6 ms·

I hope it will still be possible to receive a BPS timing signal privately and anonymously with ATSC 3 like one can with GPS. ATSC 3 has the Dedicated Return Cha

by Lammy 2y ago

I hope it will still be possible to receive a BPS timing signal privately and anonymously with ATSC 3 like one can with GPS. ATSC 3 has the Dedicated Return Channel because marketers “““need””” to spy on every-fucking-thing we do: https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04-Dedicated-Return-Channel.pdf https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04... “Conventional linear TV services alone (albeit ultra-high-definition) may not be sufficient to sustain the terrestrial broadcasting business which requires a large amount of highly coveted spectrum resources. Intelligent media delivery and flexible service models that maximize the network Return on Investment (ROI) is of paramount importance to the broadcasting industry in the new era.” That's a lot of fancy words to say ‘we're doing this because it makes us more money’ lol “Recent studies have shown that interactivity between media customers and service providers and between users themselves will be one of the most important features in the next-generation media service. In this document, this unique opportunity is addressed by defining a Dedicated Return Channel (DRC) system for the next-generation broadcasting system.”

geerlingguy 2y ago
Yeah... and that's one of the most innocuous new "features" in ATSC 3.0. Almost everything I've seen (besides BPS, and maybe HDR if you're one of the few who has a really good home theater setup) is a benefit for broadcasters and advertisers, and a bit worse for consumers (especially requiring new hardware/decoders... and sometimes persistent Internet connections!).
- 1970-01-01 2y ago
  Same feeling here. ATSC 3.0 with DRM and persistent Internet requirements tells me this is going to be the downfall of OTA television. I can see ATSC 4.0 being a discounted ISP subscription paired with some OTA location checks via BPS.
  - Alive-in-2025 2y ago
    So atsc 3 won't work unless you have some continuous "i'm user xyz watching this channel at time x.y.z" going back to the broadcaster? Why would anyone use atsc 3? It's not free over the air, you can't spoof it?
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      It's not like anyone's gonna ask them. Networks will just label this as ${network name}'s HYPER NEXT GEN 10G TV EXPERIENCE (HNG TV), market the shit out of it, and offer free ESPN on it, tack on some Paramount HBO Supermax Plus for $0.99/year and throw in a half-decent Smart TV as a sign-on bonus, and adoption will skyrocket. TV networks in the US are a living proof that, with enough marketing spend and a pinch of confusion in the offer structure, you can sell people on anything. Half the time you can just offer sportsball access and people will switch. It's how previous versions of broadcaster overreach happened, and why Smart TVs succeed despite their shortcomings.
      - bayindirh 2y ago
        I came to the same conclusion when I saw a whole armada of new TVs from every manufacturer in the eve of any World Cup. Plus TVs tailored for football has a special mode called "sports" which make football arguably look/feel better. That kind of pumping makes me sad and sick.
      - pridkett 2y ago
        Or, the manufacturers will lose patience with slow adoption, the mess that is widevine DRM (what? Your TV isn’t based on Android? No, you can’t have DRM!), and customers really not caring because basically none of the broadcasts make the visual picture substantially better right now, so there is no incentive to move. That’s what happened to LG [0]. They dropped ATSC 3.0 tuners. I’m sure this cost them precisely 0 sales as the industry incompetence destroys the broadcast industry. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897460/lg-drops-atsc-3-0-support-fcc-broadcast-tv https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897460/lg-drops-atsc-3-...
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
  - throwing_away 2y ago
    There is 1 provider for ATSC3 DRM (which is already rolling out in major markets): Google Widevine. There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android. There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine". When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1. I think people should just be aware of the state of play.
    - geerlingguy 2y ago
      At NAB someone asked one of the ATSC folks what would happen if the key is compromised and someone didn't connect a receiver to the Internet. The answer was "the receivers have many built in public keys. They should last the lifetime of the device." Concerning because they could have a situation like with some 4K blu ray discs, your hardware becomes obsolete because DRM requires that cat and mouse game...
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - WorldMaker 2y ago
        Also with some manufacturers believing the lifetime of a device should be less than 5 years and ideally less than 3 years, and are treating software/firmware support in those lifetimes, there's a lot of perverse incentives hidden behind anyone suggesting "for the lifetime of the device". As bad as some of the old cable monopolies were, they were at least sometimes held to Ma Bell's "the lifetime of a device is supposed to be 60 years" standards (which Ma Bell didn't always follow either, but that's another matter). I realize the ATSC exists primarily to sell new standards, but maybe we need ways to get back to longer planning horizons than 3-5 years.
