Silicon Dust just announced the commercial release (pre-order) of the HDHomeRun Connect 4K (two ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners, two ATSC 1.0 tuners). It works with their separate DVR (I didn’t order that yet - wanting to look at several options). Price is $199.99 (free shipping - no taxes).
There are a couple of options for DVR (Scribe for their version - comes with tuners - or Channels DVR - which incorporates many streaming options into one guide - but requires a PC).
I ordered the 4K Connect…
Hopefully Nickk has everything patched together by the time your unit arrives.
https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=133&t=74290
ONE Media’s ATSC 3.0 Smartphone Becomes a Reality
With a 3.0 smartphone on the way to potentially millions of consumers, it will be easier for the station group to implement another key aspect of its NextGen TV deployment strategy: state government mandates requiring smartphones to be built with 3.0 receivers.
“We are in the process of getting legislation into multiple states, specifically state house and senate legislation in New York at the moment, for a mandate to include ATSC 3.0 receivers in smartphones because of the public safety and public service side of the standard,” he says.
So wether or not ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV is available to you, or you have any interest in using it… broadcasters via state governments are going to mandate your can’t buy a phone without it?
On the other side, if these function accurately, there’s likely a market for them!
I am expecting that is won’t be ready for prime-time…it is going to take a while with frequent firmware/software updates to make everything “great”. The engineers at the stations have “one week” of experience with it…
I am sure over the next few years, it will get better…I just can’t wait knowing that it is out there…
I thought one of the cost benefits that stations “can” take advantage of is that local engineers aren’t required.
When the new ATSC 3.0/1.0 equipment is purchased some brands allow for remote placement or if local placement remote management. If so the experience of the engineering support could be greater then you expect.
I have tons of ATSC 1.0 tuners. Wake me up when there is a box with 4 ATSC 3.0/1.0 tuners or a reasonable priced ATSC 3.0/1.0 box with only 2 tuners.
One of the issues with ATSC 3.0 - it isn’t mandated for every “channel” to upgrade. There is no end of life for ATSC 1.0. I seriously doubt that “mainstream adoption” happens in the next 2-3 years (the main channels of NBC, ABC, CBS, CW, FOX & PBS will be the first to change over). There won’t be a ton of 4K broadcasts in the near future either…
The two biggest advantages are the ability to receive a more stable signal (reliable) and the ability to add more stations to a single broadcast frequency (estimates right now are eight (8) 4K channels on a single RF channel - and up to 32 HD channels on a single broadcast frequency - and even the possibility of up to 100+ SD channels on a single broadcast frequency.
NBC, CBS, KVBO (MyTV affiliate) and the CW in Austin are live (phase 1), broadcasting on KEYE TV (CBS) tower (owned by Sinclair). I am sure more will be added as the stability of the broadcasts continue to evolve. All 4 of these channels are still live on ATSC 1.0 - and are required by law to remain there for at least 5 more years…
And to add one thing - the future of the DVR is somewhat in question with ATSC 3.0 (because of DRM), so designing an ATSC 3.0 DVR may be premature, as additional hardware may be required to accomplish recorded content. I am by no means pushing Tablo to pursue this avenue today.
I received my HDHomeRun 4K, and installed it. It is definitely not ready for “prime-time”. No audio on Roku app, choppiness on playback. FireTV, XBox and Windows app fairly stable.
However, the ATSC 3.0 channels in Austin are not “live” - they are testing them. So, no news on that front - haven’t been able to tune the station…
From reading their boards, there are a lot of issues right now…so, ATSC 3.0 is just a novelty item at this point…
Do any Roku’s besides the brand new ultra support AC-4 via Dolby Atmos.
How many TV’s besides some LG models support Dolby Atmos. And there is playback via sound bars. Or the sound returned to sound bars via HDMI ARC
I am not sure. In reading the forums at SiliconDust, it appears they are working on the Windows 10 App, Browsers and FireTV first - then the Android and IOS apps second. Ironically, they don’t mention the Roku app very often - so I don’t think it is a priority.
I am using a Samsung Soundbar (paired via Digital Optical Audio TOSLINK).
I was watching standard ATSC 1.0 broadcasts (the ATSC 3.0 broadcast in Austin is offline).
It really looks like they are using this as a “public beta”, trying to gather information from different markets to make sure their code is working. They are releasing firmware updates every 2-3 days it seems like.
The tuner was $199 (tax & shipping included), so I thought “why not?”… It also appears that very little programming will actually be in 4K in the near future - as the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts in all the markets right now are standard HD broadcasts.
They are probably using some of this to beat up on the broadcasters so that they fill in all the appropriate fields. And since their are multiple PLP multiplex combos I’m sure they are working their way through what the various areas are doing.
And in the original thread there were a bunch of comments about the ATSC 3.0 extended features needing device level HTML support. And that Roku and Apple TV didn’t have an easy solution to that.
They seem to be updating the firmware and apps almost daily so once they lock things in I’m sure the solution will work it’s way across almost all devices.
Producing local programming like news in 4K requires some large investment in equipment so most 4K would probably be network based. But they could probably easily produce 1080p with existing equipment. So hang in their and frequently up date the firmware. Since ATSC 1.0 seems to be working, being in the tub with other ATSC 3.0 Beta users can be interesting.
My favorite station - H&I (14-3 in Austin) is transmitting on a new tower due to the conversion (it moved from KXAN to KEYE), and they have it set to 4:3 format - and it should be 16:9 (channel 14-2 Bounce is also this way). At least on the TV, I can override the setting and make it 16:9, and it is formatted correctly.
The apps for HDHomeRun allow for “zoom” (not exactly 16:9) - but Tablo and apps have no fix…
It could take a while to get it all fixed…
but ONLY the .1 are currently using ATSC 3.0. The new stations showed up in my TtanTV Guide, but I hid them. I’m in Austin 78758 zipcode close to YMCA on Rundberg.
KEYE-CD has gone live, but then goes offline - rarely is it broadcasting more than 3-4 hours. KXAN, KVNA and KVVBO were only online for about 5 minutes one time. And the broadcast (while in the new format) are only the HD rebroadcast of the regular ATSC 1.0 channels.
The thing that irked me about the repack was KEYE-TV screwing up H&I (14-3) and Bounce (14-2) - they are sending the format as 4:3 in the metadata, but they are actually 16:9. No one from KEYE or KXAN will respond as to how to fix it…so it shows up super small (very large sidebars).
Some general (not Tablo) ATSC 3.0 news today out of CES 2021
Since Cord Cutters News was sold it’s really sad they censored comments. Now it looks like they passed out a book of marketing buzz words for their selective profit generating…news… articles.
We stand for honor, integrity and truth… “oh, look… money!”
Why would someone be surprised by buzz words.
In the early 2000’s a number of tech firms RIF’ed their inhouse tech writers and went with various forms of outsourced tech writers. Since many of these writers changed quite frequently a list of approved words was developed. Our list had 250 words. This reduced the amount of time R&D had to spend figuring out what a particular writer was talking about.
Of course the side affect was that since these tech writers worked from the actual R&D functional specifications some new R&D words didn’t exactly translate to these 250 words.
And sometimes people get tired of working on the same old product and want to move on. So like WhatsApp and Instagram they sell and move on.
Everybody knew what ATSC 3.0 is going to be …yet no one said we’d get tunes and talk radio along with it.
Once the standard defined how the IP stack works with a Radio Frequency couldn’t just about any other product using TCP tag along.
Or at least I thought the vision for the ATSC 3.0 standard was to allow for just about anything.