We are a small team. I apologize that your emails got missed. Support should have sent you a link to this forum post.
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I hope you are aware that ATSC 3.0 is still in the experimental mode. It is still evolving on the broadcast side as well as the receiving gear. No guarantee that any fix you get today will matter tomorrow if your local stations make a change. So if you are expecting perfect functionality and reception for your OTA then stick with 1.0. 3.0 is not giving you anything better at this time. It’s the 1.0 broadcast upscaled to 1080p, it is not 4k it’s not even 1080p from the network, just upscaled.
Much lower bitrate though for the same or better quality. Matters for those with caps or needing to get the best quality at lowest bitrate for whatever reason...
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How does your data caps matter for OTA? Plus not true, the local 3.0 signals in my market are at the same bitrate as the 1.0
Chiming in here to say that the latest beta firmware for my Flex 4K (20230316beta1) puts tuning 4k ATSC 3.0 and 720p/1080p ATSC 1.0 channels at the same amount of time (around 5 seconds) where the 3.0 channels used to take upwards of 30 seconds.
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ATSC 3.0 is most certainly not in “experimental mode”.
It’s a standard and what we are seeing are poor early implementations of the standard. Back in the early days, even Ethernet had some poorly executed products. We forget that and have grown used to buying a $5 adapter that connects seamlessly to a $10 switch.
BTW, 1080p ATSC 3.0 looks fabulous. All by itself, it’s a reason to adopt.
Yes, I know ATSC3 is in the early stages of deployment, and everything I’ve read suggests it will be at least 2024 before it even begins to get adopted in the real world.
I would have never gone near ATSC3 at this time, but at my new residence I can’t pick up the regular broadcasts for NBC and ABC at all, whereas their ATSC3 broadcasts have a very strong signal, so I’m stuck using ATSC3. Apparently in the Washington DC market they made WHUT (a small PBS station) a “lighthouse” ATSC3 station that transmits the ATSC3 signal for the NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS local stations from the same physical channel 33 transmitter (which was upgraded). Once I get past the 20 second tuning delay all 4 stations come in rock solid, at all times.
Yes I see that too but the tuning times have been all over the place for the past 3 years. It’s unfortunately a game of cat and mouse as changes are made to the encoding chain by the lighthouse stations. Which is why myself and other engineers I know who work in this industry say to hold off on any major investment in new gear unless you just want to experiment and try things on the cutting edge. Plus once DRM is turned on by all the stations no guarantee that Channels will work at that point and the native HDHR software may be the only option. Let’s hope not but like I said this is still an experiment in progress.
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Email with captures sent
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Yes I agree you are in a tough spot with a lower powered PBS being the lighthouse. 3.0 does provide a more stable signal for people who have reception issues such as multipath.
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Capture emailed to Channels support by me also.
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Do you only watch on the LAN and not remotely? Caps would come into place if you had to stream to devices away from home. Caps play a part with both the sender and receiver(s).
Here are the ATSC3 Bitrates for my market (3 minute average):
3.1: 5.26
6.1: 5.65
7.1: 5.01
42.1: 2.37
The Bitrates for the same ATSC1 channels are closer to 12-15.
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Your better reception is probably more about the fact that 8VSB was abandoned in ATSC 3.0 for OFDM.
In short, the people who say there's no benefit today to ATSC 3.0 are wrong.
There are 2 other much bigger PBS stations in the Washington DC area (WMPT and WETA), and the WHUT signal was always weak and difficult to pick up (at least here in Northern Virginia). But according to this press release, turning it into the ATSC3 lighthouse station involved “installation of a new transmitter and related equipment and upgrades to the station's physical plant”
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Possible fix in the next TestFlight build for slow tuning issues at home.
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I’m thrilled to report the ATSC3 tuning delay appears to be FIXED on the latest Apple TV TestFlight build!!
I tested the local NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and WHUT PBS stations that are all on the same lighthouse transmitter, at least 6 times each. Also WMPT PBS which (as far as I know) is not on that lighthouse. My Flex 4k is on the 20230316beta1 (latest) firmware. Tuning takes about 1-2 seconds longer than regular stations which is fine, it’s the same with the HDHomeRun Windows viewer app. The audio still starts about 1-2 seconds after the video, also OK.
THANK YOU!
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Is there any room for improvement for Android/ATV devices to be improved based on what you did? Just curious.
How did you capture these?
On dvr machine, chromium web ui, launched channel from guide, after the feed started playing I hit the gear and selected record, stopped recording at about 50sec, copied recording to a different folder and uploaded via email. Perhaps waiting for them to start playing in web player before hitting record was a bad idea?? I can re do some if needed.
Yea you didn't capture the tuning part