    - lxgr 2y ago
      Wow, and all that to encrypt hours of ads with a few minutes of the 20th rerun of some show in between...
      - 2y ago
  - philistine 2y ago
    This is so user-hostile that I don't believe there will be any adoption. It will have to be shoved down the throat of those who use broadcast, which are overwhelmingly older and more remote. ATSC first generation will probably outlive this DRM-driven abomination.
- threemux 2y ago
  You're not wrong, but don't forget about the upgraded modulation and coding schemes. That might actually help consumers on the edge of coverage receive broadcasts and will definitely be an improvement over creaky 8vsb
  - pridkett 2y ago
    I live in an area that is on the edge of coverage and has lots of hills. On ATSC 1.0, CBS is hard to pick up. Frequently unwatchable - which means unreliable for sports. I picked up an HDHomerun Flex 4K a few years ago. Basically the same week that ATSC 3.0 went live. For a few weeks it was glorious. I had no problem picking up CBS (it was broadcast from the same antenna as ATSC 1.0 - so it was the modulation that was helping out). And then, after a little over a month. Whack! No more CBS. They turned on DRM. They are still the only network that in my area with DRM. Ughh. Under the previous administration I filled a few issues about this from a public safety perspective - I live in with the FCC an area with unreliable power. During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous. Unfortunately, nothing happened then regarding the issue and given the way that Brendan Carr is taking the FCC, I don’t think there will be any progress on this.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous. Just listen to radio?
      - mopenstein 2y ago
        Deaf?
      - pridkett 2y ago
        Radio can work, but again, I’m on the edge of reception areas and the hills make picking up FM and AM inconsistent. In the event of a truly severe weather event (the ones where they hit the alert to make every cell phone go off), the visuals provided by television are hugely helpful.
m463 2y ago
Just like 5G, which provides unexpected connectivity for IoT devices. Search for "miot" or "mmtc"
- arghwhat 2y ago
  There is zero relation there. OP is falling about the spec incorporating usage monitoring. 5G was designed with a very public and explicit goal for IoT of allowing many more devices to connect than 4G could, and more conveniently. Nothing unexpected or user-harming, and nothing new as 4G was already used for IoT.
  - timthorn 2y ago
    When EE launched 5G in the UK, they took out a full page ad with a massive headline saying simply "A real crowd pleaser" One of the best adverts for a long time - if you knew about the technical advantages of 5G, it had a real double meaning. If you knew 90s British dance music, it had a further humourous double meaning promoting the telco (an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode)
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      NEVER underestimate the layered entendre game in the UK.
    - louthy 2y ago
      > an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode That didn’t even cross my mind and Rich West (Mr. C) is a friend of mine and I know the song well. I, of course, get the reference now it has been pointed out, but you’re right that it’s pretty damn oblique!
      - timthorn 2y ago
        I never knew 'Eezer, but do pass on my thanks to Rich for some brilliant tunes from my younger years!
  - 2y ago
kmeisthax 2y ago
Wait, to be clear, this 'dedicated return channel' is just for TVs to broadcast back to the station that they're watching the adverts? I thought ATSC 3.0 was going to rely on IP backhaul for that. Actually broadcasting back seems... impractical at best. I mean, let's keep in mind, even ATSC 1.0 had really awful reception issues; compared to analog NTSC where there was enough redundancy that you could just tune into a garbage station from way too far away and see something. Now imagine trying to make that already unreliable channel bidirectional. I just really hope all the return channel stuff is optional, because it sure as hell isn't going to work without way more stations broadcasting on more channels, and OOPS you've reinvented LTE.
- timewizard 2y ago
  Ironically there's no redundancy in NTSC. There are layers of information and they degrade downward until you have just a black and white picture with no sound. In ATSC there is two types of forward error correction on the digital bitstream. The problem it faces is it sits in the same channel allocations as NTSC while having to deliver significantly more information than NTSC. That and the actual digital modulation used is not as ideal for receivers to capture.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    You can digitize and lossily compress an NTSC signal significantly without losing much detail; that's why I call it redundant. Compression removes redundancy. In ATSC the tradeoff between compression and error correction is such that a noisy channel is far more likely to cut out or otherwise be unusable than it would have been in NTSC.
- DoubleGlazing 2y ago
  Back in the late 90s when Ireland was starting to think about digital terrestrial TV a system called DVB-RCT was considered. Basically your receiver could also transmit back to the television transmitter. The system could handle thousands of concurrent connections, albeit each one had very low bandwidth - around 1Kbp/s in peak time.That was considered good enough for very basic interactivity and for authorising PPV purchases etc.In quieter hours or in areas were there were fewer receivers that bandwidth would be much higher, but in reality that would be rare. In the end the company that the governement selected to start the rollout of DTT went bust and I don't think the system was used anywhere else. The developer of the technology abandoned it in 2006 as other connection methods (broadband/mobile data) were preferred.
