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Are Over-The-Air TV Broadcasting Signals Changing?

When the US first went to digital TV signals they handed out free digital to analog converters so old TVs would still work with the new digital signals. I'm guessing that was ATSC version 1. Now they keep coming up with new versions of ATSC and the original converter boxes cannot handle the new versions of the signals...at least not completely.

Is that it?
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Correct. Mind you many areas did not hand out coverters for free, rather you got a coupon for a box at a discounted price. (and were typically the really low-end models)
 
The converter boxes weren't free--the USG handed out one $40 "coupon" per household--it was up to the customer to choose his poison. Of course, the vendors of the boxes made sure their prices were higher than $40.... I think I still have the plastic credit-card sized "coupon" from 2005 wandering around somewhere.
I still use an ATSC converter on one of my TVs to pick up stations that the TV's tuner sucks at. Said converter has an HDMI output, so it's mostly a matter of selecting an alternate input on the TV.
 
Same thing happened here. You are expected to pay for upgrades in full after that first one. But unlike USA someone got big $ to produce the subsidized boxes e.g. rebrand some cheap Chinese receiver.
 
There were some funny vendor requirements of the USG program to qualify for the subsidy. One that I recall was that the unit had to contain an integral power supply, not an external wall-wart. I suspect that was so some cash would flow toward getting the box UL/CSA approved.
But don't ask me--I'm not a politician--I'm simply not evil enough.
 
The converter box coupons transferred a lot of money to those who prudently bought brand names of defunct manufacturers.

I guess it was better putting the power conversion board inside the box instead of a small plastic enclosure that stays on the floor.
 
Chuck(G) said:
In my experience, none of those boxes had sufficient cooling to be adequate for 24/7 operation.
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It still wouldn't have decent cooling if the two boards were separated but the power supply board would be hidden on the floor when it catches fire.

Not that broadcast TV will be around for all that long. The TV stations realized they could make a lot more money charging cable companies for carriage instead of running an antenna.
 
Yeah, the OTA commercial content is getting pretty lame.

Wanna buy some gold? How about some green mussel oil? Or sign up for Medicare Advantage? Or get a walk-in tub? The latest that I've seen is for a product called "Blue Chew" (look that one up).
 
Grandcheapskate said:
I do not have cable TV or a streaming service...nor do I want them. I still receive my broadcast TV over the air from a roof antenna and my ancient TVs still use a digital conversion box. And until those old TVs die off, I'll continue to use them.

What happened a few months back is that one station sent out notices its signals were changing to a newer (better?) signal. Once that happened, I lost the video signal for that channel and only get audio.

Then a couple days ago I noticed another channel changed and the screen size is either smaller or the screen is elongated vertically. Today I noticed that same station is on another channel and when I switched to the other channel the picture was normal size.

Has anyone heard they are changing signals and the original digital conversion boxes will no longer work?

Thanks...Joe
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Which TV market are you in? In NYC, WPIX moved their main ATSC 1.0 feed to a channel share to VHF channel 7 to share with WABC's ATSC 1.0 broadcast. WPIX (VHF channel 11) switched to ATSC 3.0 and broadcasts WPIX and WABC's "next gen" feed. The ATSC 1.0 subchannels on WPIX (11.2 and 11.4) were moved to WFUT and due to the lack of bandwidth, converted to MPEG4 compression. Not all TVs and none of the "coupon" converter boxes support decoding MPEG4 video, hence you will only get audio on those channels.

The government is not mandating any conversion to ATSC 3.0, so no subsidized converter boxes. If a channel switches to ATSC 3.0, it is required to simucast in ATSC 1.0 for a few years. What is amusing is that you don't even need ATSC 3.0 to get better video quality. There is nothing stopping ATSC 1.0 from broadcasting HVC (h.265) or any other modern codec. The big changes to ATSC 3.0 is the modulation type (switches to OFDM like DVB-T uses from 8VSB), and the use of TCP/IP as part of the transport stream specification. The biggest end user benefit is less compression artifacts due to not using circa 1996 MPEG2 compression. Don't expect to ever see 4K broadcasts, its about cramming more HD content (hopefully at 1080p vs. 1080i) onto one channel and locking down those signals with DRM.
 
It scarcely matters, the way things are going. Mostly older TV shows are being broadcast, which were not shot in 1080p, much less 4K. For example, is there any content of Comet TV, or Me TV Charge TV or a whole host of other channels that could benefit from more than 480i? I note that several of these simulcast over the web...
 
Comet has dipped their toes into showing newer productions that were done for ATSC broadcast. Bounce runs its more recent movies in 720p. It does seem that some channels get upscaled versions of the original TV broadcast which are then downscaled for broadcast and then upscaled again at the receiver. So much fun.

