# Early ATSC 3.0 adopters handed lemons



## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Interesting reading the comments here about the large eastern dma's foot dragging on adopting 3.0, especially in light of all three of the big city's in the Pacific Northwest having (Seattle, Portland, Boise) implemented virtually all stations by the middle of 2021. 

Now comes the news I had been warning about since the release of this new standard ever since the fcc adopted it, signal encryption or DRM. Those folks who have been early adopters, buying 3.0 capable sets or stb's, look to be left behind, as a number of station groups have now announced their intent to implement DRM while discontinuing simulcasting 1.0 signals in order to allow more bandwidth for the 3.0 transmissions.

There hasn't been much in the way of public announcements from those station groups, but manufacturers of stb's and other devices have recently pulled their device rollouts in order to redesign them to facilitate DRM. Be in the lookout for more press releases in the coming days/weeks on this issue. 

As far as the large eastern dma's like NY and the like, I pointed out years ago that they would wait until they were good and ready to jump to 3.0 when encryption had been accepted as a done deal. I think we'll see big announcements sometime this summer. 

More news to come, for sure. The death of free ota television is now a done deal.


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## renegade (Jul 28, 2011)

I said that was going to happen. Someone on here told me I was crazy.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

I have read online the LG (nanocell 90) set I bought last year has a 3.0 tuner. if it does, it needs a firmware update to activate it. There are several LG OLED sets LG lists as having 3.0 tuners. Do these sets have tuners that do not support encryption? If not, that has to be the worst market blunder in decades.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

renegade said:


> I said that was going to happen. Someone on here told me I was crazy.


Same here, in fact direct from the 'antenna guy' on youtube. I wanted to be a tv station engineer from when I was in 7th grade, got my 2nd class then first class fcc licence by the time I finished first year of community college in 1971. Then spent 22 yrs in the army (enlisted, nco, reserves, chief warrant officer, then DoA civilian) and then as a top engineer for Alcatel. Last project, I came out of retirement in 2017 to help set up teams for equipment rollout to stations for the last bit of frequency repack when the uhf band was squeezed down to 14-36. Never did become either a station or network engineer, being closer to equipment development was much more interesting.

The stations in Boise have all gone full 3.0 drm, using the subchannel space for wireless subscription tv. The name of the outfit doing it is 'Evoca', they are in Denver as well so far, and have plans to expand throughout the west, particularly in areas with both poor cable and internet penetration.


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

machavez00 said:


> If not, that has to be the worst market blunder in decades.


My first generation Samsung 4k tv (7 yrs old) started biting the bullet a month ago and I thought for a minute about a 3.0 set, but as I live well over the horizon from both closest cities (120 miles from both Seattle and Portland) and the stations have given up on maintaining any retransmitters, it's simply not worth it. Good internet and getting better all the time (3 providers now, muni (county electric service) fiber coming in 1.5 years now that state repub restrictions have been eliminated).

Tablo has already pulled their 4tuner dvr box, I'm sure that more than a few tv manufacturers will be announcing changes soon.

DRM has to be build into the tuner system, it cant be a s/w add on, according to Tablo


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

1948GG said:


> My first generation Samsung 4k tv (7 yrs old) started biting the bullet a month ago and I thought for a minute about a 3.0 set, but as I live well over the horizon from both closest cities (120 miles from both Seattle and Portland) and the stations have given up on maintaining any retransmitters, it's simply not worth it. Good internet and getting better all the time (3 providers now, muni (county electric service) fiber coming in 1.5 years now that state repub restrictions have been eliminated).
> 
> Tablo has already pulled their 4tuner dvr box, I'm sure that more than a few tv manufacturers will be announcing changes soon.


Phoenix was a 3.0 test city. All of our full power stations are supposed to be 3.0. The Gila River nation has some low power stations that went 3.0 only a couple of months ago. That’s how I know my set doesn’t have a 3.0 tuner.


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

machavez00 said:


> the LG (nanocell 90) set I bought last year has a 3.0 tuner


What exactly is the model ID ? With all letters and numbers, and FW version (screenshots would be the source)


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## Pedro Rico (10 mo ago)

Looks like ATSC 3.0 just shot itself in the foot and is now DOA




Kodi nox​


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

1948GG said:


> More news to come, for sure. The death of free ota television is now a done deal.


ON TV now starts it's optional adults only service


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## P Smith (Jul 25, 2002)

Pedro Rico said:


> Looks like ATSC 3.0 just shot itself in the foot and is now DOA


Sure not for broadcasters and stations, but for us, who are always want to view FREE OTA programs/channels !