prox 2y ago
I just used bullshit remover : “Conventional TV ain't enough. Need new tech to make more money. Gotta maximize that ROI, yo.” So you got that right.
swores 2y ago
> "That's a lot of fancy words to say ‘we're doing this because it makes us more money’ lol" You say that as if they're using lots of words to obfuscate that fact, but the quote you pasted has them saying entirely directly "maximize the network Return on Investment", which is just normal business terminology (and only one word more than your "it makes us more money"!) Obviously this has no impact on whether that's a good or bad thing, I'm just pointing out that they weren't using a lot of words to hide that fact.
- Lammy 2y ago
  The utilization of an expanded lexicon, replete with polysyllabic and sesquipedalian terminology, engenders an ostensibly enhanced verisimilitude and an amplified capacity for rhetorical suasion in the articulation of one's propositional assertions.
  - dajtxx 2y ago
    Shorter, Milchick!
  - swores 2y ago
    "Return on investment" isn't using uncommon words to try to be hard to interpret, it's a standard business term in English-speaking countries. The fact that it seemed like its intention was to obfuscate is just a sign that you're not familiar with basic business terminology, nothing more. (And there's no shame in that, nobody knows the common phrases in every area of society, if you've never taken any business classes nor been involved in running a business there's no reason you should know it - but that doesn't mean people who use those words are trying to hide what they mean.) Edit: and unsurprisingly it's therefore also frequently seen on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=return+on+investment https://hn.algolia.com/?q=return+on+investment https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ROI https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ROI
    - Lammy 2y ago
      In case you're only accidentally missing the point and not just being an asshole: I would expect most people to have heard the term ROI before. I would not expect most people to understand the ways in which a bi-directional data path can turn into money. I definitely wouldn't expect most people to understand that it will involve compromising their privacy to spy on their viewing habits in a way that the last 100 years of broadcast television has no precedent for.
xattt 2y ago
I just realized the BPS is there to augment the return channel. Not only can the advertiser figure out what you are watching, but also where you are located.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Wi-Fi geolocation has been around for a while now and is very accurate too, so if TV/receiver manufacturers choose to reveal your location to advertisers (whether out of their own greed or because it's required to receive ATSC 3.0 DRM keys), they can already do so without any problem.
  - Lammy 2y ago
    Thanks to the beamforming that's central to modern Wi-Fi and 5G cellular standards they can even see through your walls using the backscattered energy of the steered beam, like an airport security scanner for the entire planet: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf
throw0101d 2y ago
For anyone who wants to know about ATSC 3.0 the Antenna Man channel covers over the air (OTA) stuff in the US: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw3W7MoafR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw3W7MoafR4 * https://www.youtube.com/@AntennaMan/videos https://www.youtube.com/@AntennaMan/videos ATSC 3.0 allows for DRM/encryption as the parent comment mentions.
giantg2 2y ago
I might have missed it just skimming, but what's the physical method they are planning to use for return channel?
- lxgr 2y ago
  Apparently there are two options: An existing Internet connection, or actually receivers transmitting back to the broadcast tower – which sounds crazy, but the specification [1] says it can work over up to 100 kilometers with line-of-sight...? Then again, thanks to modern modulation techniques, digital steering etc., battery-powered smartphones can talk to satellites 36 thousand kilometers away these days as well, so maybe this is just a thing now? The spec also does mention receive repeaters for complicated non-line-of-sight propagation scenarios. [1] https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04-Dedicated-Return-Channel.pdf https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04...
karaterobot 2y ago
> Recent studies have shown that interactivity between media customers and service providers and between users themselves will be one of the most important features in the next-generation media service. In this document, this unique opportunity is addressed by defining a Dedicated Return Channel (DRC) system for the next-generation broadcasting system. Wow, that's one of the best uses of corporate-speak euphemism I've seen. Everybody who reads it knows what it really means, but if you just don't say it, it's fine. Recent studies indeed!
elzbardico 2y ago
We should create technology that deliberately feeds trash data to marketers, in mind-boggling volumes. Drowning the signal in a biblical flooding of noise. We should make things so useless and annoying for them, as they did for us.

