
FCC approves ATSC 3.0, a TV technology with better pictures but less privacy - skbohra123
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-television-technology/fcc-approves-tv-technology-that-gives-better-pictures-but-less-privacy-idUSKBN1DG2XF
======
jenga22
The whole notion of owning a TV is becoming ridiculous. The cost of ownership
is simply not worth it. Fist, you have the cost of the screen itself. You buy
a TV, spend lots of money on it, and then it simply spies on you. We've seen
this already on Vizio and Samsung TVs already. This is another feather in the
cap for this trend.

Then there is the cost of cable, which is absurdly expensive. To get all the
channels you want, you end up spending a couple of hundred dollars per month.

Want to do the cord cutting route? Well that is trending to be even more
expensive as each service charges about 10 dollars per month. That doesn't
even account for live sports.

The TVs themselves seem to be going obsolete every two years. First it was
HDTV, then 3DTV, then HDTV 4K. On the tech side it was LED, LCD, ULED, now
OLED. Remember when your CRT TV lasted 10+ years?

Edit: Also they don't get updates after six months. Apps stop working as
people have mentioned. But more importantly, they don't get security updates.
So your Smart TV morphs into a Creep TV where hackers have their way with it
to do their bidding.

Overall, it is easier to just not do the whole TV thing. You will save a ton
of money and be much happier at the same time.

~~~
lathiat
I purchased my Samsung 46" 1080p LCD TV in 2007 for $3000 AUD. It's still
going strong now. The only single thing I miss from it is a lack of HDMI-CEC
support.

~~~
rsynnott
You don’t WANT HDMI-CEC; it almost never works properly.

~~~
berberous
HDMI-CEC is great and works flawlessly if the equipment you have supports it,
at least in my personal experience. On some older equipment, not all of the
functions worked though. For example, my old TV could uses CEC for volume and
power on but not power off. New TV does it all perfectly.

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TD-Linux
One of the components (not yet finalized) of ATSC 3.0 is an entire web browser
that runs as an overlay in front of the video [1]. Which itself supports
LocalStorage, XHR, and all the goodies you've come to expect - and EME DRM, of
course.

[1] [http://www.atsc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/A344S34-230r1...](http://www.atsc.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/A344S34-230r1-CS-Interactive-Content.pdf)

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elihu
> Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard “the Holy
> Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.

This doesn't tell us much about the "how". I assume how this works is that the
TV set connects to your home network and phones home with information about
what you're watching right now. If your TV set were to skip the part where it
phones home, is it still possible to watch the show? Or do you have to divulge
your location in order to get a key to decrypt the show? Will there be DRM
preventing you from recording?

~~~
pdkl95
> connects to your home network

SoC hardware with LTE/CDMA/etc already exists. As soon as some "IoT" device
manufacturer negotiates some sort of off-peak batch upload deal with the major
wireless carriers, your TV will simply bypass your home network.

> do you have to divulge your location

In the late 90s[1], there was a brief attempt to enforce region locks with
GPS.

[1] I'm not to sure about this date.

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a_e_k
> The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is
> turned off to send emergency alerts.

Uggh. I'd be very annoyed if, say, the TV turned itself on and woke my toddler
from his daily nap because of something like an amber alert.

Honestly, stuff like this is part of why I'm still using an ancient CRT-style
TV and haven't bothered replacing it yet. I think I prefer my TV "dumb."

~~~
tehlike
Even the smartest tv gets obsolete really fast. I found chromecast to be
wonderful. It's a dumb device, your phone is the smart one.

~~~
bubblethink
>It's a dumb device, your phone is the smart one.

No it's not, in the context of this article. It's just different owners.
Instead of your TV and/or cable company, google gets the data. It's cheap and
convenient, but no different privacy-wise.

~~~
hiram112
Agreed.

I'm seeing a lot of outrage, especially on left leaning sites, at the
direction the FCC is headed under the current administration.

But to me, it really just looks like a lot of the power that SV has amassed
over the past 15 years is being returned to the more traditional media cartels
and access providers.

To the little guy, it makes no difference - all our info belongs to some big
corp.

------
davb
I fail to see the use case for street by street emergency or weather
broadcasts. The weather forecast is unreliable enough at city level, let alone
street level. And what emergencies would be so serious as to warrant turning
on TVs on just my street or in my area? Seems like a thin veil for giving
broadcasters more control over end user devices.

