What will have to be done to get 3.0 on my Quatro? Can it be done by software?
thanks,
Joe
No. It would need new hardware.
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They won't have adapters? We have to buy a new Hdhomerun?
The Antenna Man interviewed an expert who said ATSC 1.0 vs. 3.0 is like moving from analog cell phones to digital phones. I say it's more like moving from 2G GSM in the Nineties to 4G LTE today, but OK, for the user it's a new purchase so it's kinda like that.
Correct. ATSC 3.0 is a completely new and different standard. Just like you can't play BluRay discs in your DVD player, you cannot use an ATSC 2.0 tuner to receive ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.
So they can't come up with an adapter to use our current Hdhomeruns?
As I said, different technology. If you want to receive ATSC3 signals, you need an ATSC3 receiver. SiliconDust does not currently offer one.
So was Digital and Analog tv, they came up with adapters for that
If you want to solicit SiliconDust to create an ATSC 3.0 -> 2.0 converter for their network tuners, then you are more than welcome to do so on their forum. However, they have said they are not presently developing any ATSC 3.0 tuners—including a converter.
I was thinking about how that would work. Do you think it would simply convert the OTA Signal to a ATSC 1.0 and then feed that into a normal ATSC 1.0 Turner like on your TV or the HDHomerun Turner. Maybe that would work?
Yes new hardware would need to be created. I'm sure SiliconDust is working on a concept. ATSC 3.0 and 1.0 are not compatable as ATSC 1.0 uses 8VSB transmission methods. ATSC 3.0 uses OFDM transmission methods. Also ATSC 3.0 uses a circular transmission method for better reception. There also is the possablity with what is known as a single frequency network with ATSC 3.0 for areas where there are translators. Instead of using separate RF channels, the transmitters are synced via GPS and the transmitters, transmit on a single frequency.
Hardware for a STB and TV's with tuners were announced at CES 2020 and are expected to be out by the end of 2020.
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SD posted in their forums that they don't really see the need right now as there are only 4 stations broadcasting ATSC3 in the entire US, and 3 of those are simulcasts of existing broadcasts; only 1 feed is unique.
That may change, but doubtful it'd be soon.
SD in incorrect. There is much more than 4 stations brodcasting in 3.0 NOW. We have 8 stations on a single ATSC 3.0 Transmitter here in Phoenix. Buildouts are happening. I personally know as I'm involved with the project here in Phoenix.
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My expectation is that we’ll need to buy a new ATSC 3.0 compatible HDHR, but hopefully it can run along side the existing box and just increase the number of recordable streams. You can have multiple boxes now.
I read (some months ago) that atsc 3.0 will allow DRM. If that's the case, I'm not sure how current DVR solutions will handle it.
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Continuing the discussion from Atsc 3.0:
I need a quatro with atsc 3.0 and 4K resolution and prefer 8K resolution upgrade capability. Current OTA quality blows HDHR Quatro away in Seattle. Additionally, ATSC 3.0 is the future and it arrives this year. Please Silicondust, be a LEADER, not a lazy believer that past technology is good enough!
Yes you could create such a thing. And it would cost more than a new box because it would have to include not just an ATSC 3.0 decoder but ALSO a transcoder to ATSC 1.0 (ie MPEG-2), AND a scaler (to shrink the 4K signal down to a 1080p signal, AND it would slaughter your quality (video has to shrink, HDR has to be stripped, the transcoder has to be realtime but cheap, which means low quality) AND the same thing all over again with audio, AND some weird RF circuitry to broadcast the signal in 8VSB over a coax cable.
So yeah, you could buy a more expensive box to do the job. Someone will probably sell such things for people who, for whatever reason, insist on not upgrading their current TV. But of course such an adaptor will be ATSC3 in, HDMI out --- no need for the more expensive transcoder to re-encode as MPEG-2 plus an RF transmission chain, so MUCH cheaper than the box you have in mind.
Or you could build that same box, dump the data to ethernet rather than HDMI, avoid the cost of transcoding it and RF'ing to coax -- and, oh my, you've created a new Silicon Dust ATSC3 box rather than an "adaptor"...
Look, the current ATSC rules are that everything that goes out over ATSC3 has to be simulcast in ASTC1. For a while at least, that simulcast signal will likely be full HDR, until 4K TVs are more common. So you can hang onto your current Silicon Dust box right up until the day they drop that HD signal down to SD (and longer, if you don't care about SD quality...)
But presumably at SOME point you'll be buying a 4K TV -- and at THAT point you'll want a new Silicon Dust box IF you want to record OTA signals at a quality level that preserves the 4K HDR signal.
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Reading through Silicondust's responses on their forums is disappointing, they seem so dismissive of the new standard that it makes me think they haven't begun work on an ATSC 3.0 tuner in earnest. I've been looking to add another tuner to our setup, the HDHR DUAL doesn't always cut it for our house now but was thinking there'd be an ATSC 3.0 option soon enough that we could hold out.
My question now is, are there any other companies out there that have tuners which Channels could incorporate?
Without getting too far into it, an HDHomerun just converts the radio waves picked up by the antenna into ones and zeroes and does the bare minimum it needs to push it down a network cable for other devices to decode and convert into video and sound. It doesn't really understand much about the ones zeroes it's passing along.
ATSC 3.0 doesn't just change what the ones and zeroes mean, it also changes how the radio wave wobbles to carry information and the part that converts the radio waves into ones and zeroes has to work completely differently.
If you try to make an adapter to feed a current HDHomerun, you'd need a new tuner and circuitry that can pull out the ones and zeroes, which is already just about everything an HDHomerun does.
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I have all 4K TV's now and will replace them with 8K ATSC3 sets in 2020. I hate having to use the TV tuner to get OTA 4K versus via HDHR through my 4K firestick. There must be a way to update Quatro technology for ATSC3 and 4K streaming. Some streaming services offer 4K content now. Just for discussion purposes, I wonder what price point SiliconDust would need on such a box?