by Lammy 2y ago

geerlingguy 2y ago

Yeah... and that's one of the most innocuous new "features" in ATSC 3.0. Almost everything I've seen (besides BPS, and maybe HDR if you're one of the few who has a really good home theater setup) is a benefit for broadcasters and advertisers, and a bit worse for consumers (especially requiring new hardware/decoders... and sometimes persistent Internet connections!).

1970-01-01 2y ago
Same feeling here. ATSC 3.0 with DRM and persistent Internet requirements tells me this is going to be the downfall of OTA television. I can see ATSC 4.0 being a discounted ISP subscription paired with some OTA location checks via BPS.
- Alive-in-2025 2y ago
  So atsc 3 won't work unless you have some continuous "i'm user xyz watching this channel at time x.y.z" going back to the broadcaster? Why would anyone use atsc 3? It's not free over the air, you can't spoof it?
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    It's not like anyone's gonna ask them. Networks will just label this as ${network name}'s HYPER NEXT GEN 10G TV EXPERIENCE (HNG TV), market the shit out of it, and offer free ESPN on it, tack on some Paramount HBO Supermax Plus for $0.99/year and throw in a half-decent Smart TV as a sign-on bonus, and adoption will skyrocket. TV networks in the US are a living proof that, with enough marketing spend and a pinch of confusion in the offer structure, you can sell people on anything. Half the time you can just offer sportsball access and people will switch. It's how previous versions of broadcaster overreach happened, and why Smart TVs succeed despite their shortcomings.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      I came to the same conclusion when I saw a whole armada of new TVs from every manufacturer in the eve of any World Cup. Plus TVs tailored for football has a special mode called "sports" which make football arguably look/feel better. That kind of pumping makes me sad and sick.
    - pridkett 2y ago
      Or, the manufacturers will lose patience with slow adoption, the mess that is widevine DRM (what? Your TV isn’t based on Android? No, you can’t have DRM!), and customers really not caring because basically none of the broadcasts make the visual picture substantially better right now, so there is no incentive to move. That’s what happened to LG [0]. They dropped ATSC 3.0 tuners. I’m sure this cost them precisely 0 sales as the industry incompetence destroys the broadcast industry. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897460/lg-drops-atsc-3-0-support-fcc-broadcast-tv https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/30/23897460/lg-drops-atsc-3-...
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
- throwing_away 2y ago
  There is 1 provider for ATSC3 DRM (which is already rolling out in major markets): Google Widevine. There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android. There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine". When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1. I think people should just be aware of the state of play.
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    At NAB someone asked one of the ATSC folks what would happen if the key is compromised and someone didn't connect a receiver to the Internet. The answer was "the receivers have many built in public keys. They should last the lifetime of the device." Concerning because they could have a situation like with some 4K blu ray discs, your hardware becomes obsolete because DRM requires that cat and mouse game...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - WorldMaker 2y ago
      Also with some manufacturers believing the lifetime of a device should be less than 5 years and ideally less than 3 years, and are treating software/firmware support in those lifetimes, there's a lot of perverse incentives hidden behind anyone suggesting "for the lifetime of the device". As bad as some of the old cable monopolies were, they were at least sometimes held to Ma Bell's "the lifetime of a device is supposed to be 60 years" standards (which Ma Bell didn't always follow either, but that's another matter). I realize the ATSC exists primarily to sell new standards, but maybe we need ways to get back to longer planning horizons than 3-5 years.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Wow, and all that to encrypt hours of ads with a few minutes of the 20th rerun of some show in between...
    - 2y ago
- philistine 2y ago
  This is so user-hostile that I don't believe there will be any adoption. It will have to be shoved down the throat of those who use broadcast, which are overwhelmingly older and more remote. ATSC first generation will probably outlive this DRM-driven abomination.
threemux 2y ago
You're not wrong, but don't forget about the upgraded modulation and coding schemes. That might actually help consumers on the edge of coverage receive broadcasts and will definitely be an improvement over creaky 8vsb
- pridkett 2y ago
  I live in an area that is on the edge of coverage and has lots of hills. On ATSC 1.0, CBS is hard to pick up. Frequently unwatchable - which means unreliable for sports. I picked up an HDHomerun Flex 4K a few years ago. Basically the same week that ATSC 3.0 went live. For a few weeks it was glorious. I had no problem picking up CBS (it was broadcast from the same antenna as ATSC 1.0 - so it was the modulation that was helping out). And then, after a little over a month. Whack! No more CBS. They turned on DRM. They are still the only network that in my area with DRM. Ughh. Under the previous administration I filled a few issues about this from a public safety perspective - I live in with the FCC an area with unreliable power. During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous. Unfortunately, nothing happened then regarding the issue and given the way that Brendan Carr is taking the FCC, I don’t think there will be any progress on this.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous. Just listen to radio?
    - mopenstein 2y ago
      Deaf?
    - pridkett 2y ago
      Radio can work, but again, I’m on the edge of reception areas and the hills make picking up FM and AM inconsistent. In the event of a truly severe weather event (the ones where they hit the alert to make every cell phone go off), the visuals provided by television are hugely helpful.

