-tv-dvb-t...
       | blog post offers good overview of the OTA TV broadcasting
       | shitshow as seen from Australian perspective. 3-4Mbit is the
       | average. There is nothing "very high quality" about OTA HD TV
       | broadcast.
       | 
       | "'gold standard' of 4k 60 fps video, streaming services is where
       | you'll find it"
       | 
       | you mean Netflix 4K 24 fps at 15Mbit? :-) That is the reality we
       | are living in now. Apple is an outlier doing 25-40Mbit,
       | everything else is bad.
       | 
       | 3 "CRT has some afterglow after the ray has scanned a given area,
       | the even field was still visible somewhat as the odd field was
       | drawn. So the two fields would blend somewhat together"
       | 
       | This is simply not how TV works, there is no somewhat, there is
       | no afterglow. CRT goes dark after about 10 lines have been
       | scanned in.
       | 
       | "An LCD screen does not have the same 'afterglow' that a CRT has"
       | 
       | LCD does in fact retain whole picture until the next update, aka
       | "full afterglow" as you would put it.
       | 
       | "so there's no natural 'deinterlacing' effect that blends the
       | screens together."
       | 
       | The natural deinterlacing effect happens in viewers brain, not on
       | the Screen. You got this entirely backwards. The whole reason
       | interlaced picture doesnt work on LCD is because previous frame
       | stays on the screen. I highly recommend "How a TV Works in Slow
       | Motion - The Slow Mo Guys"
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BJU2drrtCM
       | 
       | 4. "HD, another new standard was required, as DVD was limited to
       | SD."
       | 
       | Sony used HD as an excuse to push new format with new licensing
       | fees. Nothing, other than corporate greed, necessitated new
       | storage medium. h.264 was already on the market, as were other
       | efficient codecs. There were even failed attempts like Versatile
       | Multilayer Disc using standard DVD with VC-1 coding.
       | 
       | 5. 4K "special kind of confusion"
       | 
       | who? This is the first time I hear about people associating 4K
       | with new video codecs.
        
         | johnwalkr wrote:
         | I was huge into following the latest sound cards and video
         | cards in the mid-late 90s, owned multiple soundblaster cards,
         | and I didn't even remember a product called video blaster. I
         | also checked the archive links, and aside from one model, these
         | products were for encoding, not decoding. From my recollection,
         | FMV on computers was a novelty reserved for short clips in
         | games and encyclopedias like Encarta. You could go to a
         | computer store and see a demo of a video playing from a cdrom
         | on a 486/windows 3.1/MPEG-certified video card around 1993. But
         | video on the PC was consistently even similar quality to VHS
         | until Windows 95, MacOS System 7 and hardware from that time
         | had decent support. If you had windows 95 and even the slowest
         | Pentium, you could watch a good quality MPEG file. Granted, no
         | content was available except for "weezer.mpg", a music video
         | easter egg on the windows 95 cdrom, and you could download
         | short high-quality clips such as clever commercials. For
         | streaming an entire TV show, you could only find grainy
         | "realvideo" streams by word-of-mouth. A sidenote is that they
         | did work better in one sense than streaming today-- I remember
         | watching star wars in realtime with IRC friends. The serving
         | person had a cable modem and at least some of the viewers had
         | 56kbps modems. These days, my phone plan throttles to 100kbps
         | when I run out of data, and I can load HN, barely load a google
         | search, can't load most news sites without timing out, and
         | wouldn't even be able to navigate to any kind of video, let
         | alone stream one.
         | 
         | I'm also still disappointed in the quality of streaming
         | services of movies. 4K often looks worse than 1080p. I live in
         | Japan and broadcast TV 1080p looks so so much better than most
         | streaming at any resolution. The Mandalorian is the exception
         | that comes to mind. It's annoying that anytime I've checked out
         | 4k and 8k TVs in an electronics store, I see the same demo
         | videos for the last few years. Great-looking but utterly boring
         | content like a man swinging ropes around in a puddle and paint
         | bouncing around on some kind of speaker cone or drumhead.
         | Really drives home the point that content that actually takes
         | advantage of the (amazing) 4k+, HDR screens is lacking.
         | 
         | On the other hand, I appreciate that the floor of quality is
         | quite high, and for a person that grew up loving "this old
         | house" as a kid, I can open youtube and see incredibly high
         | quality/high-image quality content on any subject, whether
         | broad or deep. And most of it is created, starring produced,
         | and edited by one person. That's a totally different discussion
         | though.
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | >But even MPEG-1 supports a maximum resolution of 4095x4095, and
       | a maximum bandwidth of 100 mbit. So it is technically possible to
       | encode 4k (3840x2160) content even in MPEG-1, at decent quality.
       | 
       | The reality is that that despite MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 support those
       | resolution, none of the mainstream implementation supports it. (
       | Although you could always use Software implementation as MPEG-2
       | is now patent free ) Hence when you go 4K, only newer version of
       | MPEGs are used.
       | 
       | It is also missing MPEG-5 with EVC. And how not only MPEG-4 has
       | different codec, AVC itself introduces many different profiles
       | where compression efficiency differs greatly.
        
