TV Station Launches Multiple 4K Broadcasts OTA on ATSC 1.0 [video] | Hacker News Reader

TV Station Launches Multiple 4K Broadcasts OTA on ATSC 1.0 [video]

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I think this is clever: a TV station in Oregon is delivering on the promises of ATSC 3.0 with ATSC 1.0.

They are broadcasting a mix of high-definition channels, including four channels in 4K, two in 1080p, and eight in 720p, all on a single RF channel. Viewers can experience some of the benefits of ATSC 3.0, like higher resolutions, without needing a new ATSC 3.0 compatible TV or tuner.

If you click through to the full interview, the owner of the station (who bought the station for a place to test his ideas) says there are even some fringe benefits, like increased effective range.

Are they also offering the streams online? Very cool project!

There's very little incentive for an OTA broadcast station to offer a stream. These stations are always claiming to work on constrained budgets (what company doesn't?). They can't just air the same ads on the stream they do OTA, so there's that loss of revenue on top of the additional cost of hosting the streams. Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads comes at an additional tech cost too, plus you need to either hire people to run it or pay someone to manage it for you. Also, you can typically find all of the content via other streaming platforms, so the station may not even have streaming rights for the content they have broadcast rights for

>They can't just air the same ads on the stream they do OTA...

>Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads...

I'm ignorant and genuinely curious - why can't they just live stream what's being broadcast OTA with the same ads?

There are a couple issues. One is rights. It might be prohibited by contract.

Also, there’s money left on the table. Server side inserted ad solutions are available and monetize better.

And OTA ads are often hyper-local, because you know exactly the area they can be seen.

There's zero utility in seeing an ad for Big Bill Hell's cars outside of the Baltimore metro area.

> with the same ads?

Not sure if it's still the case but the AFTRA union made that somewhat difficult for many years. The ad itself needs to be cleared for digital streaming and use electronic reporting if it uses union talent. When we carry "network" programming, some of the ads slots belong to the network, and some to the local station. We have no visibility on network ads, so we had to assume they were not clear, and could never be streamed.

This was an issue in radio, too.

> Replacing the ads in the stream with streaming friendly ads comes at an additional tech cost too

There are several ad exchanges which will manage this entirely for you.

> plus you need to either hire people to run it or pay someone to manage it for you.

You can do most of it with automation. You just need to create a "break in" and "break out" signal to send to the advertising platform.

> so the station may not even have streaming rights for the content they have broadcast rights for

This is most of the issue. CBS, NBC and ABC don't give you very much latitude with their national network content. So local news and sports are usually the only space you can sell into. I've seen a lot of broadcasters setup scheduled streams that have full programmatic replacement running on them that only exist when local sports are in season and for the few hours a week they're actively played.

> There are several ad exchanges which will manage this entirely for you.

sort of. there's still a lot to be done on the station's end to do this

> You can do most of it with automation.

Yes, I can, and do. However, not every you can. There are 3rd party companies that do this, but it's not what every station wants to do.

Your comment reads as if you're writing everything off except the part you like. It's one of those situations where the station mangers look at all of the pros/cons, adds it up, and then makes a decision. They all contribute

> there's still a lot

define "a lot."

> not every you can

I assumed you would use the already existing automation system. Almost all of them have a mechanism to easily do this.

> as if you're writing everything off except the part you like.

I have a point of view that is different than yours. I'm suggesting that the points you've raised do not all share equal value in the decision making process, and if I had to guess, were based off slightly outdated experiences in the industry.

> outdated experiences in the industry.

clearly, you don't know me or what i do, but we all know what happens with assuming

you do recognize that the frequency with which you post here puts you on top 20 lists?

I imagine they have zero streaming rights to the vast majority of their content.

Any licensed content would have to be separately licensed for streaming online.

> Viewers can experience some of the benefits of ATSC 3.0, like higher resolutions, without needing a new ATSC 3.0 compatible TV or tuner.