m463 2y ago

Just like 5G, which provides unexpected connectivity for IoT devices. Search for "miot" or "mmtc"

arghwhat 2y ago
There is zero relation there. OP is falling about the spec incorporating usage monitoring. 5G was designed with a very public and explicit goal for IoT of allowing many more devices to connect than 4G could, and more conveniently. Nothing unexpected or user-harming, and nothing new as 4G was already used for IoT.
- timthorn 2y ago
  When EE launched 5G in the UK, they took out a full page ad with a massive headline saying simply "A real crowd pleaser" One of the best adverts for a long time - if you knew about the technical advantages of 5G, it had a real double meaning. If you knew 90s British dance music, it had a further humourous double meaning promoting the telco (an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode)
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    NEVER underestimate the layered entendre game in the UK.
  - louthy 2y ago
    > an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode That didn’t even cross my mind and Rich West (Mr. C) is a friend of mine and I know the song well. I, of course, get the reference now it has been pointed out, but you’re right that it’s pretty damn oblique!
    - timthorn 2y ago
      I never knew 'Eezer, but do pass on my thanks to Rich for some brilliant tunes from my younger years!
- 2y ago

kmeisthax 2y ago

Wait, to be clear, this 'dedicated return channel' is just for TVs to broadcast back to the station that they're watching the adverts? I thought ATSC 3.0 was going to rely on IP backhaul for that. Actually broadcasting back seems... impractical at best. I mean, let's keep in mind, even ATSC 1.0 had really awful reception issues; compared to analog NTSC where there was enough redundancy that you could just tune into a garbage station from way too far away and see something. Now imagine trying to make that already unreliable channel bidirectional. I just really hope all the return channel stuff is optional, because it sure as hell isn't going to work without way more stations broadcasting on more channels, and OOPS you've reinvented LTE.

timewizard 2y ago
Ironically there's no redundancy in NTSC. There are layers of information and they degrade downward until you have just a black and white picture with no sound. In ATSC there is two types of forward error correction on the digital bitstream. The problem it faces is it sits in the same channel allocations as NTSC while having to deliver significantly more information than NTSC. That and the actual digital modulation used is not as ideal for receivers to capture.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  You can digitize and lossily compress an NTSC signal significantly without losing much detail; that's why I call it redundant. Compression removes redundancy. In ATSC the tradeoff between compression and error correction is such that a noisy channel is far more likely to cut out or otherwise be unusable than it would have been in NTSC.
DoubleGlazing 2y ago
Back in the late 90s when Ireland was starting to think about digital terrestrial TV a system called DVB-RCT was considered. Basically your receiver could also transmit back to the television transmitter. The system could handle thousands of concurrent connections, albeit each one had very low bandwidth - around 1Kbp/s in peak time.That was considered good enough for very basic interactivity and for authorising PPV purchases etc.In quieter hours or in areas were there were fewer receivers that bandwidth would be much higher, but in reality that would be rare. In the end the company that the governement selected to start the rollout of DTT went bust and I don't think the system was used anywhere else. The developer of the technology abandoned it in 2006 as other connection methods (broadband/mobile data) were preferred.