         | giantrobot wrote:
         | MPEG-4 part 2 and h.263 also support multiple profiles. MPEG-4
         | part 2 is _based_ off of h.263 but with basically all the
         | features turned on with its own additional features available.
         | 
         | Annoying the author doesn't seem to understand that multiple
         | standards bodies exist. The h.xxx codecs are specified by the
         | ITU. MPEG is a totally different organization. The MPEG-x
         | standards are specific video encoding and delivery standards.
         | The ITU _also_ has delivery specifications but those are mostly
         | about telecommunications delivery.
        
         | malkuth23 wrote:
         | True. I work with media server playback stuff for live events
         | etc. Back in the day, we only used mpeg2 constant bitrate codec
         | because it allowed us to sync the playback across multiple
         | systems. The first 4k videos we could play were just a slightly
         | hacked version of mpeg2. The software I used adopted the
         | extension .mxl and claimed they sort of invented a new thing,
         | but truthfully, it was just an mpeg2 encoder/decoder that
         | ignored that 4095 rule.
         | 
         | Now we use HAP family (DXT/S3 based) or NotchLC (which is a
         | specialized codec for media servers that is fairly encumbered
         | with patents).
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | >Now we use HAP family (DXT/S3 based)
           | 
           | You mean Apple Road Pizza, right? :)
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Video#Four_color_mode
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | I am assuming thats with huge color compression though - I
         | forget the details of MPEG1 - 100mbit can be GREAT or CRAP
         | depending on the codec
        
       | tatersolid wrote:
       | Sort of a Wikipedia-style overview of video codec history. If you
       | were expecting some new info or insight, skip the article.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | hulitu wrote:
         | And just like Wikipedia the content is full of errors.
        
           | dopa42365 wrote:
           | On Wikipedia YOU can fix it at least!
        
             | hulitu wrote:
             | You cannot fix it. There was a discussion on HN some month
             | ago about this issue.
        
         | natly wrote:
         | I wish HN had way more technical overviews like this from
         | people with experience. It's certanily new to me.
        
       | lostmsu wrote:
       | If anyone's interested in the programmatic side, I found the new
       | Windows APIs for encoding to be very sufficient for both H.264
       | and HEVC: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
       | us/uwp/api/Windows.Media.Trans...
       | 
       | I does not have as many tunable options as ffmpeg, but served me
       | better for the purpose of multimonitor screen capture (~ 7k by 3k
       | total resolution) precisely because it flings DXGI surfaces
       | directly without the need to copy pictures from GPU to RAM and
       | back for encoding.
        
       | seanalltogether wrote:
       | Video deinterlacing is one of those topics that I always felt
       | would be a good way to teach myself deep learning techniques. The
       | idea that you have a previous frame and a next frame with
       | information to help you fill in the gaps of the current frame is
       | really intuitive and easy to visualize. I'm sure this has been
       | solved really well by now, but it seems like a good problem to
       | learn with.
        
