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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

#171

Post by Lammy »

lxgr wrote: post #125
sznio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you can't innovate, financialize.

But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free? It would be a different story if the DRM were available ubiquitously, e.g. in the way that arguably Widevine is for online streaming (but certainly not broadcast TV). Are rightholders that afraid of unauthorized out-of-market rebroadcasts that they'd rather obliterate their…

> But what even is the business case here? I get the idea of encrypting pay TV, but isn't the entire point of free broadcast TV that it's... free?

This should be a big clue that the spying is the point, and all the DRMs of the world are justification for spying instead of the other way around. Total Information Awareness is the path to completing the Great Work.

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

#172

Post by rocqua »

brookst wrote: post #161
mcculley wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get time with a single tower, but not location.

How do you know time of flight for the signal? Tower sends its coordinates, client uses GPS?

Perhaps they were just hand-fed to demonstrate accuracy. If instead of PPS it gave a 10Mhz reference, then there is a pretty good use in keeping nearby systems sample-synchronized. In which case you don't care about 'time' just about frequency accuracy.

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

#173

Post by throwing_away »

gruez wrote: post #115
throwing_away wrote: post #64

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.

>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.

Yes, it happens all the time, especially as the devices age.

L1 devices remotely downgrade to become L3 devices. This has different effects depending on content provided from "totally unavailable" to "lower resolution".

It's both DRM and planned-obsolescence in one.

The qualifier: https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/security-...

The list: https://android.googleapis.com/attestation/status

The dev docs: https://github.com/doridori/Android-Security-Reference/blob/...

I'm not sure if it's confirmed, but it's believed Level 1 video output contains a watermarking scheme that ties the key to the media, so if it's leaked they can disable the key that leaked the content.

You can search around and find tons of angry consumers shouting into the void about widevine errors on older consumer devices.

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

#174

Post by Kon-Peki »

Marsymars wrote: post #166
mmooss wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Broadcast TV after the digital rollout was so bad many people just stopped watching TV. That is the first time I've heard that. Everything I've heard has been positive - people amazed that others aren't doing it. Are there any numbers on user satisfaction? I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap ( > The people who live close enough to the broadcasts to pick it up…

> I used it myself once or twice and it worked simply with antennas that were relatively cheap ( I don’t know about Minneapolis is particular, but 40 miles is far enough that it gets tricky, and in my Canadian city, I’m close to the towers as the crow flies, but in the RF shadow of a huge hill - so I’d actually get better reception if I was further away from the broadcast towers.

Minneapolis is in a river valley (the Mississippi River). From an airplane at cruising altitude the area will look fairly flat, but down at ground level there is a ton of 50-100 foot undulation. The elevation of your antenna is probably far more important than the quality of your antenna.

Fun: if you’ve got Apple Maps (I’m sure Android has this as well), ask for walking directions from Minneapolis to something 35-40 miles away. I chose “Elko New Market” - 36 miles from downtown. Click on the walking details and you can see the elevation change. You’re going from around 800 feet above sea level to 1100 feet above sea level, a difference of ~300 feet. But the total change over the course of the walk is nearly 4000 feet!

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

#175

Post by WorldMaker »

geerlingguy wrote: post #102
throwing_away wrote: post #64

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...

Also with some manufacturers believing the lifetime of a device should be less than 5 years and ideally less than 3 years, and are treating software/firmware support in those lifetimes, there's a lot of perverse incentives hidden behind anyone suggesting "for the lifetime of the device". As bad as some of the old cable monopolies were, they were at least sometimes held to Ma Bell's "the lifetime of a device is supposed to be 60 years" standards (which Ma Bell didn't always follow either, but that's another matter). I realize the ATSC exists primarily to sell new standards, but maybe we need ways to get back to longer planning horizons than 3-5 years.

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

#176

Post by WorldMaker »

lxgr wrote: post #137
aydyn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, the majority of under 40 are still watching "TV" but just through intertube streaming. netflix, apple TV, amazon, and so on, all except apple have ads too.

That's not really "TV", though (at least unless you'd also consider people buying a film or show on VHS or DVD "television").

Some of it is still linear like broadcast, if that's your personal distinction. Pluto, for instance, has a surprisingly large audience. The return of linear TV is also a big buzzword in streaming today with a lot of the majors experimenting with or already reintegrating linear TV options (partly because services like Pluto proved it out, partly because some of the streamers realized linear again is the ultimate endgame of Netflix-like binge watching and YouTube-like autoplay and want to skip the intermediate steps and return to the original thing).

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

#177

Post by WorldMaker »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #131
aydyn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, the majority of under 40 are still watching "TV" but just through intertube streaming. netflix, apple TV, amazon, and so on, all except apple have ads too.

The post I responded to mentioned TV networks, not TV. In a thread discussing over the air TV, I took that to mean linear programming sold by CBS (soon to be Skydance), NBC (Comcast), ABC (Disney), and Fox (also Disney, I think), and the CW (Nexstar). The crux of the matter being that even if OTA channels didn’t track people’s location, it wouldn’t matter since OTA itself going the way of the dodo.

Fox TV stations are now Fox Corp, aka "New Fox", the more direct successor to News Corp. Disney bought most (but not all) of News Corp's TV studio and film studio but knew it couldn't get past the FCC if it bought the TV stations (especially the sports stations).

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

#178

Post by lxgr »

WorldMaker wrote: post #176
lxgr wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really "TV", though (at least unless you'd also consider people buying a film or show on VHS or DVD "television").

Some of it is still linear like broadcast, if that's your personal distinction. Pluto, for instance, has a surprisingly large audience. The return of linear TV is also a big buzzword in streaming today with a lot of the majors experimenting with or already reintegrating linear TV options (partly because services like Pluto proved it out, partly because some of the streamers realized linear again is the ultimate endga…

Yes, there definitely is linear programming over the Internet, both free and paid.

We've finally come full circle: Linear broadcast TV -> TiVo (finally, no more missed episodes!) -> VOD, i.e. Netflix, Max, Hulu etc. (why linear broadcast everything to everyone if we can just OTT stream everything individually?) -> FAST, i.e. Pluto TV etc.

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

#179

Post by [deleted] »

WorldMaker wrote: post #177
lotsofpulp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post I responded to mentioned TV networks, not TV. In a thread discussing over the air TV, I took that to mean linear programming sold by CBS (soon to be Skydance), NBC (Comcast), ABC (Disney), and Fox (also Disney, I think), and the CW (Nexstar). The crux of the matter being that even if OTA channels didn’t track people’s location, it wouldn’t matter since OTA itself going the way of the dodo.

Fox TV stations are now Fox Corp, aka "New Fox", the more direct successor to News Corp. Disney bought most (but not all) of News Corp's TV studio and film studio but knew it couldn't get past the FCC if it bought the TV stations (especially the sports stations).

[deleted]
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