LG halts production of ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs over patent concerns

With less error coding (13/15 code rate), the constellation is more rectangular.

https://www.w6rz.net/64qamnuc1315.png

With really heavy error coding (2/15 code rate), the constellation becomes almost unrecognizable with points very close to each other.

https://www.w6rz.net/64qamnuc215.png

Similar to how most people have shifted to permanent shuffle for the song selection queue, online streaming caused the same shift in how people decide what to watch. Familiary with existing media is what keeps people tied to services, and at some point viewers will move on.

The recommendation system around broadcast media seems immature and doesn't feel personal, the cable model makes it worse. People don't subscribe to every service every month, like they did for cable, people cycle through them. Keeping a viewer will always be cheaper than trying to regain a lost one.

Youtube and Twitch has gained social signficiance and some content is on par with traditional media. Kids who only watch YT, Twitch, and TikTok do not feel left out socially. Memes and social media fill in any gaps. I've noticed that the younger generations are more surprised when a peer doesn't know the Mr Beast YT channel than when they don't know a specific TV channel/show.

I think the future of live events and sports will look like Twitch, with a heavy emphasis on interactability. I think branding for shows/channels will get more focused on the characters/actors and creators. And larger categorization will be based on genre. Basically the same way it works with movies.

DRM limits hardware options significatly. Open standards are embraced even when they come later, AV1 vs HEVC is a great example. The standard will exist but hardware adoption of the standards is often weaker, which I consider killed. DRM is how the patent holders maintain control over who can use the standards.

The existing standard that people are going to use is the previous version of ATSC without DRM and encryption. Althrough DRM and encryption are not technically the same, they are practically in this kind of situation.

It's funny watching spotify try to move closer to radio with AI generated DJ curation. I hope it dies sooner rather than later so we can reallocate those bands to something more useful.

Every car I've had with SiriusXM also supported HD Radio. Low end cars tend to have neither, or only as a premium upgrade

In my market, ATSC 3 broadcasters are also using AC4, so same deal here. Of course, AC3 in ATSC 1 was a licensing coup too.

> Patents on standards is largely how standards are financed, by company who will then recoup their research spent on that via those patents.

Thankfully those companies have a sense of fair play, and wouldn't dream of charging more than they spent on research, or of using patented standard to stifle competition for anyone not in their industry group.

I didn't know that, eg the W3C patents the HTML standards that they create?

Whether you seek royalties or not, you only want to step on your own patents (or the participating parties, who can agree on licensing), not a patent troll (non-participating entity) whose biggest motivation is to sit on the fence until a deep-pocket company comes along.

Yeah, I think some form of "use it or lose it" will be necessary. Either that or just making patents have to 'pay for themselves' via exponentially increasing cost (or some such) to maintain after the initial period of protection (which must be MUCH shorter). That has it's own problems and complications, of course.

I get the sense that many of these ideas of e.g. patents and copyright, etc. are based on good faith actors, while we're currently seeing extreme optimization towards 'just how close to the legal/illegal line can I get'.

I don’t think that’s a good idea; it would hurt investment in promising startups. Today, “company failed, but produced valuable IP” is a fallback outcome for investors.

Declaring that the IP of failed companies (and individuals who hope to but never bring a product to market) is public domain just makes the problem worse. Is a patent valid if I sell one single product? If that one sale comes after an infringing product? Years after?

Patents are a mess and need reform, but IMO we are better served by reform that emphasizes truly novel inventions and not small improvements / variations that are essentially obvious.

Look at all of the small companies that Apple has bought over the years to integrate their technologies into the iPhone. None of those companies could have had the scale or the no how to create a useful product by themselves.

Even if you look at chip design, there are only a few companies that I can actually manufacture chips. But plenty of companies that can design processors.

Your law would only help big companies.

> 4K video, advanced advertising and immersive audio

Yeah, I mean, 2/3rds of this sounds great.

Obviously both can be done without the DRM parts (some discussion on codecs and patents is warranted though).

Not sure the service could afford it. 250 episodes/year times 60 years is 15_000 episodes to license.

Most soaps are missing their early episodes; keeping all of them wasn't standard practice until the late 70s.

4K won’t happen for a very long time. Broadcasters get the majority of their revenue from retransmission fees from cable companies. Their OTA broadcasts are a secondary concern. Their business model rewards adding more sub channels and therefore more ad slots, not cancelling the subchannels to allow the main channel to occupy the entire 6 MHz. Many viewer don’t own a 4K TV and on the content end the cameras on the fields don’t support 4K yet.

One thing I've noticed is that the low bitrate sports content looks way better on my old Plasma than a new Oled.

yeah, that's a whole lot of nobody.

France is using AC4 from Dolby for OTA audio transmission as part of their new standard...

Well technically there are four standards, ASTC for North America and South Korea, ISDB for Japan and South America ( and part of Africa ), DTMB for China, small parts of SEA and DVB-T for the rest of the world.