[HN Gopher] LG halts production of ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs over ...
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LG halts production of ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs over patent concerns
Author : tech234a
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-09-30 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lightreading.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lightreading.com)
| bastard_op wrote:
| You really can't blame them when they have already lost to a
| patent troll already in the weird little world known as "West
| Texas" and their highly patent-unfriendly courts.
|
| Perhaps if technology corporations in this boat did more to
| dismantle the weird world of patent litigation around West Texas
| as a whole, the world and innovation everywhere would be better
| off for it.
| rstat1 wrote:
| I mean that's not really gonna do anything. They'll just find
| another favorable court and continue.
|
| The real solution is to make patent trolling impossible. Make
| it so if you own a patent you actually have to use it to make
| something. Not just use it to steal money from people who are
| actually making things.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| Yeah, I think some form of "use it or lose it" will be
| necessary. Either that or just making patents have to 'pay
| for themselves' via exponentially increasing cost (or some
| such) to maintain after the initial period of protection
| (which must be MUCH shorter). That has it's own problems and
| complications, of course.
|
| I get the sense that many of these ideas of e.g. patents and
| copyright, etc. are based on good faith actors, while we're
| currently seeing extreme optimization towards 'just how close
| to the legal/illegal line can I get'.
| brookst wrote:
| I don't think that's a good idea; it would hurt investment in
| promising startups. Today, "company failed, but produced
| valuable IP" is a fallback outcome for investors.
|
| Declaring that the IP of failed companies (and individuals
| who hope to but never bring a product to market) is public
| domain just makes the problem worse. Is a patent valid if I
| sell one single product? If that one sale comes after an
| infringing product? Years after?
|
| Patents are a mess and need reform, but IMO we are better
| served by reform that emphasizes truly novel inventions and
| not small improvements / variations that are essentially
| obvious.
| rstat1 wrote:
| > it would hurt investment in promising startups. Today,
| "company failed, but produced valuable IP" is a fallback
| outcome for investors.
|
| As long as those investors end up actually using those
| patents for something other than what is effectively
| legalized extortion who cares?
|
| Though I do generally agree reform is necessary, and it
| should have a bias against trivial nonsense getting
| patents. But also against people who stockpile patents for
| no other reason than to sue people.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And if I invent something that improves a car, does that
| mean I should have to manufacturer a car instead of
| license to existing manufacturers?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Look at all of the small companies that Apple has bought over
| the years to integrate their technologies into the iPhone.
| None of those companies could have had the scale or the no
| how to create a useful product by themselves.
|
| Even if you look at chip design, there are only a few
| companies that I can actually manufacture chips. But plenty
| of companies that can design processors.
|
| Your law would only help big companies.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's easy to imagine a modification to the proposed law
| that _would_ be beneficial: only the original inventor is
| allowed to assert patent rights as a nonpracticing entity.
|
| That way, the small-time inventor can sell their patent to
| Apple, or (yes) they could act as a patent troll. But they
| can't sell it to Intellectual Ventures or another
| professional patent troll that produces nothing but
| lawsuits.
| mook wrote:
| Who's name is on the patent lawsuit doesn't need to be
| related to who's funding the patent lawsuit. Being able
| to pay for somebody else's lawsuit and get a share of the
| profits is occasionally (but not always) useful; that's
| basically lawsuits on contingency, and is important for
| smaller players to sue bigger players.
| davidhyde wrote:
| I like this idea. The inventor should also have to use
| the jurisdiction in which their company was registered or
| they lived. Also, I think software patents should be not
| be granted, period. But if they are they should be for no
| longer than 10 years. This 20 year catch-all is nonsense.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| at some point, someone that is okay with whatever licensing terms
| will create an ATSC3.0 tuner box that will connect to your
| non-3.0 compatible screen.
| bsder wrote:
| Nobody really cares as everybody else is using DVB-T.
|
| Only the US and Canada bothered with the abomination that is
| ATSC.
| userbinator wrote:
| That's called China, and such things probably already exist if
| you know where to look.
| jzl wrote:
| Tons of great videos on YouTube about ATSC 3.0 by "The Antenna
| Man". Worth checking out if you want to get the real scoop on it.