How many TVs/tuners are compatible with HEVC over ATSC 1.0 is a real question I have. I'm pretty sure my computer based tuners would be fine; AIUI, it's still an mpeg transport stream, and demultiplexing doesn't care about the codec, and my player app can figure that out (or not, but I think it would), but I don't know if even my recent atsc 1.0 only tvs know about this and they do have the codecs supported for smart tv.

Otoh, if they're broadcasting in ac-3 audio instead of ac-4 that's common on atsc 3.0, that's a big compatability win. I can't get ac-4 to work well at all.

> How many TVs/tuners are compatible with HEVC over ATSC 1.0?

Great question to which I don’t know the answer. My intuition is the video decoder is the compatibility limiter but it’s beyond my expertise but not my interest.

this Q is covered in the longer-form interview, but in short, here's what I've seen and heard from audience feedback:

-If it's a UHD TV, and has an ATSC1 tuner, it seems everything we test or encounter will decode HEVC pictures, up to 2160p, at up to 30 FPS

-If it's a 1080 only TV, but has usb/sd/mmc card support, and made after 2020, it's likely that it'll decode HEVC up to 1080p30

-If it's a 1080 but made between 2013 and 2020ish, and has usb/mmc/sd/etc, it's likely it'll at least decode AVC up to 1080p60

If someone is using a USB or network tuner, and decoding on something like a computer, laptop, tablet, etc. with software like the VideoLAN CLient (VLC), the "Channels" app (for hdhomerun units), or ffplay/etc. then it's totally likely everything will work up to the limits of their system. That seems to be 2160p30 at least, today, but likely p60 if they've got a semi-recent GPU or fast enough cpu to decode & push frames around to their display.

https://www.rabbitears.info/screencaps/or-eug/185855-0_0.htm

France is doing terrestrial UHD on DVB-T2, a 2008 standard, with HEVC for the Olympics: https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=R9&liste=1&live=1...

There's no major obstacle that I know of that wouldn't make DVB-T possible for HEVC for an even closer analog to the ATSC 1.0 situation, except there's no point as Europe is now broadly speaking on a high level of DVB-T2... it having been a standard since 2008 after all.

Here's an application note by a reputable vendor doing UHD with HEVC on DVB-T2 with real products they are shipping: https://scdn.rohde-schwarz.com/ur/pws/dl_downloads/dl_applic...

It dates from 2014. And the main reason it hasn't become popular is because Europe has an extremely high level of cable and satellite penetration. Switzerland no longer has terrestrial television at all for example, with some curious minor exceptions where terrestrial distribution to end-users isn't actually the goal - it's for foreign cable companies to legally rebroadcast a freely received signal on their own networks. That's right, terrestrial television exists solely as a facilitator for a legal loophole.

The whole ATSC 3.0 discussion and its DRM and personalised ads has set back innovation in technology standards for a decade. That said, the false choice between either expensive paid cable or terrestrial is probably just as much to blame.

That said, Australia, ironically being one of the most terrestrial TV countries on the planet despite its low density, did trials of DVB-T2 with UHD and HEVC way back in 2018. But it hasn't eventuated into anything further, probably because the apps are taking over and happen to also carry with them DRM and personalised ads.

And as an extra note, DVB-T2 HEVC at HD resolutions is uncommon but definitely in use in places across Europe: https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=MUX-M1-D4&liste=1... https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=NET-21&liste=1&li... https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?lang=en&liste=2&live=... https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?lang=en&liste=2&live=... and in fact in some it's all that's left for terrestrial television because of the aforementioned predominance of IPTV, cable, and satellite.

And just found out Spain has HEVC UHD DVB-T2 as well, without anything too obvious that it's still a test: https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=ESP41&pid=40003&l...

For some sense of completeness' sake, the terrestrial signal of Rai 4k is a 720p terrestrial channel advertising that Rai 4k can be streamed over the internet with HbbTV, so that doesn't count.