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## renegade (Jul 28, 2011)

Pedro Rico said:


> Looks like ATSC 3.0 just shot itself in the foot and is now DOA


We should be so lucky.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

Pedro Rico said:


> Looks like ATSC 3.0 just shot itself in the foot and is now DOA


Its not dead, its just pining.*

Until all of the biggest markets come on line, it is a slow march. While lots of markets have NextGenTV stations, they are by no means complete as they mostly lack diginets. To truly succeed, any successor to DTV will have to win hearts and minds of he public and that's more likely to follow the diginets than it is the networks (as many get their major network content a different way -- Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock).

* referencing Monty Python "Parrot" sketch


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

P Smith said:


> What exactly is the model ID ? With all letters and numbers, and FW version (screenshots would be the source)


SW File(Version 03.25.45) 

This, and another website showed the same info https://televisionspecs.com/lg-75nano90upa/


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## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

Newest YouTube posting from 'Antenna Guy' no longer has pushing atsc 1.0 forever, as it had become obvious to all that there are no fcc requirements for stations to continue using bandwidth for that after transitioning to 3.0, and never were. 

But he still has an eastern US tilt, failing to look at what's happening west of the Mississippi, definitely nothing west of the Rockies. The dma's are, compared to back east, huge by both square miles and end to end milage; my dma is almost 300 miles from the Canadian border to the state of Oregon. The six major network stations have a total of less than 10 low power retransmitters (the closest to me, at 30+ miles, is unrecievable). 

It's not unusual that Evoca is pushing its 3.0 encrypted systems totally in the (far) west. So far, it appears that the demand for their systems where they are operating has exceeded their ability to provide the reciever/decryption boxes in the quantity folks are wanting.


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

1948GG said:


> Newest YouTube posting from 'Antenna Guy' no longer has pushing atsc 1.0 forever, as it had become obvious to all that there are no fcc requirements for stations to continue using bandwidth for that after transitioning to 3.0, and never were.
> 
> But he still has an eastern US tilt, failing to look at what's happening west of the Mississippi, definitely nothing west of the Rockies. The dma's are, compared to back east, huge by both square miles and end to end milage; my dma is almost 300 miles from the Canadian border to the state of Oregon. The six major network stations have a total of less than 10 low power retransmitters (the closest to me, at 30+ miles, is unrecievable).
> 
> It's not unusual that Evoca is pushing its 3.0 encrypted systems totally in the (far) west. So far, it appears that the demand for their systems where they are operating has exceeded their ability to provide the reciever/decryption boxes in the quantity folks are wanting.


Not sure Evoca could help you without a OTA signal. They may not ship to areas without good OTA. It combines antenna ATSC1.0 and 3.0 with IPTV. Without an antenna connection I only get 39 IPTV channels including my regional sports networks. With antenna I get 122 total channels in metro Denver.

When I ordered service I got my receiver within 5 days.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

1948GG said:


> Newest YouTube posting from 'Antenna Guy' no longer has pushing atsc 1.0 forever, as it had become obvious to all that there are no fcc requirements for stations to continue using bandwidth for that after transitioning to 3.0, and never were.


Are you sure you didn't mean "Antenna Man"? If you search YouTube for Antenna Guy, it results in Antenna Man's videos.

The 2020 plan that won a 3-2 vote in the FCC to even allow regular NextGen TV broadcasts required five years of "substantially similar" DTV programming subject to NextGen TV meeting adoption criteria. If the entirely voluntary adoption of NextGen TV isn't there, DTV isn't going away. Even when DTV was mandated, it took a couple of tries to bring analog broadcasts down with some of the stragglers going off the air last year.


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## PrinceLH (Feb 18, 2003)

Sitting here with a new Sony ATSC 3.0 compatible TV. On a good tropo day, I can get some of this interactive stuff from Buffalo and Syracuse NY. Unfortunately, my closest OTA stations are Watertown and Rochester NY. What I've seen with the new interactive stuff, that it's pretty good. Problem is, the foot-dragging from the local channels. Summer works fine, winter, not so much. Either get it moving or get someone to buy them out and get it up and running. Frustrated as hell, here in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. Of course our CRTC is so last century, that we'll never see anything like this in Canada. We still don't even have subchannels on our OTA. What a bureaucratic nightmare, in Canuckistan.


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## jsk (Dec 27, 2006)

The technology to scramble/encrypt OTA signals has existed in NTSC, ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0. Stations are now required to have at least one channel in the clear. I suppose they could put a SD shopping channel in the clear and encrypt everything else though, but so far, it hasn’t been a resounding success in the past (someone mentioned ON TV and there were also others like Select TV, and SuperTV in the 80s) and they currently seem to believe that free OTA is best for their bottom line.


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## harsh (Jun 15, 2003)

jsk said:


> Stations are now required to have at least one channel in the clear.


I can't say that I've heard of any stations that are offering their full palette in NextGen TV. All of my local stations have banded together to put seven .1 streams on two frequencies. There may be some outlier that has been hard-nosed enough to offer 4K feeds and the like but that's exceedingly rare.

I think it likely that the pay content will be mostly streamed and use the channel only to bring in the Internet traffic.


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