| Osiris wrote:
| Maybe this explains why my Hisense TV, which has an ATSC 3 tuner,
| stopped working with ATSC 3 channels after the last update.
| drmpeg wrote:
| On the technical side, the patent is for Non-Uniform
| Constellations or NUCs. It's a modification of the modulation
| constellation points to match the error coding.
|
| Traditional 64QAM:
|
| https://www.w6rz.net/64qamrect.png
|
| ATSC 3.0 64QAM for 9/15 code rate:
|
| https://www.w6rz.net/64qamnuc.png
|
| You can explore this with my open source ATSC 3.0 transmitter.
|
| https://github.com/drmpeg/gr-atsc3
|
| Demo clip.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmIGM0I3NE0
| hatsunearu wrote:
| I was always surprised why QAM uses a rectangular I/Q
| coordinate rather than a radial one like how 8PSK does it. It
| would seem like a radial pattern maintains better ISI margin
| just from inspection.
| drmpeg wrote:
| With less error coding (13/15 code rate), the constellation
| is more rectangular.
|
| https://www.w6rz.net/64qamnuc1315.png
|
| With really heavy error coding (2/15 code rate), the
| constellation becomes almost unrecognizable with points very
| close to each other.
|
| https://www.w6rz.net/64qamnuc215.png
| abnry wrote:
| Wow. There must be some interesting coupling between the
| coding and the constellation/modulation.
| raverbashing wrote:
| > is an IP-based signaling platform capable of supporting
| enhancements and advancements such as 4K video, advanced
| advertising and immersive audio. US broadcasters are deploying
| ATSC 3.0 across dozens of markets.
|
| Sounds like nothing of value was lost
|
| At this day and age, few people care about it. And ATSC "legacy"
| will continue to work so you can still watch your local news (or
| Days of Our Lives I guess)
| mnd999 wrote:
| Doubt anyone is going to miss advanced advertising.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >(or Days of Our Lives I guess)
|
| has any streamer taken the challenge of making the "soaps"
| available from their beginning? i can imagine this would appeal
| to a Peggy Bundy type eating bonbons marathoning her soaps.
| Uvix wrote:
| Most soaps are missing their early episodes; keeping all of
| them wasn't standard practice until the late 70s.
| mleo wrote:
| Not sure the service could afford it. 250 episodes/year times
| 60 years is 15_000 episodes to license.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| 4K for sports would be nice. I upgraded to a larger TV
| recently, and 18mbit 1080i MPEG-2 does not look great on it.
| supertrope wrote:
| 4K won't happen for a very long time. Broadcasters get the
| majority of their revenue from retransmission fees from cable
| companies. Their OTA broadcasts are a secondary concern.
| Their business model rewards adding more sub channels and
| therefore more ad slots, not cancelling the subchannels to
| allow the main channel to occupy the entire 6 MHz. Many
| viewer don't own a 4K TV and on the content end the cameras
| on the fields don't support 4K yet.
| kcb wrote:
| One thing I've noticed is that the low bitrate sports content
| looks way better on my old Plasma than a new Oled.
| toast0 wrote:
| > At this day and age, few people care about it. And ATSC
| "legacy" will continue to work so you can still watch your
| local news (or Days of Our Lives I guess)
|
| It will it until it doesn't. My market currently has two
| physical channels for ATSC 3.0, and the rest are ATSC 1.0. If
| there's adoption (or a mandate), I can imagine the ratio
| flipping. If you like you programming at low bitrates, you'll
| be fine as they compress everything down, but there's a lot of
| potential for better video on ATSC 3, if users and broadcasters
| switch.
|
| Otoh, using a poorly supported, non-free audio codec makes
| things unusable for me.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| > 4K video, advanced advertising and immersive audio
|
| Yeah, I mean, 2/3rds of this sounds great.
|
| Obviously both can be done without the DRM parts (some
| discussion on codecs and patents is warranted though).
| knaik94 wrote:
| I am glad, I won't miss this feature. This will also mean there
| is less adoption of the new stanard and so the old standard will
| be kept around for longer. ATSC 3 was guaranteed to fail the
| moment it intoduced DRM into the standard. This is the situation
| with HD Radio all over again.