         | brigade wrote:
         | It's one of the oldest widespread applications of neural
         | networks for video, with NNEDI at least dating to 15 years ago.
         | 
         | That said, I don't think there's been much work incorporating
         | new research from the current resurgence of deep learning.
        
           | babypuncher wrote:
           | I wish Handbrake would incorporate some of these. Its built-
           | in deinterlacing options leave me wanting, particularly with
           | older animated content.
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Definitely already been done, but yeah it's pretty much ideal
         | for ML.
        
         | NonNefarious wrote:
         | I wouldn't say it has been solved all that well. The problem is
         | the temporal difference between the two fields, so moving
         | objects have a "comb" distortion while more static parts of the
         | image mostly don't.
         | 
         | Interlacing should never have been a part of a digital-TV
         | standard, but broadcasters pushed a bunch of FUD and lies
         | during the progressive-vs.-interlaced debate. They whined that
         | going progressive "would break their pipeline," when that's
         | obviously BS because they'd been playing film-originated
         | material for decades. Acquisition should always have taken
         | place in a progressive format, even if transmission continued
         | to be interlaced for a while.
         | 
         | Now we're stuck with a bunch of historical footage that looks
         | like shit.
         | 
         | And then there's the asinine perpetuation of non-integer frame
         | rates; those too should have been abolished with digital TV.
        
           | Melatonic wrote:
           | Yea seriously - interlacing made sense only for when it was
           | actually required by the technology. We should have dropped
           | it at the first chance we got
        
           | babypuncher wrote:
           | Interlacing should never have been part of any digital video
           | standard, in my opinion. All it has done is cause problems.
           | Early digital productions shot in 720p look better than their
           | 1080i peers.
        
             | rasz wrote:
             | The problem is first digital video was sill targeting CRTs.
        
               | babypuncher wrote:
               | Interlacing could have been handled by the playback
               | hardware. At the end of the day, 60 interlaced fields or
               | 30 full frames per second still require the same amount
               | of bandwidth.
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | Thats not necessarily only deinterlacing - lots of modern
         | codecs are doing compression (pretty much all of them) based on
         | how much change there is frame to frame. But almost nothing is
         | interlaced these days. Although of course interlacing itself
         | was a simple form of what you are describing above in a way.
        
       | phoboslab wrote:
       | > MPEG is not free. A license is required for using MPEG.
       | 
       | For MPEG-1 this is not true anymore. All patents have expired.
       | It's also far less computationally expensive and easier to
       | implement/integrate than more modern codecs. This makes MPEG-1 a
       | "good enough" solution for (e.g.) short video clips in a game.
       | 
       | Disclaimer: I wrote pl_mpeg[1], so my opinion is biased.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg
        
         | corysama wrote:
         | Fun fact: The PlayStation2 (and maybe PS1?) had an "MDEC"
         | coprocessor that was basically a JPEG decoder chip. So, in one
         | game we used low-rez MJPEG streams for the characters' pop-up,
         | talking-head, conversational clips. The were small enough to
         | keep in the 32MB of main RAM for zero-latency and free to
         | decode any frame on the fly as needed.
        
           | pvg wrote:
           | _and maybe PS1?_
           | 
           | Yeah it started on the PS1, as you say:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27699899
        
             | corysama wrote:
             | lol. Been a long time since I worked on a PS1 ;)
        