prox 2y ago

I just used bullshit remover : “Conventional TV ain't enough. Need new tech to make more money. Gotta maximize that ROI, yo.” So you got that right.

swores 2y ago

> "That's a lot of fancy words to say ‘we're doing this because it makes us more money’ lol" You say that as if they're using lots of words to obfuscate that fact, but the quote you pasted has them saying entirely directly "maximize the network Return on Investment", which is just normal business terminology (and only one word more than your "it makes us more money"!) Obviously this has no impact on whether that's a good or bad thing, I'm just pointing out that they weren't using a lot of words to hide that fact.

Lammy 2y ago
The utilization of an expanded lexicon, replete with polysyllabic and sesquipedalian terminology, engenders an ostensibly enhanced verisimilitude and an amplified capacity for rhetorical suasion in the articulation of one's propositional assertions.
- dajtxx 2y ago
  Shorter, Milchick!
- swores 2y ago
  "Return on investment" isn't using uncommon words to try to be hard to interpret, it's a standard business term in English-speaking countries. The fact that it seemed like its intention was to obfuscate is just a sign that you're not familiar with basic business terminology, nothing more. (And there's no shame in that, nobody knows the common phrases in every area of society, if you've never taken any business classes nor been involved in running a business there's no reason you should know it - but that doesn't mean people who use those words are trying to hide what they mean.) Edit: and unsurprisingly it's therefore also frequently seen on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=return+on+investment https://hn.algolia.com/?q=return+on+investment https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ROI https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ROI
  - Lammy 2y ago
    In case you're only accidentally missing the point and not just being an asshole: I would expect most people to have heard the term ROI before. I would not expect most people to understand the ways in which a bi-directional data path can turn into money. I definitely wouldn't expect most people to understand that it will involve compromising their privacy to spy on their viewing habits in a way that the last 100 years of broadcast television has no precedent for.

xattt 2y ago

I just realized the BPS is there to augment the return channel. Not only can the advertiser figure out what you are watching, but also where you are located.

lxgr 2y ago
Wi-Fi geolocation has been around for a while now and is very accurate too, so if TV/receiver manufacturers choose to reveal your location to advertisers (whether out of their own greed or because it's required to receive ATSC 3.0 DRM keys), they can already do so without any problem.
- Lammy 2y ago
  Thanks to the beamforming that's central to modern Wi-Fi and 5G cellular standards they can even see through your walls using the backscattered energy of the steered beam, like an airport security scanner for the entire planet: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf

throw0101d 2y ago

For anyone who wants to know about ATSC 3.0 the Antenna Man channel covers over the air (OTA) stuff in the US: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw3W7MoafR4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw3W7MoafR4 * https://www.youtube.com/@AntennaMan/videos https://www.youtube.com/@AntennaMan/videos ATSC 3.0 allows for DRM/encryption as the parent comment mentions.

giantg2 2y ago

I might have missed it just skimming, but what's the physical method they are planning to use for return channel?

lxgr 2y ago
Apparently there are two options: An existing Internet connection, or actually receivers transmitting back to the broadcast tower – which sounds crazy, but the specification [1] says it can work over up to 100 kilometers with line-of-sight...? Then again, thanks to modern modulation techniques, digital steering etc., battery-powered smartphones can talk to satellites 36 thousand kilometers away these days as well, so maybe this is just a thing now? The spec also does mention receive repeaters for complicated non-line-of-sight propagation scenarios. [1] https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04-Dedicated-Return-Channel.pdf https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04...

karaterobot 2y ago

> Recent studies have shown that interactivity between media customers and service providers and between users themselves will be one of the most important features in the next-generation media service. In this document, this unique opportunity is addressed by defining a Dedicated Return Channel (DRC) system for the next-generation broadcasting system. Wow, that's one of the best uses of corporate-speak euphemism I've seen. Everybody who reads it knows what it really means, but if you just don't say it, it's fine. Recent studies indeed!

elzbardico 2y ago

We should create technology that deliberately feeds trash data to marketers, in mind-boggling volumes. Drowning the signal in a biblical flooding of noise. We should make things so useless and annoying for them, as they did for us.