|
| The DRM and patents effectively destroyed the value and purpose
| of having an open standard, for consumers. It's what gave spotify
| and google music room to kill radio and now online streaming will
| do the same to broadcast TV.
|
| Even with live events and sports, Amazon has started live
| streaming thursday night football on Twitch, you only need prime
| to watch. Youtube and Twitch are also creating a new way to
| consume the content, adding interactability. A charity recent
| soccer match that included major content creators had 1.3m
| average live viewers, 2.5m+ peak on Youtube.
|
| This was eventually going to happen, but these decisions
| accelerate it. The concept of being limited by tv "channels" has
| already started to feel foreign to me.
| MBCook wrote:
| > ATSC 3 was guaranteed to fail the moment it intoduced DRM
| into the standard. This is the situation with HD Radio all over
| again.
|
| I don't see DRM killing many standards. It mostly seems to fail
| because it's released too late or to an existing open standard.
|
| I don't see why HD Radio failed due to DRM. I'd say it failed
| due to MP3 players and streaming music services meaning people
| didn't care, so it wasn't worth car makers bothering.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Amazon has started live streaming thursday night football on
| Twitch, you only need prime to watch
|
| Despite being hosted on https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo you do
| not actually need prime. I watch it without prime just fine.
| mastax wrote:
| I have a theory that SiriusXM paid carmakers to install
| satellite radio receivers (obviously) and also to _not_ install
| HD Radio receivers.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Two wrongs making a right here sort of weird. The local
| channels around me have started becoming available on online
| streaming services. Once that really occurs the lines between
| streaming / cable / terrestrial video are going to keep on
| blurring. Streaming services that have transformed streaming
| into more like a cable model don't seem to be sustainable
| though so it begs the question what will be the future.
| knaik94 wrote:
| Similar to how most people have shifted to permanent shuffle
| for the song selection queue, online streaming caused the
| same shift in how people decide what to watch. Familiary with
| existing media is what keeps people tied to services, and at
| some point viewers will move on.
|
| The recommendation system around broadcast media seems
| immature and doesn't feel personal, the cable model makes it
| worse. People don't subscribe to every service every month,
| like they did for cable, people cycle through them. Keeping a
| viewer will always be cheaper than trying to regain a lost
| one.
|
| Youtube and Twitch has gained social signficiance and some
| content is on par with traditional media. Kids who only watch
| YT, Twitch, and TikTok do not feel left out socially. Memes
| and social media fill in any gaps. I've noticed that the
| younger generations are more surprised when a peer doesn't
| know the Mr Beast YT channel than when they don't know a
| specific TV channel/show.
|
| I think the future of live events and sports will look like
| Twitch, with a heavy emphasis on interactability. I think
| branding for shows/channels will get more focused on the
| characters/actors and creators. And larger categorization
| will be based on genre. Basically the same way it works with
| movies.
| pests wrote:
| At the same time YouTube is testing its live-tv style
| service with channels such as LTT. The channel makes a list
| of uploads and then its displayed to the user in a 24/7 tv
| style broadcast.
| anordal wrote:
| Patents against standards: It's a failure of our society when
| it's near impossible to write a standard without stepping on
| someone's patent. When an open standard is patented, it is
| ruined.
| phh wrote:
| Based on your comment, it seems you're assuming the people
| writing the standard don't intent to step on patents, but
| that's wrong.
|
| Patents on standards is largely how standards are financed, by
| company who will then recoup their research spent on that via
| those patents.
|
| I think that RAND patents and with the list of patents
| published alongside the standard are an acceptable compromise.
|
| In France for the equivalent on ATSC 3.0, we standardized on
| Dolby audio (AC4), which is NOT available as RAND at all (and
| is stupid for many other reasons). So well, we've put ourselves
| in a worst situation.
| toast0 wrote:
| In my market, ATSC 3 broadcasters are also using AC4, so same
| deal here. Of course, AC3 in ATSC 1 was a licensing coup too.
| SenAnder wrote:
| > Patents on standards is largely how standards are financed,
| by company who will then recoup their research spent on that
| via those patents.
|
| Thankfully those companies have a sense of fair play, and
| wouldn't dream of charging more than they spent on research,
| or of using patented standard to stifle competition for
| anyone not in their industry group.
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