3 ms·

Higher video quality is and may remain hypothetical: they seem to currently be using the bandwidth for extra channels. I think you can count the number of ATSC

Higher video quality is and may remain hypothetical: they seem to currently be using the bandwidth for extra channels. I think you can count the number of ATSC 3 UHD broadcasters on zero fingers. You'd think the demand would be there for UHD sports, but sports is a monopoly, so :shrug:.

toast0 3y ago
Like I said upthread, it's not practical for me to use the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, so I don't have a real opinion on video quality; but hypothetical quality is a selling point. I don't recall the quality being significantly better or worse than ATSC 1, but I was more focused on if audio worked at all, and unfortunately it generally didn't because of codec problems. From RabbitEars listings [1], it looks like markets currently have 0-2 ATSC 3 broadcasts, and in many market, those broadcasts are the basically .1 subchannels from the major ATSC broadcasts. But I do see a lot of 1080p instead of 1080i, so maybe (but if the source is 1080i and just deinterlaced at the studio instead of the receiver, meh). If they can fit 4-5 subchannels at acceptable quality in one physical channel, that is a significant increase in quality, which is consistent with roughly 2x the bandwidth and the codec upgrade. There's a lot of chicken and egg here. Can't use more bandwidth for better quality if you only have spectrum to do a demo with all the local broadcasters. Don't want to bother with getting 4k content piped through the broadcast chain if nobody actually receives it, and you have to downconvert it to send over ATSC 1 anyway. Etc. With ATSC 1, there was a bunch of extra spectrum available for transition, and federal mandates, and subsidized converters. There's none of that for ATSC 3, so it's going to be slow. [1] https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3 https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3

toast0 3y ago

Like I said upthread, it's not practical for me to use the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, so I don't have a real opinion on video quality; but hypothetical quality is a selling point. I don't recall the quality being significantly better or worse than ATSC 1, but I was more focused on if audio worked at all, and unfortunately it generally didn't because of codec problems. From RabbitEars listings [1], it looks like markets currently have 0-2 ATSC 3 broadcasts, and in many market, those broadcasts are the basically .1 subchannels from the major ATSC broadcasts. But I do see a lot of 1080p instead of 1080i, so maybe (but if the source is 1080i and just deinterlaced at the studio instead of the receiver, meh). If they can fit 4-5 subchannels at acceptable quality in one physical channel, that is a significant increase in quality, which is consistent with roughly 2x the bandwidth and the codec upgrade. There's a lot of chicken and egg here. Can't use more bandwidth for better quality if you only have spectrum to do a demo with all the local broadcasters. Don't want to bother with getting 4k content piped through the broadcast chain if nobody actually receives it, and you have to downconvert it to send over ATSC 1 anyway. Etc. With ATSC 1, there was a bunch of extra spectrum available for transition, and federal mandates, and subsidized converters. There's none of that for ATSC 3, so it's going to be slow. [1] https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3 https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3