Somewhat interesting is that Brazil has been testing ATSC 3.0 with LCEVC on VVC.

And VVC is another codec that many in the EUR are testing with DVB-T2.

Slideshow "UltaHD over ATSC 1.0" from station owner Anton Kapela.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hysslJsp6rTYkWuOmDBK...

I'm driving through Eugene in a few months. Guess I'll be bringing my HDHomeRun and an obnoxiously huge VHF antenna!

Interesting to see cloudflare TV on the list. https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=259

I thought cloudfare only did online steaming.

There is an little screen recording too. https://youtu.be/e_94q9TCCDY?t=277

Looks like he got the rights to broadcast their educational ("Cloudflare U") content: https://cloudflare.tv/

Here's the source of the first screenshot: https://www.rabbitears.info/market.php?request=station_searc...

ATSC is a North American modulation standard for transmission of Transport Streams over RF signals. Transport streams can carry any kind of a payload, including data. When the spec came out it was mandatory to use mpeg-2 for video encoding because that was the popular codec at the time. However there is nothing in the spec preventing broadcasters using other video/audio codecs (many already do). This is what this tv station did. You have approximately 19mbps of bandwidth to pack in as much payload in there as you can fit. ATSC3 brings about other features such as higher bandwidth, improved RF signals transmission efficiency (lower costs), error correction, etc…

> ATSC3 brings about other features such as higher bandwidth, improved RF signals transmission efficiency (lower costs), error correction, etc…

And DRM that requires receivers to get official blessing before they’re allowed to sell their hardware.

I remember there being a fairly strict set of encoding tools and formats within the ATSC standards for broadcast video. I did a little searching (Wikipedia and atsc.org) but could only find mention of extensions to add H.264 and then only up to 1080p (in A/72), but nothing about H.265 of any resolution.

This is pretty cool but I'm wondering if it's compliant?

digital TV never worked as well as analog. in my opinion, the switch should have never been justified until it could be qualitatively proven that digital > analog. by "greater than" / better I mean not interrupting the viewing experience, especially the audio. This test would be done using stock antennae within reasonable distance from the transmitter. or even better, actually ask users which they prefer: UHF analog or digital. don't switch until 2/3 or more prefer digital. I've never consistently watched DTV, because inevitably a disruption will come and block the audio for about 1.5s, and completely freeze the video. It's simply a waste of time.

The big difference to me about analog vs digital broadcast is that analog could receive part of the signal and display the poor video and then cleaned up the image/sound as the signal was dialed in. With digital, you're either receiving the stream of 1s&0s or your not. If you miss enough, you have no signal to decode.

I met an old timer satellite dish installer (big giant dish types) that used this to align newly installed dishes. He knew the location of a specific satellite and the frequency it was broadcasting one. He had a tuner dialed in for that channel. Once he found it, he'd move along the one axis to count the number of signals he'd pass until he got to the satellite meant for receiving. He'd then swap out to the receiver for that signal to verify.

The loss of analog just made the playing and experimenting much less fun

"analog" used high-power horizontal and vertical sync pulses. These were hard for the receiver to lose / mess up, if there was any signal at all. Put another way, the receiver would receive the sync pulses (aka 'blacker than black) before even a shred of the video could be decoded. Another way to say this: The sync pulses had such good SNR compared with the picture content, so when the picture content was even barely visible, it was solidly in sync.

There's a lot about the old analog video signal that was just fun to me like that. The fact the color signal could be received by a b&w was cool, except for now with hindsight being 20/20 we now have to deal with the ramifications of that cool. Part of it lingered into HD, but we're finally getting rid of most of that baggage with 4K.

Things like the color burst, 1 volt peak-to-peak, whiter than white, how the video signal that was too hot could interfere with the audio that was multiplexed into the RF signal, how a signal could cause the picture to distort when not within spec. Just all sorts of things that were fun to mess with

> digital TV never worked as well as analog. in my opinion, the switch should have never been justified until it could be qualitatively proven that digital > analog. by "greater than" / better I mean not interrupting the viewing experience, especially the audio.

