This is the script of my national radio report last Monday regarding
the ongoing transition in the U.S. to yet another digital over the air
TV transmission system, that may shortly obsolete virtually all
consumer TV equipment used to receive over the air signals. And even
the people (and there are many) most dependent on these signals (and
pretty much everybody else) don't even know that this is happening! As
always, there may have been a few minor wording variations from this
script as I presented this report live on air.
- - -
Yeah, so sometimes you gotta wonder if the TV broadcasting industry is
trying to save itself or destroy itself. You probably remember back
around 2009 when U.S. over the air television broadcasts went digital.
This had actually been delayed several years. And it obsoleted
existing consumer television equipment, You either had to buy a new TV
that was compatible with the digital system, or buy a converter box to
hook up to your old TV. The federal government actually issued
vouchers worth like $40 toward the purchase of converters -- which
sometimes covered the entire cost of those converters.
So there was a lot of confusion but because relatively inexpensive
flat screen TVs were starting to appear around that same time many
people were upgrading their sets anyway, so it wasn't as bad as it
could have been.
But the odds are you probably haven't heard that the existing digital
system has already been declared obsolete by the broadcasting
industry, and a switch to yet another incompatible system is in
progress right now as I speak. And many observers are calling the
situation something of a train wreck for a bunch of reasons.
Now the current digital TV standard is called ATSC 1.0. And it was a
big leap over analog in terms of quality and other features in most
situations, though it has its problems. The new system is ATSC 3.0
(there was an ATSC 2 but it never really saw the light of day). And
there are already many stations around the country simulcasting in 3.0
and 1.0.
Now originally, and this may stun you given how few people have even
heard about the move to another system, the FCC mandated that stations
simulcast 1.0 into 2025 -- next year! But since adoption of 3.0 (also
called NextGen TV by the industry) has had so many technical
controversies and other problems this was extended to 2027. But it's
widely suspected that it will be even more years before 1.0
simulcasting compatible with existing equipment is widely terminated.
In addition to most people not even knowing about this, there's
actually comparatively few TVs that support 3.0 currently, often only
the high end units from manufacturers. As far as I know LG stopped
including it at all in any of their current sets due to patent
disputes. And it's really unlikely that the government is going to
pitch in to help pay for this stuff this time around, despite industry
hopes.
Now you might ask, why the switch from 1.0 to 3.0? Well 3.0 can have
better reception in some situations including when in motion, but the
real reason the industry is pushing this is because ATSC 3.0 includes
DRM -- digital rights management encryption. And most stations
currently broadcasting 3.0 are encrypting even their main channels.
And the reasons for this include both trying to control recording of
programs via DVRs, and having over-the-air pay tv channels that yeah
you'd have to pay for to view. It's kinda of like many years ago when
some UHF stations in the evenings and nights switched to
pay-for-access broadcast scrambled signals for movies and sports and
such.
Fundamentally, this appears to be TV broadcasters trying to find ways
to compete with Internet video streaming. But the impacts, even if the
end of 1.0 simulcasting turns out to be into the 2030s somewhere, are
going to be enormous on those people, and there are still enormous
numbers of them, who depend on over-the-air TV broadcasting of main
channels and the wide variety of subchannels.
And keep in mind that TV stations in the U.S. generally do not pay for
their bandwidth and get access to the public airwaves partly on the at
least theoretical basis that they're doing public good. So you can
see why there is considerable skepticism about ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV --
as usual, and it's no surprise to any of us, in the final analysis
it's all pretty much about the money.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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