Thread

Federal Communications Commission scraps limit on broadcast TV ownership

163 points · 111 comments · pseudolus

trollbridge · 1786041906 · focus · HN ↗
Broadcast TV seems laughably irrelevant. It’s difficult to find official numbers, but under 1% of US households have no cable, satellite TV, home Internet, or a cell phone. The latter two are how people consume video and TV to a large degree today.
In exchange, we have a great deal of spectrum tied up for terrestrial TV, much of which goes to running infomercials or else is surreptitiously leased for terrestrial data broadcasts. And the government gets to decide to regulate it so it becomes inherently politicised - like favouring certain owners.
Realistically - this spectrum should simply be reassigned for IP based services, with perhaps some set aside for non profit / educational uses, some for commercial, etc.
(Radio is pretty much the same boat but I can see a case to be made for keeping some analog FM radio broadcasts. The 6MHz per channel for TV is insane.)
1. wmf · 1786042710 · focus · HN ↗
  I heard in some European countries they packed digital SD channels into less spectrum (one 6 MHz channel can carry 4-5 TV channels). We should have done that here instead of broadcasting HD.
  1. jyoung8607 · 1786043786 · focus · HN ↗
    That's already widely done in the US.
    If you plug in an antenna and scan for local channels, what used to be one analog TV channel on colloquially-named "channel 7" in the defined channel 7 frequency range will now be seen as "channel 7-1" which is often (but not always!) actually broadcast on the old frequency. During the ATSC transition, it was important to retain the branding and consumer memory of "channel 7" even when the RF transport frequency changed.
    The transition opened the ability to have an arbitrary number of digital subchannels, 7-2, 7-3, etc etc. The total bitrate available on a given ATSC broadcast is fixed, but it can be partitioned among multiple MPEG streams. The typical setup is one (occasional two) HD channels and several SD channels. Obviously there's a balancing act between bitrate and visual quality for each subchannel. It's often used as a way to broadcast older (read: cheaper) syndicated SD content on which they can run more ads while keeping the main HD channel quality reasonably acceptable.
    wmf · 1786043987 · focus · HN ↗
    That's not what I'm talking about though. We should have repacked ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox onto a single channel.
    jyoung8607 · 1786045356 · focus · HN ↗
    Seventeen years ago, when we transitioned, the state of available and deployed equipment, codecs, and home receivers would not have permitted it.
    I mean sure, you could pack four streams into one 6MHz channel. They could even be "HD" insofar as the transmitted stream is 720p or 1080i.
    The result would have been MPEG-2 program streams of about 4.5Mbit each instead of about 18-19Mbit (assuming no other subchannels). That would make live sports or anything with significant motion look like absolute dogshit.
    You might say that you don't care about that, and that is fine for you. However, in that case, I would respectfully submit that opinion to be far from the center of the bell curve of television-viewing American public of that era.
    We could do a lot better with ATSC 3.0. So, there might someday be a second round of broadcast frequency reclamation, just as there was with ATSC 1.0.
    wmf · 1786046617 · focus · HN ↗
    If you limit it to 480i I think 4.5 Mbps would be fine. If you use a cherrypicker sports could burst to a higher bitrate.
    jyoung8607 · 1786048661 · focus · HN ↗
    The original transition (and release of extra frequencies) was a delicate and painful process with lots of involved parties who had to spend lots of money to make it happen. Politically speaking, it could only happen if everyone involved saw some actual benefit from the change.
    If you got into a time machine and tried your plan two decades ago, the conversations would have gone something like this:
    -----
    Government: "Hey broadcaster, we need you to throw out and upgrade all your broadcast equipment that's working just fine today."
    Broadcaster: "Why?"
    Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."
    Broadcaster: "Why else?"
    Government: "That's really it."
    Broadcaster: "How about instead, I take a little bit of that money you're asking me to spend, and give it to your political opponent's campaign?"
    -----
    Government: "Hey citizens, we need you to buy a new TV or buy an adapter for your current TV that's currently working just fine."
    Citizen: "Why?"
    Government: "So we can auction off some of the broadcast channel bandwidth."
    Citizen: "Why else?"
    Government: "That's really it."
    Citizen: "How about instead, I vote for the opposition candidate who says he'll let me keep my TV and my money?"
    -----
    Today, that's a much less relevant conversation. We're able to juggle broadcast frequencies more easily after the transition. Not only did we shrink the broadcast frequency range at the time of transition, we did it again about ten years ago with far less pain.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_wireless_spectrum_auction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_wireless_sp...
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_spectrum_auction" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_wireless_sp...
    TL;DR: 480i would have been an absolute non-starter.
    Kirby64 · 1786052004 · focus · HN ↗
    480i? Nobody owns CRTs anymore, so interlaced content is inferior in many ways. 720p is already garbage for 2026. We shouldn’t be reducing resolution, if anything it should be going up.
    thomasjb · 1786052110 · focus · HN ↗
    A single 6MHz channel at the top end of UHF band would be enough to implement a universal cellular telephony service - simple calls and texts - at very low cost if phones had modems for it. I think that would be the better use of spectrum.
    toast0 · 1786056925 · focus · HN ↗
    RF Channels 38-83 have all been taken from (US) TV since the 80s. Mostly used for mobile phones.
    rf 70+ is 800 Mhz
    rf 52+ is 700 Mhz
    rf 38+ is 600 Mhz
    Lots of phones support these frequencies.
    TheAdamist · 1786049172 · focus · HN ↗
    Atsc 3.0 does this in a lot of areas, it is in my area, all the channels are multiplexed from one broadcast, although it's hard to tell on the tv since you get the virtual channel numbers that are different and the same as the atsc 1.0 channels
    cogman10 · 1786061477 · focus · HN ↗
    The very VERY unfortunate thing about ATSC 3.0 is it has an internet optional requirement which broadcasters have decided to use as a gate for watching ATSC content. They've turned it into a premium service rather than just simply using the open codecs.
    toast0 · 1786057323 · focus · HN ↗
    If you're gonna smash everything onto a single channel, you may as well turn the whole thing off.
    Gonna look like absolute trash. Might be almost acceptable with atsc 3, except for the diaster of DRM and new proprietary audio codecs that brings.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.