~~~
cylinder714
The National Weather Service offers localized weather down to the neighborhood
level. My experience has been that it's pretty reliable as I live miles away
from the weather station that gathers the official data for my city.

 _And what emergencies would be so serious as to warrant turning on TVs on
just my street or in my area?_

I live very close to the evacuation zone for the recent Napa-Sonoma fires,
close enough that we were on an evacuation alert: we didn't have to leave, but
we had to be ready in case the situation worsened.

------
midnitewarrior
What the article skipped over is that your TV will require an internet
connection to watch broadcast channels. This proposal is terrible for freedom,
consumer cost and privacy.

Also, it's a stupid reason to get every American to throw out their TV AGAIN
(digital tv transition being first) to give the consumer electronics industry
a revenue boost.

The industry has run out of features consumers will pay for (3-D tv, screen
size, 4K, HDR) during a significant market maturity price erosion - taking 65"
TVs from $2,500 down to $1,000 well equiped in only a few years. To reset the
pricing scheme, they get the FCC to create a new mandatory feature so they can
reset the pricing and sell millions of devices needlessly.

~~~
cylinder714
_it 's a stupid reason_

Free, over-the-air HDR 4K TV sounds like a _great_ reason. And where is it
documented that an internet connection is required?

What's your alternative? As it stands now, if one wants 4K television, one has
to get a cable or satellite connection, with all the user tracking that
entails. If ATSC 3.0 really makes OTA UHD possible, then it's worth the cost
of a converter box to implement it--no need to throw out TVs, come on.

------
tzs
> U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the use of new technology that will
> improve picture quality on mobile phones, tablets and television, but also
> raises significant privacy concerns by giving advertisers dramatically more
> data about viewing habits.

I don't understand. The article talks about a new TV broadcast standard, ATSC
3.0. Most mobile phones and tablets do not include a TV tuner, so how is this
going to improve quality on mobile phones and tablets?

~~~
drmpeg
It won't. No telco in their right mind is going to put ATSC 3.0 capability in
their phones. The current ATSC 1.0 has a mobile standard and it went
absolutely nowhere because of this same reason.

~~~
ansible
Some of the other digital TV standards support mobile device use, meaning that
it is practical to implement it on a device that is changing locations during
reception. ATSC is not, and is difficult enough to receive from a stationary
receiver.

I don't see the new standard being very relevant anyway. The main use case for
plain old ATSC is terrestrial broadcast. And now we're going to be pushing 4K
over the air? I don't see that working out to well in practice.

The cable providers really want you to use their own box, and encrypt
everything going over the wire, to make piracy harder. And at some point, it
is going to be easier to just go pure data, rather than cram a bunch of 4K
channels down the wire.

So who is really going to use ATSC 3.0 in the USA?

~~~
cylinder714
_And now we 're going to be pushing 4K over the air? I don't see that working
out to well in practice._

ATSC 3.0 is rolling out as we speak in South Korea, in advance of the Winter
Olympics in Pyeongchang. I haven't seen any reports of how well it's working;
as an enthusiastic antenna user, I'm dying to see how well it works over the
air.

------
tux1968
In fairness, that's the same data that Netflix, Youtube, and others have
access to when we watch online. The broadcast system is just transitioning to
more of a network model as well.

Not that I agree with this decision, but it's not a huge change in the state
of affairs really.

~~~
davb
But Netflix doesn’t use their demographic data to shove ads down my throat.
And, while they have the account holder address, they don’t have precise
location data on all the devices I use to watch - TVs are pretty static so
will generally only be connecting from the account address.

~~~
Sephr
Netflix can derive your location with network performance analysis and
correlation with all of their network data.