I'm not sure I agree with you. Audiowise, you may be right, but video wise, it took a lot to have near perfect video receiving, without ghosts and other weirdness, whereas if you've got a comfortable margin from the digital cliff, you can get an uninterrupted picture and audio, and it will be as good as it gets.

Now, when someone at the station decides they should stuff 8 subchannels of 1080i over the 20Mbps carrier with static multiplexing, that's going to look awful. Dynamic multiplexing helps, but doesn't work miracles either. If the broadcaster does 1 HD stream with about 12-15Mbps, it can look pretty good, as long as it's not flowing water or Olympic diving, one or two, maaaaybe three SD subchannels for the rest of the bandwidth is ok too.

If you don't have a comfortable margin, it is much worse though. Analog TV audio was usually pretty decent even with a very snowy picture. And then there's the delays in tuning to a new channel.

In the video of the full interview (linked below the main video), he explains that some of the formats he uses overcome those disruptions, where there is a weak signal.

Cool, realtime fuzzing of atsc 1.0 hardware that is long since supported.

hey, thanks for sharing this link, and the interest in my work.

station owner here, feel free to AMA.

Huge fan here. I've been following your work. I downloaded your PDF slideshow a year or two back, and I was very impressed with what you were doing with the vanilla flavor of ATSC. I was particularly impressed in your ability to secure a testing ground for it.

I'm hoping to being my HDHomeRun with me next time I'm in the area and check it out first hand (although a portable VHF setup might not be easy).

Please keep up what you're doing and I look forward to hearing about your progress!

This is pretty neat!

tldr the station does this by usingusing more efficient codecs like HEVC instead of the common MPEG2

Broadcast stations are the epitome of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it, especially if it's going to cost money". They also do not like roll your own solutions. They want a rock solid piece of equipment typically from someone like Snell&Wilcox or Tektronix type of devices. They do not want to deal with "are we on the air" type questions because some one's nephew's science experiment can't be maintained. If there's a chance that something can go out that's non-standard, fines can be levied, and those can get expensive.

Agreed! It literally takes an experimenter buying a station to see innovation like this.

The experiment didn't need the full power of a station to prove though. I'm not really sure that this is as much innovation as you imply. Channels have been splitting their bandwidth for years. In fact, Congress wasn't really happy with the network's decision to fraction the signal as the intent was a single full bandwidth signal. We've also already seen what the switch from MPEG2 to MPEG4 can do for allowing more channels via cable boxes.

It's also a case of equipment available today is much more robust compared to the cable TV. I was testing the MPEG4 abilities of some of these earlier boxes. Encoding based on the white papers provided for the chips, we found these were not very accurate and required a lot of tweaking to get to work. The chips in today's TVs are much better, so there's a lot more that can be gotten away with.

if this hadn’t been performed on a real, live, over the air signal with a real, live, audience providing feedback to the station, we (and my competition, other broadcast brethren) wouldn’t be talking about this now.

fyi - AVC and HEVC decoders are, sadly, far more fickle than they should be, in 2024. we would like to believe they all implement a working HRD buffer model, read and obey stuff we put into the SEI and VUI NAL units, as well as properly support basic functions like slices and layers (such as non-ref P frames for 60P refinement of a 30p sequence), and etc.

heck, based on current feedback and testing, the least common denominator for maximum reference frames in AVC is four, and HEVC is five. sad, but better than mpeg2.

Is OTA TV even relevant anymore, except for the specific content that OTA has that isn't (yet) available over the net for free / ad-supported?

I believe it's a waste of valuable spectrum to burn it on TV. It would be better to allocate TV's spectrum to cell services (for example).

Radio should be used when things are moving relative to each other; AM and FM Radio make sense as receivers are often in cars. People don't watch TV in cars.

