The point is that they aren't willing to take advantage of the better specs which until that happens, there isn't much to be excited about.
Are you actually saying you are getting HD audio? It is silly saying we all have tunnel vision.
I'm just going off of what I read in various articles about what the benefits are. I thought some of those aspects of weren't set in stone yet? So whatever codec support their is now might not be what it is down the road? Could be wrong. Haven't read anything recently since Philly isn't on the cutting edge, and I'm only in my first year with the quatro.
You're wrong, no doubt or "could be" about it. When standards such as TV broadcasts are created, they are set in stone and cannot be changed. ATSC 3.0 requires H.265/HEVC encoded video, and AC-4 encoded audio. There is no way around those requirements. Nothing else is permitted.
Does anybody know the Sacramento, CA KQCA, KCRA and KXTV ATSC 3.0 go live date?
I heard it should be carried on KQCA RF23 channel on June 1, 2021.
Maybe time to get the HDHR4K tuner.
Just in the last few days I've noticed two new channels on my flex. Channels 5000 and 5001. Neither one tunes anything, but it has me wondering if we are finally starting to see the atsc 3.0 rollout in Sacramento!
I would assume KQCA will start telling people to rescan their TV's/tuners since their ATSC 1.0 signal is supposed to be carried by KCRA when KQCA goes live with the 3.0 transmission.
Found some mentions at the AVS Forum https://www.avsforum.com/threads/sacramento-ca-ota.397256/page-572
and see it on rabbitears https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=atsc3
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Channels 5000 and up are distant fringe signals that cannot be identified. I get them every once in a while from adjacent markets.
Looks like KQCA's RF channel 23 ATSC 3.0 Lighthouse "lights up" on 6/15 at 10am
So far it appears they'll be broadcasting KQCA(MyN), KCRA(NBC), KXTV(ABC), KTXL(FOX), KOVR(CBS) and KUVS(UNI) from their ATSC 3.0 Lighthouse.
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I have a couple questions for those that have this. How’s this working right now for those who don’t have any 3.0 stations? My second question is does anybody see any info about 3.0 stations for 3.0 for Springfield Missouri market? I saw them on an i initial list but can’t seem to find any dates about when some stations may start to broadcast in the new standard…
It's a solid 4-tuner replacement for the previous Quatro model, with a more sensitive receiver that pulls in distant stations that the Quatro does not detect. It's been like Whack-A-Mole to hide the most distant channels that are not consistently receivable, but some would say that's a nice problem to have. It also picks up unidentified test signals and drops them in the 5000 range, giving me hope that someone's playing with ATSC 3.0 around here but who knows.
Hmmmm... that is interesting that you have a 145.1 but not a 45.1 like you have with 33.1/133.1 and 43.1/143.1. Is that because of the stability, range, and ability to deal with multi-path interference of 3.0 compared to 1.0?
My market was supposed to be starting the transition this summer, but looks like it moved to the "coming soon" list. 
45.1 is there, it's just a low power translator for NBC. For some reason the 4k tuner doesnt pick it up.
Does Channels not let you just “hide” those not coming in consistently like you can with say a Pluto channel you don’t want in the guide?
Yes, but you can't do that until the new channel appears.
Pretty sure that's what he means by Whack-A-Mole.
The HDHR tuners do their own internal channel scan in the background about every three days.
Unfortunately, SiliconDust has decided not to make that optional, there's no way to disable it.
Yes that's what I mean. I didn't even know one of them existed, and suddenly it's in Channels and in my guide, with everything airing one hour earlier — apparently people in Sacramento go to sleep earlier than folks in San Jose, lol — and that affected some of my passes. Long story, different thread.
