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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Why is US ATSC 3.0 so bad? It is nearly a decade since it was South Korea have it deployed and operational. The standard itself is no longer "next gen". Brazil's TV 3.0, also uses ATSC 3.0 is so much better in every aspect.

Even if someone mandate it as requirement for TV sold next year all the tech inside are at least 10 years old ( HEVC ? ) . Not to mention the roll out time. Do Americans only watch Cables and Netflix? And not Free to Air TV? Which is what I belief what most of the worst still do to a larger extend other than Internet streaming.

They might as well look into the standards before putting a mandate into it.

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Broadcast TV modernisation is trapped between a load of enemies.

To the north, competition from a huge installed base of last-gen technology, which is mostly good enough.

To the south, streaming services, youtube and cable. These let people watch whenever they want (nobody has VCRs any more) and they've offered 4k for over a decade.

To the east, the industry's dumb decision to build the 'next gen' technology atop a patent minefield, and load it with DRM. So if you manufacture this tech, you can face huge surprise bills because in implementing the spec you've unknowingly infringed on some nonsense patent.

And to the west, the commercial reality that showing someone an advert in 4K isn't any more profitable than showing the advert in 1080p. If you're a broadcast TV station when you up your quality everything gets more expensive but you don't make any extra money. So why bother?

> If you're a broadcast TV station when you up your quality everything gets more expensive but you don't make any extra money. So why bother?

In a functioning, competitive market, the answer to this is "Customers choose a competing broadcast TV station with higher quality." Unfortunately what we have is far from that.

Nitpick: ATSC 1.0 only offers broadcast in 720p or 1080i... of course with overscan and all, nobody actually notices the resolution of TV.

Only "18% of U.S. TV households had at least one TV set enabled to receive free, broadcast programming."

https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2024/beyond-big-data-the-au...

Wow. Thanks. So when an Americans say they are watching TV, I assume that mostly meant watching Netflix or Cables?

Yes. Satellite dishes also provide service like cable does, a number of "basic" channels included plus options for "premium" channels that cost extra. The basic channels include the broadcast networks for one's geographic area.

They're not that popular but there are similar bundles available over the Internet, YouTube TV is one.

All the national broadcast networks have Internet options, Hulu has shows from multiple networks, Paramount+ has CBS. Both also have shows made for cable & satellite channels and Internet-only programming.

There's a lot more than Netflix too, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, Max, and many others.

Live sports kept people signed up to cable & satellite for a long time, I think now there are Internet options (and probably exclusives, I don't watch sports).

This is from 2022: https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2022/broadband-only-tv-home...

Be aware that the cable tv infrastructure is also the main Internet service provider, many people are like me, paying the cable company for home Internet but not for TV (my plan does include a legally mandated minimum TV service and a TV box but I only have it because it's cheaper than Internet alone for some reason).

Cable is losing subscribers, too.

https://evoca.tv/cord-cutting-statistics/

Thank You. I guess I will submit this as an operate entry. Mind blowing figures.

Broadcast TV after the digital rollout was so bad many people just stopped watching TV. Picking it up is such a hassle it's simply not worth the effort for some ad laden TV.

At the time of the switchover in the early 2000s I lived about 40 miles from a major metropolitan area, Minneapolis, which is pretty close in US terms. We spent hundreds of dollars on different antennas (indoor and outdoor) and signal boosters and what not and it was simply never reliability.

In 2008 I moved to my current location, three miles outside of downtown Minneapolis. Again I tried a number of antennas and still found operation to be anything but reliable. I gave up and began just watching Netflix.

The people who live close enough to the broadcasts to pick it up have easy access to cable TV. The people who live in the countryside who used to depend on it can't pick it up. There's just no place for the TV system we were given.

> Broadcast TV after the digital rollout was so bad many people just stopped watching TV.

That is the first time I've heard that. Everything I've heard has been positive - people amazed that others aren't doing it. Are there any numbers on user satisfaction?

I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap (<$50 iirc). Maybe there was a problem in Minneapolis?

> The people who live close enough to the broadcasts to pick it up have easy access to cable TV.

Cable is expensive for many people and broadcast is free, of course. (Also, Broadcast is more private, for now.)

> I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap (<$50 iirc). Maybe there was a problem in Minneapolis?

I don’t know about Minneapolis is particular, but 40 miles is far enough that it gets tricky, and in my Canadian city, I’m close to the towers as the crow flies, but in the RF shadow of a huge hill - so I’d actually get better reception if I was further away from the broadcast towers.

Minneapolis is in a river valley (the Mississippi River). From an airplane at cruising altitude the area will look fairly flat, but down at ground level there is a ton of 50-100 foot undulation. The elevation of your antenna is probably far more important than the quality of your antenna.

Fun: if you’ve got Apple Maps (I’m sure Android has this as well), ask for walking directions from Minneapolis to something 35-40 miles away. I chose “Elko New Market” - 36 miles from downtown. Click on the walking details and you can see the elevation change. You’re going from around 800 feet above sea level to 1100 feet above sea level, a difference of ~300 feet. But the total change over the course of the walk is nearly 4000 feet!

I live in downtown Chicago and get tons of channels, despite no line of sight due to buildings in the way. Though they tend to go out when the El passes by.

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