If the communications is point-to-point, run the wires/fiber and hook up. If you're in a car, boat, airplane, or train -- fine, use 'wireless'. Yet, even today, wi-fi / 5G + some wide-area services for special cases (planes, boats) gets you there.

TV is a vast wasteland (of spectrum).

I agree, despite the fact that I use OTA TV. I would prefer to just get an internet stream, but I need to pay like $70/mo+ to get the content (plus a ton that I don't want), and it still has ads.

I would be willing to pay a reasonable price to access a live CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox stream, but no one (legitimately) offers that. So OTA it is.

Exactly. OTA remains a little walled garden of content, justifying (?) their wasting of the precious spectrum.

There are some bundles of content (youtube TV, I think)?

But operationally, for the viewer at home -- HOW the bits get delivered to your screen is irrelevant; what's ON the screen is what we care about.

I'm thinking the TV operators are running a scam, in a desperate attempt to hold on to $ and spectrum -- both of which they are less and less capable of justifying.

The quality of OTA TV is certainly superior to anything you're gonna get over fiber or coax.

If you're in the US and you have an online provider for cable channels, try swapping an NFL game between the online broadcast and the OTA broadcast. There's a night and day difference in terms of picture quality.

Yes, the bandwidth argument. OTA TV uses MPEG-2 for ATSC-1 as the OP's video describes. If the content is available in higher-res but the streamers aren't sending that, sounds like a marketing reason. Netflix will sell you 'premium' 4K for $ 22.99/mo

There's no good reason the NFL is better OTA than streaming except streamers aren't complaining enough, I would guess. Note this last season, there was one game that was not available on regular TV, only on streaming. That was a 'test run' but clearly, the NFL is there to make money, and if they can make more streaming... well, there's your answer.

There were a number of regular season games on Thursday night carried exclusively by Amazon Prime. I watched them through my Roku devices and the quality was not great but then there can be up to three TVs streaming through their respective Roku devices at once here and our download bandwidth is limited to 25Mbps.

The one playoff game that was carried exclusively via Peacock was the wildcard game between the Dolphins and Chiefs. I also watched it through the Roku devices and I thought the picture quality was fine, better than Amazon Prime had been.

Would I have ponied up $5.99 if it weren't the Chiefs as they're the local team? I don't know. Perhaps next year I'll have to make that decision if they carry another playoff game that has teams I don't care that much about.

For those that did not 'get' my reference to TV as the 'vast wasteland' --- that is a shout-out to Newton Minnow, the FCC Chairman in the 60s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_N._Minow?useskin=vector

The TV industry was ticked off by that comment, and do you recall the name of the ship on Gilligan's Island? The S.S. Minnow

US TV spectrum has been halved in the last 20 years. Used to have channels 2-69 (minus 37, reserved for radio astronomy). Now it's just 2-36.

Channels 70-83 were reallocated away from TV in 1983.

OTA TV has one advantage over all of the delivery alternatives: no ongoing access fees. I agree that the spectrum is wasteful, but at least it still belongs to the people in some sense. If we give it up, it will be sold as more 5G spectrum that you then have no option other than to pay for.

Yes, that's true. Until local municipalities consider wifi a service they provide their communities, like parks and libraries.

Until then, yes, probably some spectrum should be devoted to OTA; maybe in SD, mainly PBS, I dunno, because this would be for the 'no access fee' case. That means cheap folks, or really poor folks. Society should be doing everything possible to eliminate the latter.

If TV receivers were built into smart phones, it would be easier to make this case.

Analog TV needs a lot more spectrum than digital TV, and in the US analog TV spectrum has already been reallocated.

OTA TV is a vital, free public service. We take high speed internet for granted and think everyone has access. They don’t. OTA is not as it once was, but it isn’t going away for a long, long time.

ATSC 3.0 is dangerous because it brings encryption to the table, and it's already clear that encryption will not only be limited to entertainment and for-profit content, but also E/I content like news.

Encryption must be banned in OTA television.

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