           | Melatonic wrote:
           | Motion JPEG was once the bain of my existence - the very
           | first DSLR's to get video recorded in mjpeg (it was an
           | afterthought tacked on - they had no idea it would
           | revolutionise an industry). Many of the free decoders were
           | quite crap and did not do a good job when you were trying to
           | squeeze every last bit of detail out of a 720P mjpeg stream -
           | there was one significantly better one which I am forgetting
           | the name of now. It was paid but I got a hold of it
           | eventually somehow (as a broke college student) through a
           | friend or class. One plus of it however from what I remember
           | is that the format would play on even the crappiest hardware
           | performance wise
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | OTA broadcasters have to upgrade to ATSC 3 to support 4K video.
       | You either need to get a new TV set or an ATSC 3 decoder to watch
       | tune it in.
       | 
       | In Syracuse (about 50 miles away from me) the three network
       | broadcasters collaborate to run one ATSC 3 transmitter with big
       | which I can tune in with
       | 
       | https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-flex-4k/
       | 
       | The picture on ATSC 3 is high-quality 1080i/720p with an
       | aggressive surround soundtrack which sounds great for sports
       | events on my home theater upstairs. I wind up watching the ATSC 1
       | channels more because: ATSC 1 signals have subchannels like Comet
       | (I am a sucker for Quantum Leap, Baby Godzilla, Time Bandits,
       | ...), the new audio codec in ATSC 3 doesn't work on every device,
       | and the ATSC 3 signal is a little less robust than most of the
       | ATSC 1 signals.
       | 
       | I think Sinclair broadcasting (the owner of the transmitter) is
       | more interested in embedding sports betting into sports events as
       | an interactive application than they are in 4K. I think that will
       | wait until they start turning off ATSC 1 transmitters and turning
       | on more ATSC 3 transmitters, but that will take a long time.
        
         | ipython wrote:
         | I looked into this recently when I moved houses and was without
         | cable for a few weeks. I thought about purchasing an ATSC 3 box
         | to try it out instead of just using an antenna with my TVs
         | internal ATSC 1 decoder.
         | 
         | I will never adopt ATSC 3 because they have built targeted
         | advertising and viewer tracking into the spec. See for example
         | https://rampedup.us/atsc-3-0-marketing-opportunity/. It's
         | really too bad but to me this is the final nail in the coffin
         | for ota programming in my opinion.
        
           | cogman10 wrote:
           | Yup, ATSC 3 is really unfortunately problematic in the amount
           | of garbage that's been put into it. The fact it requires an
           | internet connection is atrocious.
           | 
           | Hell, the fact that ATSC supports PAID OTA transmissions is
           | likewise garbage. It'll just encourage a race to the bottom
           | with OTA bandwidth that will (likely) end up killing it off
           | all together. Who is going to pay for 4 channels from a
           | broadcaster vs streaming? Yet there will be enough incentive
           | that you can almost bet the market for free OTA broadcasts
           | will go away.
        
           | Melatonic wrote:
           | Well that is extremely disappointing.
           | 
           | Sinclair as a media company is also shady as fuck so I am not
           | surprised they are the ones going in on this.
           | 
           | Maybe this will create a black market for ATSC 3 boxes that
           | have been hacked to remove / block all tracking features -
           | sounds like a fun project for someone here :-D
        
             | PaulHoule wrote:
             | ATSC 3 supports an application model based on a single page
             | application that gets notified of events coming down the
             | radio channel by websockets
             | 
             | https://muygs2x2vhb2pjk6g160f1s8-wpengine.netdna-
             | ssl.com/wp-...
             | 
             | there is a radio back channel
             | 
             | https://muygs2x2vhb2pjk6g160f1s8-wpengine.netdna-
             | ssl.com/wp-...
             | 
             | but the TV is expected to have a real internet connection
             | as well as the radio link. Such a system is capable of
             | anything a web application is, including tracking.
             | 
             | It would be interesting to see if targeting meant that I
             | occasionally get to see an ad for something I could buy
             | with my own money as opposed to the injection of the month
             | (used to be pill of the month but now it seems to be all
             | biologicals) or something seniors can get for free with
             | medicare.
        
               | Melatonic wrote:
               | So just do not hook the tuner up to the internet then?
               | Interesting. Unless of course they do something shady
               | like throw a 4G chip inside the box
        
           | cjensen wrote:
           | If your TV set can't talk to the internet, you can't be
           | tracked. All you lose is the silly 'interactive' features
           | that no one uses.
        
