[HN Gopher] TV Station Launches Multiple 4K Broadcasts OTA on AT...
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TV Station Launches Multiple 4K Broadcasts OTA on ATSC 1.0 [video]
Author : RF_Enthusiast
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-03-16 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| I think this is clever: a TV station in Oregon is delivering on
| the promises of ATSC 3.0 with ATSC 1.0.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Are they also offering the streams online? Very cool project!
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's very little incentive for an OTA broadcast station to
| offer a stream. These stations are always claiming to work on
| constrained budgets (what company doesn't?). They can't just
| air the same ads on the stream they do OTA, so there's that
| loss of revenue on top of the additional cost of hosting the
| streams. Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming
| friendly ads comes at an additional tech cost too, plus you
| need to either hire people to run it or pay someone to manage
| it for you. Also, you can typically find all of the content
| via other streaming platforms, so the station may not even
| have streaming rights for the content they have broadcast
| rights for
| jjulius wrote:
| >They can't just air the same ads on the stream they do
| OTA...
|
| >Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly
| ads...
|
| I'm ignorant and genuinely curious - why can't they just
| live stream what's being broadcast OTA with the same ads?
| thakoppno wrote:
| There are a couple issues. One is rights. It might be
| prohibited by contract.
|
| Also, there's money left on the table. Server side
| inserted ad solutions are available and monetize better.
| bombcar wrote:
| And OTA ads are often hyper-local, because you know
| exactly the area they can be seen.
|
| There's zero utility in seeing an ad for Big Bill Hell's
| cars outside of the Baltimore metro area.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > with the same ads?
|
| Not sure if it's still the case but the AFTRA union made
| that somewhat difficult for many years. The ad itself
| needs to be cleared for digital streaming and use
| electronic reporting if it uses union talent. When we
| carry "network" programming, some of the ads slots belong
| to the network, and some to the local station. We have no
| visibility on network ads, so we had to assume they were
| not clear, and could never be streamed.
|
| This was an issue in radio, too.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly
| ads comes at an additional tech cost too
|
| There are several ad exchanges which will manage this
| entirely for you.
|
| > plus you need to either hire people to run it or pay
| someone to manage it for you.
|
| You can do most of it with automation. You just need to
| create a "break in" and "break out" signal to send to the
| advertising platform.
|
| > so the station may not even have streaming rights for the
| content they have broadcast rights for
|
| This is most of the issue. CBS, NBC and ABC don't give you
| very much latitude with their national network content. So
| local news and sports are usually the only space you can
| sell into. I've seen a lot of broadcasters setup scheduled
| streams that have full programmatic replacement running on
| them that only exist when local sports are in season and
| for the few hours a week they're actively played.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > There are several ad exchanges which will manage this
| entirely for you.
|
| sort of. there's still a lot to be done on the station's
| end to do this
|
| > You can do most of it with automation.
|
| Yes, _I_ can, and do. However, not every _you_ can. There
| are 3rd party companies that do this, but it 's not what
| every station _wants_ to do.
|
| Your comment reads as if you're writing everything off
| except the part you like. It's one of those situations
| where the station mangers look at all of the pros/cons,
| adds it up, and then makes a decision. They all
| contribute
| akira2501 wrote:
| > there's still a lot
|
| define "a lot."
|
| > not every you can
|
| I assumed you would use the already existing automation
| system. Almost all of them have a mechanism to easily do
| this.
|
| > as if you're writing everything off except the part you
| like.
|
| I have a point of view that is different than yours. I'm
| suggesting that the points you've raised do not all share
| equal value in the decision making process, and if I had
| to guess, were based off slightly outdated experiences in
| the industry.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > outdated experiences in the industry.
|
| clearly, you don't know me or what i do, but we all know
| what happens with assuming
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| How many TVs/tuners are compatible with HEVC over ATSC 1.0 is a
| real question I have. I'm pretty sure my computer based tuners
| would be fine; AIUI, it's still an mpeg transport stream, and
| demultiplexing doesn't care about the codec, and my player app
| can figure that out (or not, but I think it would), but I don't
| know if even my recent atsc 1.0 only tvs know about this and
| they do have the codecs supported for smart tv.
|
| Otoh, if they're broadcasting in ac-3 audio instead of ac-4
| that's common on atsc 3.0, that's a big compatability win. I
| can't get ac-4 to work well at all.
| thakoppno wrote:
| > How many TVs/tuners are compatible with HEVC over ATSC 1.0?
|
| Great question to which I don't know the answer. My intuition
| is the video decoder is the compatibility limiter but it's
| beyond my expertise but not my interest.
| xnx wrote:
| tldr the station does this by usingusing more efficient codecs
| like HEVC instead of the common MPEG2
| dylan604 wrote:
| Broadcast stations are the epitome of "if it ain't broke, don't
| fix it, especially if it's going to cost money". They also do
| not like roll your own solutions. They want a rock solid piece
| of equipment typically from someone like Snell&Wilcox or
| Tektronix type of devices. They do not want to deal with "are
| we on the air" type questions because some one's nephew's
| science experiment can't be maintained. If there's a chance
| that something can go out that's non-standard, fines can be
| levied, and those can get expensive.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Agreed! It literally takes an experimenter buying a station
| to see innovation like this.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The experiment didn't need the full power of a station to
| prove though. I'm not really sure that this is as much
| innovation as you imply. Channels have been splitting their
| bandwidth for years. In fact, Congress wasn't really happy
| with the network's decision to fraction the signal as the
| intent was a single full bandwidth signal. We've also
| already seen what the switch from MPEG2 to MPEG4 can do for
| allowing more channels via cable boxes.