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Spark900
So many of the questions in this thread are "but how??" Folks, this is a
Reuters article. It's not technical. If you want to know how it works read the
standards:

[https://www.atsc.org/standards/atsc-3-0-standards/](https://www.atsc.org/standards/atsc-3-0-standards/)

Perhaps the standards themselves are worthy of a HN post, so folks can ask
deeper questions on that thread.

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omginternets
Compare me to _Don Quixote_ if you like, but this kind of crap is what makes
clicking on that little magnet icon so damn satisfying.

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nasredin
\---

The system uses precision broadcasting and targets emergency or weather alerts
on a street-by-street basis. The system could allow broadcasters to wake up a
receiver to broadcast emergency alerts. The alerts could include maps, storm
tracks and evacuation routes.

The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is turned
off to send emergency alerts.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc last month called the new standard “the Holy
Grail” for the advertiser because it tells them who is watching and where.

\---

Another nail in the coffin of traditional broadcasting.

I find it amusing that these (evil) corporations are so brazen that they are
not even coating their glee at these 1984-esque surveillance in the usual rosy
corporate speak.

I do not know who FCC works for, but it's certainly not for the American
people.

------
dayaz36
This article just made me more confused instead of explaining what the
technology is and how it works.

> would allow for more precise geolocating of television signals, ultra-high
> definition picture quality and more interactive programming, like new
> educational content for children and multiple angles of live sporting events

What?? What does multiple camera angels have anything to do with the signal
quality? What type of educational content is possible that's not possible with
current TVs? Don't current TVs already support 4k? So what type of picture
quality is it talking about? What type of interactive programming is it
capable of that's not possible with current TVs?

Someone please explain!

------
upofadown
This strikes me as an attempt by the broadcasting industry to get into that
cool internet stuff the kids are all talking about. I doubt it really means
anything. Most of this stuff will be ignored.

The ultimate problem for advertising supported broadcast media is and has been
for some time the DVR/PVR. There is nothing preventing people from recording
ATSC 3 to a hard disk so this ultimately changes nothing important for the
industry.

------
radicalbyte
That's really cool. So you can detect if someone hasn't seen an advert for a
couple of hours then remotely turn their TV on the next time their TV sees
them and play the advert at max volume. Awesome.

~~~
taneliv
I detect some sarcasm in your tone. But essentially I think you are right. We
have seen similar development when W3C started mandating DRM for web content.
Ad blockers can be quite effective when all the content is available to them.
This probably won't be true for too long.

I guess the limitations of advertisement technology were seen as enough of a
blocker that serious effort (and money) was spent on removing some of them.

There are, of course, some winners due to these changes. I wonder if this can
be a net win for the society, though. Instinctively I would say that it won't
be, but I'm not sure why I'd think so. Perhaps the historical examples from
mass surveillance societies in the previous century give raise to some
negative feelings.

~~~
colordrops
> I wonder if this can be a net win for the society.

You don't have to be so coy about it. It's obviously not a win for anyone but
the small set of people profiting from it.

------
dayaz36
Something left out in the article is ATSC 3.0 supports digital watermarking of
the audio signal and video signal...

~~~
walterbell
The watermark can encode the targeted geolocation, so that recordings can be
traced back to an address?

~~~
dayaz36
Yup

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bubblethink
What does a standard mean ? Other than connecting an antenna, does any signal
directly reach a TV ? Isn't it all dominated by set top boxes anyway, which
can do whatever they please ? Some TVs don't even have tuners any more.

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bostik
> _The new standard would also let broadcasters activate a TV set that is
> turned off to send emergency alerts._

Just what the world needs: the resurrection of Max Headroom.

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Overtonwindow
How does this play into cord cutting though? I haven't had "cable" television
since 2005, and I haven't owned a TV ...well since then. I tried OTA with a
Mac Mini for a bit, but it was just awful in general. So no TV.

~~~
berbec
Have you tried DirecTV Now? It's actually quite nice. My "cable box" is a Fire
Stick. I can watch all the channels I subscribed to on my TV this way, on my
laptop or phone. I pay $35 and they include HBO.

~~~
Overtonwindow
I haven't. Would I need a dish?

~~~
berbec
Nope. Pure streaming over the internet. Works on fire sticks, roku etc

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killbrad
Cut the cord works