         | password4321 wrote:
         | What antenna do you recommend?
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Depends on your case. You should look up your location here:
           | 
           | https://tvfool.com/
           | 
           | If you have many stations close by (you live in L.A.) a set
           | of rabbit ears can tune in almost as many channels as cable.
           | If you live 40 miles away from the transmitter you want an
           | outdoor directional antenna. The further away you are from
           | the transmitter and the weaker the transmitter, the bigger an
           | antenna you need.
           | 
           | There are two cities about 150 degrees apart that have
           | transmitters near me, I am thinking of putting up a second
           | antenna that points at the secondary city, maybe that way
           | I'll be able to get ABC reliably.
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | I like that OTA is still even a thing but I cannot help but
         | think that this is going to fail - who the hell is even using
         | OTA let alone tech saavy enough to be UPGRADING their boxes for
         | 4k?
         | 
         | I'm still using one of the last Plasma TV's ever made (bought
         | it used for cheap) which does have a built in tuner but is
         | obviously 1080P only. At my last apartment I was line of site
         | and only a few miles from where everything is transmitted from
         | so I had great reception. Now it is the opposite and I would
         | need to run a cable up the side of my apartment building to get
         | an antenna working.
         | 
         | Is ATSC 3 really not backwards compatible? It seems like it
         | would be crazy to upgrade to a system that then will not work
         | on all older TV's considering that most new TV's sold these
         | days do not have a tuner built in at all!
        
           | bluedino wrote:
           | > who the hell is even using OTA
           | 
           | It's pretty common with cord cutters.
        
           | saltminer wrote:
           | OTA is underrated IMO. I really only watch the local PBS
           | affiliate, Chromecast takes care of everything else. And best
           | of all, I can watch it on my PC with my Hauppauge tuner
           | (though it doesn't do ATSC 3, I don't have any 3 stations in
           | my area).
        
         | robonerd wrote:
         | > _You either need to get a new TV set or an ATSC 3 decoder to
         | watch tune it in._ [...] _until they start turning off ATSC 1
         | transmitters_
         | 
         | How did things get this bad? In the 90s and early 00s, you
         | could watch virtually any OTA television channel with a
         | television made half a lifetime earlier in the 1950s. New
         | technology like color television was introduced, but remained
         | compatible with old TVs.
         | 
         | In the 50s through 90s virtually nobody gave a damn about
         | e-waste. Today everybody plays lip service to the idea, yet
         | we're obsoleting recently purchased technology faster than ever
         | before, and for what? So you can see individual pores on some
         | ball-kicker's nose?
        
           | giantrobot wrote:
           | Stations wanting to do ATSC 3.0 broadcast are required to
           | broadcast the same content (within bounds of the technology)
           | as ATSC 1.0 in that market. There's no required sunset for
           | ATSC 1.0 broadcast like there was for NTSC.
           | 
           | ATSC 3.0 isn't backwards compatible because it's signaling is
           | different than ATSC 1.0. It ends up being more efficient
           | getting a higher data rate in the 6MHz channel. The video
           | codec is _also_ more efficient (h.265 vs h.262) allowing more
           | program streams per RF channel.
           | 
           | It will be quite a while before ATSC 1.0 is mandated to roll
           | over to an updated ATSC standard. Even then there's no reason
           | you can't just buy a tuner for the new standard instead of a
           | new TV.
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | There was a try at an ATSC 2 that kept the same transport but
           | added interactive features. They gave up on it and went to
           | ATSC 3.
           | 
           | The greatest tragegy in modern television is cable boxes. To
           | this day a cable box takes 80W to do what a phone does in
           | 0.8W and you are always waiting for it to do it.
           | 
           | There was this
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CableCARD
           | 
           | but a standardized digital signal early on would have gone a
           | long way. As it was cable companies struggled mightily with
           | proprietary systems until Comcast developed a decent system
           | circa 2015.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | nsgi wrote:
         | Isn't the vast majority of 4k content delivered online anyway?
        
           | PaulHoule wrote:
           | Probably. You can get 4k Blu Rays but I don't know how big
           | that market is compared to streaming.
        
         | tzs wrote:
         | I wish they had made audio more robust in ATSC, even if it
         | would mean making video less robust. For probably most programs
         | a video dropout without an audio dropout is much less
         | disruptive than an audio dropout without a video dropout.
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-06 23:01 UTC)