|
| It's also a case of equipment available today is much more
| robust compared to the cable TV. I was testing the MPEG4
| abilities of some of these earlier boxes. Encoding based on
| the white papers provided for the chips, we found these
| were not very accurate and required a lot of tweaking to
| get to work. The chips in today's TVs are much better, so
| there's a lot more that can be gotten away with.
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The big difference to me about analog vs digital broadcast is
| that analog could receive part of the signal and display the
| poor video and then cleaned up the image/sound as the signal
| was dialed in. With digital, you're either receiving the stream
| of 1s&0s or your not. If you miss enough, you have no signal to
| decode.
|
| I met an old timer satellite dish installer (big giant dish
| types) that used this to align newly installed dishes. He knew
| the location of a specific satellite and the frequency it was
| broadcasting one. He had a tuner dialed in for that channel.
| Once he found it, he'd move along the one axis to count the
| number of signals he'd pass until he got to the satellite meant
| for receiving. He'd then swap out to the receiver for that
| signal to verify.
|
| The loss of analog just made the playing and experimenting much
| less fun
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| "analog" used high-power horizontal and vertical sync pulses.
| These were hard for the receiver to lose / mess up, if there
| was any signal at all. Put another way, the receiver would
| receive the sync pulses (aka 'blacker than black) before even
| a shred of the video could be decoded. Another way to say
| this: The sync pulses had such good SNR compared with the
| picture content, so when the picture content was even barely
| visible, it was solidly in sync.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a lot about the old analog video signal that was
| just fun to me like that. The fact the color signal could
| be received by a b&w was cool, except for now with
| hindsight being 20/20 we now have to deal with the
| ramifications of that _cool_. Part of it lingered into HD,
| but we 're finally getting rid of most of that baggage with
| 4K.
|
| Things like the color burst, 1 volt peak-to-peak, whiter
| than white, how the video signal that was too hot could
| interfere with the audio that was multiplexed into the RF
| signal, how a signal could cause the picture to distort
| when not within spec. Just all sorts of things that were
| fun to mess with
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I'm not sure I agree with you. Audiowise, you may be right, but
| video wise, it took a lot to have near perfect video receiving,
| without ghosts and other weirdness, whereas if you've got a
| comfortable margin from the digital cliff, you can get an
| uninterrupted picture and audio, and it will be as good as it
| gets.
|
| Now, when someone at the station decides they should stuff 8
| subchannels of 1080i over the 20Mbps carrier with static
| multiplexing, that's going to look awful. Dynamic multiplexing
| helps, but doesn't work miracles either. If the broadcaster
| does 1 HD stream with about 12-15Mbps, it can look pretty good,
| as long as it's not flowing water or Olympic diving, one or
| two, maaaaybe three SD subchannels for the rest of the
| bandwidth is ok too.
|
| If you don't have a comfortable margin, it is much worse
| though. Analog TV audio was usually pretty decent even with a
| very snowy picture. And then there's the delays in tuning to a
| new channel.
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| In the video of the full interview (linked below the main
| video), he explains that some of the formats he uses overcome
| those disruptions, where there is a weak signal.
| miyuru wrote:
| Interesting to see cloudflare TV on the list.
| https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=259
|
| I thought cloudfare only did online steaming.
|
| There is an little screen recording too.
| https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=277
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| Looks like he got the rights to broadcast their educational
| ("Cloudflare U") content: https://cloudflare.tv/
|
| Here's the source of the first screenshot:
| https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_searc...
| drmpeg wrote:
| Slideshow "UltaHD over ATSC 1.0" from station owner Anton Kapela.
|
| https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hysslJsp6rTYkWuOmDBK...
| RF_Enthusiast wrote:
| I'm driving through Eugene in a few months. Guess I'll be
| bringing my HDHomeRun and an obnoxiously huge VHF antenna!
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| 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?
|
| 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).
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| TV is a vast wasteland (of spectrum).
| devrand wrote:
| I agree, despite the fact that I use OTA TV. I would prefer to
| just get an internet stream, but I need to pay like $70/mo+ to
| get the content (plus a ton that I don't want), and it still
| has ads.
|
| I would be willing to pay a reasonable price to access a live
| CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox stream, but no one (legitimately) offers that.
| So OTA it is.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The quality of OTA TV is certainly superior to anything you're
| gonna get over fiber or coax.
|
| If you're in the US and you have an online provider for cable
| channels, try swapping an NFL game between the online broadcast
| and the OTA broadcast. There's a night and day difference in
| terms of picture quality.
| bifrost wrote:
| This is pretty neat!
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(page generated 2024-03-16 23:01 UTC)