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BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

jeffgeerling.com

111–120 of 179 posts

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same feeling here. ATSC 3.0 with DRM and persistent Internet requirements tells me this is going to be the downfall of OTA television. I can see ATSC 4.0 being a discounted ISP subscription paired with some OTA location checks via BPS.

There is 1 provider for ATSC3 DRM (which is already rolling out in major markets): Google Widevine. There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android. There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine". When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1. I think people should just be aware of the state of play.

Wow, and all that to encrypt hours of ads with a few minutes of the 20th rerun of some show in between...

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So atsc 3 won't work unless you have some continuous "i'm user xyz watching this channel at time x.y.z" going back to the broadcaster? Why would anyone use atsc 3? It's not free over the air, you can't spoof it?

It's not like anyone's gonna ask them. Networks will just label this as ${network name}'s HYPER NEXT GEN 10G TV EXPERIENCE (HNG TV), market the shit out of it, and offer free ESPN on it, tack on some Paramount HBO Supermax Plus for $0.99/year and throw in a half-decent Smart TV as a sign-on bonus, and adoption will skyrocket. TV networks in the US are a living proof that, with enough marketing spend and a pinch of co…

Remember during the switch to digital TV, when marketers convinced half the population that they needed to buy a new "digital antenna" to keep viewing the same channels?

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is 1 provider for ATSC3 DRM (which is already rolling out in major markets): Google Widevine. There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android. There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine". When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1. I think people should just be aware of the state of play.

At NAB someone asked one of the ATSC folks what would happen if the key is compromised and someone didn't connect a receiver to the Internet. The answer was "the receivers have many built in public keys. They should last the lifetime of the device." Concerning because they could have a situation like with some 4K blu ray discs, your hardware becomes obsolete because DRM requires that cat and mouse game...

[deleted]

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same feeling here. ATSC 3.0 with DRM and persistent Internet requirements tells me this is going to be the downfall of OTA television. I can see ATSC 4.0 being a discounted ISP subscription paired with some OTA location checks via BPS.

There is 1 provider for ATSC3 DRM (which is already rolling out in major markets): Google Widevine. There is 1 operating system for ATSC3 DRM: Android. There are several SoCs that can be used for "Level 1 Widevine". When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1. I think people should just be aware of the state of play.

>When a SoC is compromised and the key is leaked from the TEE, all models of that device with the key are now untrusted for Level 1.

Has this actually happened? Especially for "appliances" like set-top boxes or blu-ray players, as opposed to something like a tablet which are presumably easier to hack.

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but don't forget about the upgraded modulation and coding schemes. That might actually help consumers on the edge of coverage receive broadcasts and will definitely be an improvement over creaky 8vsb

I live in an area that is on the edge of coverage and has lots of hills. On ATSC 1.0, CBS is hard to pick up. Frequently unwatchable - which means unreliable for sports. I picked up an HDHomerun Flex 4K a few years ago. Basically the same week that ATSC 3.0 went live. For a few weeks it was glorious. I had no problem picking up CBS (it was broadcast from the same antenna as ATSC 1.0 - so it was the modulation that wa…

>During severe weather, we often lose Internet and power (which knocks out cable TV too). Requiring working internet to watch TV to monitor the progress of a tornado in your area seems stupid and dangerous.

Just listen to radio?

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#117
post #101
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only "18% of U.S. TV households had at least one TV set enabled to receive free, broadcast programming." https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2024/beyond-big-data-the-au...

Wow. Thanks. So when an Americans say they are watching TV, I assume that mostly meant watching Netflix or Cables?

Yes. Satellite dishes also provide service like cable does, a number of "basic" channels included plus options for "premium" channels that cost extra. The basic channels include the broadcast networks for one's geographic area.

They're not that popular but there are similar bundles available over the Internet, YouTube TV is one.

All the national broadcast networks have Internet options, Hulu has shows from multiple networks, Paramount+ has CBS. Both also have shows made for cable & satellite channels and Internet-only programming.

There's a lot more than Netflix too, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+, Disney+, Max, and many others.

Live sports kept people signed up to cable & satellite for a long time, I think now there are Internet options (and probably exclusives, I don't watch sports).

This is from 2022: https://www.nielsen.com/insights/2022/broadband-only-tv-home...

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#118
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Thanks. So when an Americans say they are watching TV, I assume that mostly meant watching Netflix or Cables?

Yes. Satellite dishes also provide service like cable does, a number of "basic" channels included plus options for "premium" channels that cost extra. The basic channels include the broadcast networks for one's geographic area. They're not that popular but there are similar bundles available over the Internet, YouTube TV is one. All the national broadcast networks have Internet options, Hulu has shows from multiple n…

Be aware that the cable tv infrastructure is also the main Internet service provider, many people are like me, paying the cable company for home Internet but not for TV (my plan does include a legally mandated minimum TV service and a TV box but I only have it because it's cheaper than Internet alone for some reason).

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, to be clear, this 'dedicated return channel' is just for TVs to broadcast back to the station that they're watching the adverts? I thought ATSC 3.0 was going to rely on IP backhaul for that. Actually broadcasting back seems... impractical at best. I mean, let's keep in mind, even ATSC 1.0 had really awful reception issues; compared to analog NTSC where there was enough redundancy that you could just tune into a…

Ironically there's no redundancy in NTSC. There are layers of information and they degrade downward until you have just a black and white picture with no sound. In ATSC there is two types of forward error correction on the digital bitstream. The problem it faces is it sits in the same channel allocations as NTSC while having to deliver significantly more information than NTSC. That and the actual digital modulation u…

You can digitize and lossily compress an NTSC signal significantly without losing much detail; that's why I call it redundant. Compression removes redundancy.

In ATSC the tradeoff between compression and error correction is such that a noisy channel is far more likely to cut out or otherwise be unusable than it would have been in NTSC.

Re: BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

#120

Is there any DVB-T equivalent?

Czech technical university - 2018 - https://www.radioeng.cz/fulltexts/2018/18_04_1155_1165.pdf But concepts are translatable to other technologies, for example mobile phone network signals (even without decrypting it) which in most populated areas can have hundreds frequencies by itself. there are literally literally thousands of radio signals around us which can be used for various unintended / non-cooperative purpo…

(some of those thousands signals can be dependent on GPS too...)

it is possible to listen to small part of spectrum thru receivers which enthusiasts connected to internet, without buying anything for example -http://kiwisdr.com/public/

but "high performance signals" are not in frequency range of those radios. but it is possible to hear ham radio, aviation, military, maritime, not only voice but weather fax, other digital signals, all sorts of timing signals...

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