ATSC 3.0 Transition information

Personally, its the encryption and corporate greed that disturbs me. In the US the spectrum is supposed to be OURs.

Just what we need, another government “task force” to screw us over and help bleed us of every penny.

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You're confused about their motivations. The biggest reason ATSC 3.0 exists is so they can regain control. The reason they cite for encryption is that it's necessary due to their signals being retransmitted via illegal IPTV. Sure, all these supposed new features (4k, HDR, etc) are nice, but make no mistake, they are just meant to make this whole thing palitable. The truth is the local affiliates make millions from the pay tv services so they couldn't care less if ATSC 3.0 pushes people towards those instead of being able to easily pull in their signal and utilize it on apps like Channels. They're going to satisfy the govt mandate for OTA TV in the most minimalistic way possible.

In reality, ATSC 3.0 is going to come to fruition whether you like it or not.

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When that happens, do they kill off ATSC 1.0 too? Or is there a transition period? Would that transition take years to play out, or is it more like, decades?

I believe they could start shutting down some ATSC1 in July, but the FCC will likely add a few more years to the requirement. If the intent of the broadcasters is to eliminate all local recordings then we will be returning to the 1960's OTA TV. Right now only TV's have been built with NextGen Certification. We should know by the end of year if any external devices can get certified or if it is really necessary. I plan to use ATSC1 and Philo with Channels DVR until it doesn't work anymore. But I expect Youtube TV or Hulu Live will be in my future or maybe I will learn to do without live TV.

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I too am not worried about any of this if it happens, I will just adjust to what is available ... don't sweat things out of my control.

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Youtube videos do not require client authorization. They intentionally lump together transport encryption with authorization. The tuner needs to be authorized to view.

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Exactly.

It seems the local affiliates are making a real power play all of the sudden that threatens even the OTT services:

So this whole ATSC 3.0 encryption seems to be a big part of their new approach.

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As a die hard Channels user who's been salivating over the potentials of ATSC 3 for years, this is incredibly depressing. :cry:

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Yea, I realized about 6-8 months ago it was good cover for the local OTAs to ditch their pesky antenna customers who are too stingy to chip in on their carriage deals with big media.

My market is already encrypting Hearst stations, and it appears the days of me being able to watch sports the way I want to are numbered. I guess to "Big Media" the OTA signals are a form of piracy even though WE THE PEOPLE own those airwaves. If they want to get shitty with the content on those airwaves, I can find other things to do.

F*ckers.

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Hearst hasn't encrypted their Pittsburgh ATSC 3.0 station yet. I can only believe it's because their 1.0 station broadcasts from a terrible location in the opposite direction of all the other majors and it's hard to pick up.

They did have a repeater they turned on in 2009 that was based near the city that really helped, but they quickly got rid of it once the 3.0 broadcast started up in 2020.

My hope is they won't turn on encryption anytime soon for their Pittsburgh channel because of this.

That article was ONLY about locals wanting to negotiate directly with OTT providers, nothing to do with ATSC 3.0 broadcast.

I know, but it's another instance where the locals are trying to make more money which is almost certainly at the root of the ATSC 3.0 conversion despite how they're selling it.

Thread originator had a good idea there.

The only way this will work is if the DVR does not see the unencrypted content. Each playback device will have to be equipped with decryption keys in order to perform decryption on their own. No more ad detection by DVR. Centralized ad detection will be problematic because local broadcasters will oppose access to the content by entities not residing in a specific market. Are we ready for the distributed ad detection network with presence in every market?

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What this will do is drive your everyday law abiding citizen to piracy. I can install DuckieTV and have it automatically add series passes for all of my TV shows and it will download them automatically from torrents. I don't use this because I get everything through OTA and TVE and it is unnecessary. Place enough restrictions that inconvenience law abiding citizens and they will resort to the dark side. DRM is not going to stop or even reduce piracy. It will just frustrate the honest person that wants to obey the law.

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Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like Tablo is the model to follow now. We're gonna need a licensed Channels-branded tuner, yes? (I really, really don't want to use Silicondust's DVR software)

Tablo is in the Same boat as Silicondust.

Tablo ATSC 3.0 QUAD OTA DVR Status Update – Tablo (tablotv.com)

Yes but by having their own hardware they can control encryption end to end, which I believe both SD & Tablo have said they're planning to do. Channels needs hardware to control to be able to do this.