ATSC does a poor job of handling errors. I think I would need to be very close to the transmitter to have a chance to view a 4K program reliably.
 
I bought an ATSC 3.0 box, and basically don't bother with the 3.0 functionality. Hardware-wise it's nifty (it just sits on the network and there are URLs you can point to to stream different channels), but the content isn't much of a win. There's only a few channels, it's nothing unavailable on 1.0, and the sound support is a mess right now due to AC-4. (the ATSC1 broadcasts are easily tuned even on weird stuff like Haiku, but nothing but very specific Windows setups seem to work for 3.0) I don't get much more mileage out of it than the previous-gen 1.0 box it replaced (which in turn replaced a 20-year span of PCI and PCI-Express TV cards)
 
In Europe it's bit different, lots of countries have national TV station that's a state run agency. Moving that out of the air implies that state should now own or have right on new delivery infrastructure too.

What I hate about ours, apart from the fact that a state TV will always be a tool of the government, they run commercials and they ask for monthly tax. And the quality of programme is diminishing. In mid 2000s all major sports were free to air here, domestic football league, derbies from "big 5" or euro football, UEFA leagues, Formula 1, NBA...people would wake up at 4 am, turn on the TV and watch Bulls in their heyday for instance. I remember mid 90s, going to bed before school, turning off computer, turning on the TV channel 2. Seinfeld, Voyager, Northern Exposure, every night from Monday to Friday, with a minute of commercials in between shows.

Now you have to pay for essentially nothing, two/three OK talk shows weekly, dumb "The Voice" type entertainment, and a single league or Euro match they negotiated from private providers. And gambling/sports betting ads, they are everywhere.
 
Grandcheapskate said:
While nearly all the technical talk went far, far over my head, let's see if I am reading this thread correctly.

When the US first went to digital TV signals they handed out free digital to analog converters so old TVs would still work with the new digital signals. I'm guessing that was ATSC version 1. Now they keep coming up with new versions of ATSC and the original converter boxes cannot handle the new versions of the signals...at least not completely.

Is that it?

Oh well, at least I have enough DVDs to keep me entertained for the next couple decades.

Thanks...Joe
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Not exactly. ATSC 1 is just a container/package.

Some broadcasters are experimenting with using modern compression on the antique ATSC 1 modulation and it turns out 90% of folks TVs can decode more modern codecs as the standard was always built to be able to be “upgraded “ with newer compression, sadly very old sets won’t run the new codecs.

The number of broadcasters doing this is very small

A more likely situation is that one channel went ATSC 3 and they repacked the remaining channels into the remaining 1.0 stations some of which might have mediocre reception.
 
njroadfan said:
Which TV market are you in? In NYC, WPIX moved their main ATSC 1.0 feed to a channel share to VHF channel 7 to share with WABC's ATSC 1.0 broadcast. WPIX (VHF channel 11) switched to ATSC 3.0 and broadcasts WPIX and WABC's "next gen" feed. The ATSC 1.0 subchannels on WPIX (11.2 and 11.4) were moved to WFUT and due to the lack of bandwidth, converted to MPEG4 compression. Not all TVs and none of the "coupon" converter boxes support decoding MPEG4 video, hence you will only get audio on those channels.
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Yes, I am in the NYC market and lost the 11.2 and 11.4 video signal after the conversion. I still get the 11.1 signal without a problem.

It seems the 33.x channels have been upgraded and a copy of some stations can be found on 31.x stations with the old format.

Since every TV in my house is old, all of them need a converter box to get over the air signals. And since most of the broadcast TV I do watch is on the nostalgia channels, I have no need to rush out and get new TVs.

Are you guys saying there are new converter boxes which will decode the new upgraded signals for older TVs?

Thanks...Joe
 
The converter box is built around the same chips as TV tuners are. Presumably, no one is sending signals out that can't be decoded by any TV which means that a new converter box will also decode those signals. Hopefully, you can find a review of the converter you plan on buying to ensure it works with all the local broadcasters. Note that there are a lot of older converters that haven't been sold just waiting for the hurried consumer to purchase by mistake.
 
Mr.Amiga500 said:
After seeing this thread, I decided to see if the one remaining analogue TV station was still working in my area. I turned on my 1978 B&W TV for the first time in years and the station was still on air, playing a Seinfeld episode! (...ironically, HD-converted to "widescreen", when 4:3 would have been better suited to the 1978 CRT)

They just started another episode, so I think I'll watch it. There hasn't been anything worth watching for the last 3 decades!
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Ok, now you got me curious...

1715628379989.jpeg

Nope, Seattle reports Nothing.
 
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