Looking for ATSC 3 opinions

[BillOatman 502]

The first local channel to go ATSC 3 goes live in a month.  I would imagine others will follow. Before I upgrade my HdHomerun, I'm looking for opinions on how much of a difference people notice with ATSC 3, video as well as audio.  My setup is a Windows Emby server, what would be a HdHomerun 4K, and a Shield.  No surround at the moment, but that could change.  Thanks!

Edited February 23, 2023 by BillOatman

[MBSki 1025]

I don't see any quality difference. Everything I've recorded is still 720 and audio is no better than what I get on cable. The only difference I've seen is that the files are smaller.

[roaku 797]

The handful in my area are just clones of concurrently existing HD channels and are only a few months old. Same resolution and audio, the video is just HEVC.

[TMCsw 123]

Advantages:

• The biggest advantage of ATSC 3.0 for me is rock solid reception as it seems to be much more resistant to weather, solar flares etc.
• Picture quality seems to be a little crisper and smoother for sports and action scenes.
• The pre-encoded HEVC file size is nice.

Disadveantages:

• The current uncertainty of DRM implementation
• Cost of tuners

...It may be better to wait a while before ingesting in new equipment ?...

[BillOatman 502]

On 2/23/2023 at 6:40 PM, TMCsw said:

Advantages:

• The biggest advantage of ATSC 3.0 for me is rock solid reception as it seems to be much more resistant to weather, solar flares etc.
• Picture quality seems to be a little crisper and smoother for sports and action scenes.
• The pre-encoded HEVC file size is nice.

Disadveantages:

• The current uncertainty of DRM implementation
• Cost of tuners

...It may be better to wait a while before ingesting in new equipment ?...

Yeah I emailed the station to ask if they were going to increase resolution or improve audio.  I'll probably wait to hear back.

Tuners should come down in price at some point as well.

[emveepee 112]

Right now since a few big 5 commercial networks are already starting to use DRM with ATSC 3 and there hasn't been any statement on Emby for their support of the A3SC standard I think this post https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=389762#p389762 needs to be factored into purchase decisions.

It seems that HDR is the big thing coming with ATSC not 4K, not sure how that is working with Emby Live TV now either.

Martin

[rdhardi 19]

I cancelled cable TV service with my ISP in December. Turned in my cable card (which had gone from $2 to $6/month)  and bought a HDHR Flex 4K to replace my HDHR Prime. My bill decreased by more than half! But with ATSC3 channels starting to use DRM (so far for me, it's only the NBC channel, but I'm sure the others will soon follow), I'm thinking I should have waited before investing money in a new tuner...

My setup is Emby server on Ubuntu 20.04, HDHR Flex 4K, surround sound on Yamaha AVR. Personally, I don't notice much difference in quality on the ATSC channels.

If you're interested, I posted my experience with ATSC DRM on another thread earlier today:
https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/115470-atsc3-with-drm-is-coming-say-goodbye/#comment-1235428

 

Edited March 18, 2023 by rdhardi
typo

[BillOatman 502]

Thans @rdhardi.  I'm reposting this link from your other thread as it has some very good information.

Requirements to playback DRM-restricted channels in the HDHomeRun app

[emveepee 112]

Is that link relevant to ATSC 3?  I think that was for their cable card support since they don't even have public firmware that supports A3SA encryption yet.

I guess from an Emby perspective it doesn't matter in the end.

Martin

Edited March 18, 2023 by emveepee

[rdhardi 19]

Thanks @emveepee I'm still a noob in the world of streaming/broadcasting, still learning my way through this confusing (to me) mess! After researching A3SA and spending some time on the Silicon Dust forums, you are correct, they don't have the firmware yet. No ETA that I could find, but they say the HDHomeRun ATSC 3.0 models will be "upgraded for protected content with a firmware upgrade".

And yeah, sadly, for Emby it doesn't matter at all.

Source: https://forum.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=390355#p390355

Edited March 23, 2023 by rdhardi
typo

[rbknox 4]

First SF Bay area 3.0 broadcasts started last week.  Not much to be excited about, particularly because my reception is spotty at best.

With Emby I have noticed a couple issues:

- tuning time for 3.0 channel is almost 30 seconds (Emby Theater on Windows) versus about 5 s on HDHR app.
- Emby (Server I think) not releasing ATSC 3.0 channels on HDHR Connect (there are only 2 that can play 3.0).  My experience is that Emby Server holds on to tuner.  Then I get a no streams available error message.

[emveepee 112]

We don't have ATSC 3 in Canada and I don't use Emby either  but testing remotely with a NextPVR direct play ATSC 3.0 client, I found there can be a drastic difference at the backend for the time tuning to a channel that is already tuned vs. one that is not tuned.  If it is not tuned I never saw 30s but ~15s to receive enough data to steady stream seemed "normal".  The followup call on the same tuner could be about 5s. 

Martin

[rbknox 4]

Again, Emby is not particularly fast at tuning in general, but a regular channel typically takes about 8 seconds, which is comparable to the hdhr app.   For ATSC 3.0 stations, the emby tune time stretches to over 30s.  It seems to be divided into 2 phases: the first with the spinning wheel but no screen change takes over 20s.  Then the screen blanks, the wheel continues, for another 10s before audio and video appear.   

Further on the releasing of 3.0 channels.  I turned off the Playback feature that allows the current channel to continue in the background.  That seems to have fixed the releasing of the 3.0 tuners.

[rbknox 4]

On 4/21/2023 at 1:33 PM, rbknox said:

Again, Emby is not particularly fast at tuning in general, but a regular channel typically takes about 8 seconds, which is comparable to the hdhr app.   For ATSC 3.0 stations, the emby tune time stretches to over 30s.  It seems to be divided into 2 phases: the first with the spinning wheel but no screen change takes over 20s.  Then the screen blanks, the wheel continues, for another 10s before audio and video appear.   

Further on the releasing of 3.0 channels.  I turned off the Playback feature that allows the current channel to continue in the background.  That seems to have fixed the releasing of the 3.0 tuners.

The tuning time for ATSC 3.0 stations has improved considerably.  Not sure when this happened but tuning time is now comparable to other OTA/cable channels, somewhere around 8s for me..