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Are Over-The-Air TV Broadcasting Signals Changing?

G

Grandcheapskate

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New Jersey, USA
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
 
As was mentioned ATSC is being revised, again. The revision mostly repacks the channels and increased the broadcast resolution at the expense some of the older receivers no longer work.

I really miss analog TV for how it was so relentless at not changing.
 
I think some of the broadcasters are scaling back coverage as well. Most of the secondary sub-channels have terrible content. How many times can you re-show 2 hours of "Emergency", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "M*A*S*H". Nowadays, it's a lot of "I see dead people". Maybe there are areas where broadcast TV is growing, but not here. Two of the subchannels on one station have shown nothing but color-bar test patterns for 3 years now. And if you see an advertisement on one of those less-than-prime feeds, it's probably a scam.
 
I read somewhere that broadcasters are also pushing no-recording allowed in the new ATSC spec. I don't know if any receiver manufacturer have actively pushed back on this.
 
Old people love those reruns. My 80-year-old mother loves watching Wagon Train and Gunsmoke something I don't think she watched back in the day.

I figured they would change standards sooner or later because people have had 4K+ TV's for ages and 720P/1080i broadcast just don't cut it anymore.

Stations show test patterns because you either use the spectrum or lose it.
 
dorkbert said:
I read somewhere that broadcasters are also pushing no-recording allowed in the new ATSC spec. I don't know if any receiver manufacturer have actively pushed back on this.
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If you look at ratings the advertising-based broadcasters are losing viewers in the coveted age group like crazy so and the ones who do watch do it with DVR or just download the content.
 
Yeah, ATSC3 is supposed to come someday, if you're in a "big" market, it will be sooner rather than later. One of the plans is to cram a bunch of local stations into legacy transmitters that still broadcast ATSC1 format. But there has been very little news about the progress, at least where I am.

I noticed that my local PBS just changed from 5 days of guide info to 12 hours, and they've stopped putting episode names in the title field. That might be a sign that they've installed new equipment in preparation for eventually going to ATSC3. PBS stations are likely to be at the head of such changes, and I watch quite a bit of PBS. I really don't want to have to rebuild my MythTV right now.
 
Unknown_K said:
I figured they would change standards sooner or later because people have had 4K+ TV's for ages and 720P/1080i broadcast just don't cut it anymore.
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To an 80-year old, 720P or even 480i is high-resolution. I'll watch because they're good memory ticklers. For instance, one station's M*A*S*H tonight had Larry Wilcox as a character who also played "Jon" on CHiPs. That I could not only recognize him but remember his name, is doing pretty well for this old-timer.

Some of the old writing was much better. "There are eight million stories in the Naked City". The first few seasons of "Route 66" gave a good view of America in the late 1950s.
 
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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!
 
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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HUH.
I always thought CFJC was the last analog station in Canada.
 
NeXT said:
HUH.
I always thought CFJC was the last analog station in Canada.
Click to expand...

No, definitely not. Besides the station in my area, I've read there are still analogue stations in northern Ontario and a few in northern Quebec and the far north. It's weird because they said the station in my area will go down in 2019, then in 2021, then in 2023, but it's still working.

I never "went digital", so I never watched "TV" since the changeover in Canada in 2012.
 
dorkbert said:
I read somewhere that broadcasters are also pushing no-recording allowed in the new ATSC spec. I don't know if any receiver manufacturer have actively pushed back on this.
Click to expand...

I did a brief search and ATSC 3.0 is supposed to implement DRM with end to end encryption, which would allow broadcasters complete control over the content they air. They're supposedly "working with" DVR manufacturers to allow DVRs to record encrypted content, but it's likely with heavy restrictions. I bet there'll be time limits imposed, and how many times you can view the content before it gets automatically deleted. There'll also obviously be device limits.

ATSC is gearing up to be a perpetual dumpster fire because not only the DRM, but also because it's not a mandatory standard. So there will eventually be ATSC 1, 2 and 3 devices, all being sold at the same time.

Further hamstringing the standard is a company called Constellation Designs, who owns several ATSC 3 patents. They successfully sued LG for implementing ATSC 3 tuners in their devices and not paying up royalties. LG announced they will no longer ship devices with an ATSC 3 tuner. It really shows how broken the patent system is when two people can hold for ransom a public standard used by billions.

Mr.Amiga500 said:
No, definitely not. Besides the station in my area, I've read there are still analogue stations in northern Ontario and a few in northern Quebec and the far north. It's weird because they said the station in my area will go down in 2019, then in 2021, then in 2023, but it's still working.

I never "went digital", so I never watched "TV" since the changeover in Canada in 2012.
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Whenever something critical blows up on the analog broadcast circuitry, they'll stop broadcasting. Nobody makes analog broadcast gear anymore. All it will take is one good electrical storm. There were a couple of holdout stations down here in the states after the official changeover date, but they all went off air whenever they had a major equipment failure and ran out of parts.
 
FYI: in the Netherlands TV broadcast over the air has been stopped years ago. And you only find a few FM radio stations. Most use DAT now.
 
DVB-T2 in Croatia, there is no chance in hell of removing TV from the airwaves because the state TV agency is harassing people to pay TV tax.
We have a roof antenna on our building, and it's still operational and I use it with a DVB-T2 receiver, so I'm one of rare people that have airwave TV at home.

(I don't pay the tax, I simply do not talk with controllers or anyone coming to my door without a warrant)

As for "compatibility", well I had to get a receiver box for T2 because the TV did support it but the chip was slow to decode A/V with sync, the audio was lagging. So if they change the signals you can always get a receiver cheaply.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Further hamstringing the standard is a company called Constellation Designs, who owns several ATSC 3 patents.
Click to expand...

Same crap with US digital FM broadcasts. Cram more crap channels onto an FM channel. Use single-source proprietary codecs. Splatter into first adjacent channels.
Fortunately, they didn't force analog FM Stereo off the air like they did with TV to harvest a bunch of their bandwidth for cell companies.
 
Ah, talking about the old analogue broadcasting standards does bring back the '80s.

I want my,
I want my,
I want my NTSC...
 
cjs said:
Ah, talking about the old analogue broadcasting standards does bring back the '80s.

I want my,
I want my,
I want my NTSC...
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When did Japan stop with MUSE BS? I seem you had a period where you had a relatively diverse variety of OTA and satellite HD systems. 1Seg is pretty fun.
 
NeXT said:
When did Japan stop with MUSE BS? I seem you had a period where you had a relatively diverse variety of OTA and satellite HD systems. 1Seg is pretty fun.
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I have no idea, actually. I did have actual OTA TV here for a little while first in the early oughts, via a VCR that I guess I'd run into a monitor with CVBS input, and later digital via a Sony box (whose name I can't remember, but I could dig it up) connected to my PS3, but the 1seg phones came and went, and then "smart hoes" came in and pretty much everything went Internet. So now it's just Netflix, Hulu (the Japanese one; it's a separate thing from the U.S. one) and Amazon Video for me. But of course all but the first still have burned-in captions on almost all material, sheesh.
 
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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