Thought you knew the sun sets earlier here in SAC (actually 2 minutes later, but being east of San Jose one would think earlier)
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Interesting. I guess the sun disappears a little earlier here because of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
I can confirm better reception. I live by the water with a big hill between me and stations. Could not get several channels with 1.0, my tv has a atsc 3 tuner and it is getting the atsc 3 channels that I couldn’t get with any antenna on 1.0
Going to add the new hdhomerun to my setup as soon as 2 channels my wife watches hit atsc 3, then can ditch Locast
Just an FYI, all 4 tuners can still get the 1.0 signal and only 2 of them can get the 3.0 signal. If you want to get the new HDHR in early, there should be no loss or issues.
I think what often gets lost in the conversation about HEVC vs AVC, especially when people claim that there isn't much difference in subjective quality, is that the references themselves that are pointed to are somewhat flawed (at least in terms of the now vs the future). For instance, the most common representatives of each format you will find in non-commercial online 'shootouts' are x265 and x264, respectively. x264 is pretty darn good – not the best, but certainly up there with the best H.264 encoders out there, and an incredible resource to have from an open-source standpoint; x265, on the other hand, is no where near the upper echelon of H.265 encoders – it is just the most prevalent and accessible, and thus is often (non-deservedly) presented as the H.265 'reference'.
Anyway, getting back to the "now vs future" narrative: AVC is a considerably older technology. In the codec space, age of a codec generally equates to much more time and investment in squeezing out every last bit of advantage it can offer. Look at MPEG-2 encoders as an example... there hasn't been any real breakthrough on the picture quality front with MPEG-2 in at least 3 years. But MPEG-2 encoders are infinitely better today than they were back in the 90s. Similarly, AVC encoders today are exponentially better than they were in the mid-2000s. AVC is only now beginning to reach its end-of-the-road in terms of future theoretical PQ improvements (at least without further modification to the spec).
Comparatively, HEVC is in its infancy – HEVC encoders 10 years from now will show much improvement from what we see today (similar to how HEVC encoders from 10 years ago were not very good compared to what we have today). So while the decision to generally go with HEVC vs AVC for ATSC 3.0 in the here-and-now may not show much advantage, especially when there are still some considerable hills to climb with HEVC decode options, ATSC 3.0 is not just about 2020, 2021, or even 2022. ATSC 3.0 is about the year 2025 and the year 2030 etc. Standards organizations must consider this when building specifications, otherwise they will not be able to get manufacturers on-board to build solutions (no consumer-facing company wants to constantly be adopting new technologies every few years with little guarantee of market penetration).
Regarding overall ATSC 3.0 QoE: indeed, even if a broadcaster immediately starts encoding their content at 1080p HEVC, this will have little benefit until the actual content they ingest is at least 1080p. Today, most stations are still reliant upon receiving either a 1080i or 720p-native national feed; so while there may be a few benefits to 1080p, such as better and more uniform decode experiences over how some decoders handle 1080i, this is a decode quality issue and not an immediate encoder benefit.
On the audio front, AC-4's inclusion in the spec admittedly felt a bit pre-mature from a consumer's perspective at launch; but when considering the business and applicational reasons behind its support, things become a little bit clearer as to why AC-4 was chosen over traditional AC-3 or E-AC3. While AC-4 is a proprietary format, there are no additional licensing fees from a consumer product standpoint, as long as the manufacturer is already licensing one of Dolby's other codecs (quite common). The only real cost with AC-4 is if a manufacturer or developer wishes to have access to Dolby's AC-4 SDK, which is actually quite bearable and expected.
In terms of other codecs not being chosen for the initial version of the ATSC 3.0 spec, codecs such as AV1 and VVC weren't viable for inclusion because if you think that H.265 is a net negative, these would have only exasperated that feeling! Forget for a moment the greater lack of decode availability for these codecs currently, it is the encode situation which made those codecs completely untenable. VVC isn't finalized yet, and the existing AV1 encoders that do exist aren't necessarily the most resource efficient or of the highest quality (at least when it comes to true, operational environments which require good densities + real-time speeds). Also, when you already have a lot of industry veterans predicting that the industry will go from HEVC to VVC, bypassing AV1 (outside of mobile that is), then these decisions become a lot more clear. Lack of Opus is a bit unfortunate, but at least MPEG-H is there.
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