US ATSC 3 FTC Comments wanted

[Ranbato]

I thought that this discussion about the potential of OTA encryption being added to the new standards would be of interest here.
It seems like it would break all existing hardware tuners once rolled out.

Blog entry and request for comment
Related HN thread

Mods feel free to move or remove if you disagree.  

[mvallevand]

From the h/w perspective this doesn't break any ATSC 3.0 tuners out there since there is only one company Silicondust that makes them and they are actively trying to get the required certification for the decryption that is required. The main issue here is that all the existing ATSC 1.0 tuners that users have will "break" once the sunset date arrives, which now is planned for 2027. The secondary issue is of course once DRM is implemented, currently only the Silicondust app users will have access.

The thing is the original sunset date has already passed, it was supposed to be early this year, so ATSC 1.0 users would already be sunk just like old analog users were. The YouTube cord cutter sites and ATSC owners seem to be reacting a bit late to this. If there is a villain here it is probably pirate IPTV since while it changed the PVR user base and new users are growing on that side, it killed of the h/w industry so tuner companies like Hauppauge aren't supplying the hardware ATSC 3.0 users needed with or without DRM.

This DRM isn't a surprise for me either, I expect broadcasters in the past received lots of many from cable and satellite, no doubt more than they get from advertising to OTA onlys users so they lose from pirate IPTV too.

None of the the ATSC 3.0 discussions talk about the troubles with the audio AC-4 used. Even without DRM NextPVR.exe, VLC, Kodi and most players don't support AC-4. There are only a handful h/w players (Android and a few Roku) that support AC-4 directly so many people will need new players, including Nvidia Shield users. Sure there are are incomplete and technically "bad" ffmpeg patches that Emby, Channels DVR and my NextPVR clients uidroid and yauiclient use (not sure if any NextPVR users even use them) but that isn't good enough to support an industry. Can Silicondust really afford to provide perpetually their "free" server-side audio transcoding to everyone of their users once ATSC 1.0 is sunset? I suspect they are counting on a better open source solution.

Martin

[sub]

If there is a villain here it is probably pirate IPTV since while it changed the PVR user base and new users are growing on that side, it killed of the h/w industry so tuner companies like Hauppauge aren't supplying the hardware ATSC 3.0 users needed with or without DRM.

Netflix and the other streaming services are what killed off tv tuners, not the pirate IPTV services (which is a comparatively tiny number of people)

The vast majority of users can just use an app, already built into their tv, to watch what whatever they want, when they want.

[mvallevand]

I was mainly talking about why tuner manufactures aren't jumping onto OTA ATSC 3 for local content which OTT providers don't show. I'm confident that IPTV weighs in the decision why there is a shrinking market. IPTV providers often give 100's of choices for the same network just for these local users. IPTV, Catch UP and VOD hurts Netflix too.

Most of the time apps here in Canada don't compete with OTA, you need to already have cable or satellite subscription to get access. The big IPTV apps for Android have millions of downloads it is not niche market like PVR.

Martin