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BPS is a GPS alternative that nobody's heard of

jeffgeerling.com

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

#141

Post by threemux »

pridkett wrote: post #92
threemux wrote: post #85

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…

I have an older HDHomerun - it's great! Most of the 3.0 stations in my area are already encrypted so I haven't bothered to upgrade

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

#143

Post by timthorn »

louthy wrote: post #133
timthorn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When EE launched 5G in the UK, they took out a full page ad with a massive headline saying simply "A real crowd pleaser" One of the best adverts for a long time - if you knew about the technical advantages of 5G, it had a real double meaning. If you knew 90s British dance music, it had a further humourous double meaning promoting the telco (an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode)

> an oblique reference to The Shamen's Ebenezer Goode That didn’t even cross my mind and Rich West (Mr. C) is a friend of mine and I know the song well. I, of course, get the reference now it has been pointed out, but you’re right that it’s pretty damn oblique!

I never knew 'Eezer, but do pass on my thanks to Rich for some brilliant tunes from my younger years!

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

#144

Post by amelius »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #45
lxgr wrote: post #21

High-power, and ideally authenticated, alternatives to space-based GNSS are desperately needed, given the sharp uptick in jamming and spoofing incidents in many places. In a true "end of history" moment, the US and other NATO members discontinued both of their ground-based systems (which are inherently harder to jam due to their much higher transmission power, since transmitters are not power limited) – Omega in the…

You can't really beat a jammer, sure you can compete for power output, but there is no real stopping it. Aircraft and military positioning concepts are evolving towards more map and dead reckoning, lessening the benefit of GPS jamming.

What if you used directional antennas?

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

#145

Post by elzbardico »

Lammy wrote: post #15

I hope it will still be possible to receive a BPS timing signal privately and anonymously with ATSC 3 like one can with GPS. ATSC 3 has the Dedicated Return Channel because marketers “““need””” to spy on every-fucking-thing we do: https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04... “Conventional linear TV services alone (albeit ultra-high-definition) may not be sufficient to sustain the terrestrial broadc…

We should create technology that deliberately feeds trash data to marketers, in mind-boggling volumes. Drowning the signal in a biblical flooding of noise.

We should make things so useless and annoying for them, as they did for us.

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

#146

Post by Lammy »

lxgr wrote: post #127
xattt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized the BPS is there to augment the return channel. Not only can the advertiser figure out what you are watching, but also where you are located.

Wi-Fi geolocation has been around for a while now and is very accurate too, so if TV/receiver manufacturers choose to reveal your location to advertisers (whether out of their own greed or because it's required to receive ATSC 3.0 DRM keys), they can already do so without any problem.

Thanks to the beamforming that's central to modern Wi-Fi and 5G cellular standards they can even see through your walls using the backscattered energy of the steered beam, like an airport security scanner for the entire planet:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf

https://people.csail.mit.edu/fadel/papers/wivi-paper.pdf

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

#147

Post by Lammy »

arghwhat wrote: post #75
m463 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like 5G, which provides unexpected connectivity for IoT devices. Search for "miot" or "mmtc"

There is zero relation there. OP is falling about the spec incorporating usage monitoring. 5G was designed with a very public and explicit goal for IoT of allowing many more devices to connect than 4G could, and more conveniently. Nothing unexpected or user-harming, and nothing new as 4G was already used for IoT.

> Nothing unexpected or user-harming, and nothing new as 4G was already used for IoT.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-...

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

#148

Post by Lammy »

swores wrote: post #83
Lammy wrote: post #15

I hope it will still be possible to receive a BPS timing signal privately and anonymously with ATSC 3 like one can with GPS. ATSC 3 has the Dedicated Return Channel because marketers “““need””” to spy on every-fucking-thing we do: https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A323-2024-04... “Conventional linear TV services alone (albeit ultra-high-definition) may not be sufficient to sustain the terrestrial broadc…

> "That's a lot of fancy words to say ‘we're doing this because it makes us more money’ lol" You say that as if they're using lots of words to obfuscate that fact, but the quote you pasted has them saying entirely directly " maximize the network Return on Investment ", which is just normal business terminology (and only one word more than your "it makes us more money"!) Obviously this has no impact on whether that's…

The utilization of an expanded lexicon, replete with polysyllabic and sesquipedalian terminology, engenders an ostensibly enhanced verisimilitude and an amplified capacity for rhetorical suasion in the articulation of one's propositional assertions.

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

#149

Post by Lammy »

mindslight wrote: post #135
kmeisthax wrote: post #38

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…

I would think that the expectation is for the common option to be IP backhaul based on embedded LTE/5G modems. Having a separate communication scheme is probably more of a hedge for super rural areas that don't have LTE/5G or other IP coverage, especially as that is where broadcast TV will have more staying power.

This is my understanding as well. You can see the usage-reporting scheme and data structure here: https://www.atsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/A333-2024-04...

“The fundamental record that captures consumption information is called a Consumption Data Unit (CDU). For a streaming A/V channel, each CDU identifies a reporting interval during which a service is accessed. Such a CDU includes the service identifier, the time the service access started and the time the service access ended. If any Applications are active during the report interval, it also records when the Applications are active (whether on a primary device or a “second screen”, companion device), including the Application Identifier, the time the Application started being active, and the time it stopped being active.”

“For services, events logged into a CDU shall correspond to all usage intervals of no less than 10 seconds and may correspond to shorter usage intervals. For Application activity, events logged into a CDU shall correspond to all usage intervals of no less than 5 seconds and may correspond to shorter usage intervals. The precision and accuracy of start times and end times in the CDUs should be within 1 second.”

The payload schema is a 4651-byte JSON structure, so I would imagine that a response-payload fitting this schema would be same-order-of-magnitude size. With 10-second granularity that works out to roughly a half-kilobyte-per-second data rate, and according to the DRC spec the maximum payload size of one DRC message is 2048 bytes.

It will also report when you play something back from a DVR:

“Component.SourceDeliveryPath – Delivery path used for or the source of the content component indicated by the parent Component element.

SourceDeliveryPath.type –

0 – Broadcast delivery (content component is delivered by broadcast)

1 – Broadband delivery (content component is delivered directly by broadband by broadcaster)

2 – Time-shift-buffer source (content source is local time shift buffer)

3 – Hard-drive source (content source is local hard drive)

4 – Delivery via direct connection (HDMI)

5 – Alternate IP delivery (content component is delivered via intermediary)”

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

#150

Post by dajtxx »

Lammy wrote: post #148
swores wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "That's a lot of fancy words to say ‘we're doing this because it makes us more money’ lol" You say that as if they're using lots of words to obfuscate that fact, but the quote you pasted has them saying entirely directly " maximize the network Return on Investment ", which is just normal business terminology (and only one word more than your "it makes us more money"!) Obviously this has no impact on whether that's…

The utilization of an expanded lexicon, replete with polysyllabic and sesquipedalian terminology, engenders an ostensibly enhanced verisimilitude and an amplified capacity for rhetorical suasion in the articulation of one's propositional assertions.

Shorter, Milchick!
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