FCC and 4K Ultra HD Broadcasts

Saw an article a little while back saying today's 4K TV will not receive OTA so wait before you buy.

It was a long technical paper, I only read the first paragraph.

I would be rather surprised if the 4K broadcasting scheme was incompatible with existing broadcasts in the way that digital TV was incompatible with analog. Actual 4K broadcasts would not be viewable on a TV that didn't support them, but other digital broadcasting should (I think) be able to continue alongside, rather than requiring every television to switch over.

I rather doubt there would be a lot of over-the-air 4K broadcasts in practice, as the bandwidth that one such broadcast would require could be used for a larger number of lower-resolution, lower-quality feeds. You can already see that in some cases with existing digital channels where they cram in several sub-channels at lower quality rather than having a single high quality HD broadcast.

leeper wrote:
The FCC is working on changing the way TV signals are transmitted as they did before. They are getting ready to change things so TV stations broadcast in 4K Ultra HD and a better reception. They just opened discussions on next generation broadcast TV standards. Here we go again.

ummmm.. ATSC-3 development has been going on for years with no involvement from the FCC, this is a manufacturer and industry led development. Nothing has changed whatsoever with this research. The ONLY thing that has happened with the FCC in recent weeks is the announced results of the latest spectrum auction that has nothing to do with any Next Gen TV. It's nothing more than another spectrum grab by the wireless companies that the FCC thought they were going to get hundreds of billions of dollars for. Didn't happen.

OBTW- all but a very few TV's out there today are not compatible with ATSC-3, and none of them contain the interactive that AFAIK is not finalized. It's gonna be a tough sell to people with TV's that simply don't fail anymore, and there will be no subsidies this time

By "fuzzy" I mean resolution that is too low for either the size of the screen or the distance one is sitting from it.

High(er) resolution can look great, or near great, for all viewers at any home screen size or any home viewing distance. It's just plain a more versatile way to transmit a video product for as broad a customer base as possible. There is no substitute for higher resolution and a full color spectrum.

FWIW, some prefer a viewing experience that as close as possible matches what they see through their own eyes in real life - as if a "screen" wasn't there at all. The sourcing and receiving technology for in-home and in-RV viewing near to that is now available and affordable. Of course, many viewers still only feel that they need good enough video.

There should be no, or at least darn few "SD" analog fuzzy shows.

or are you just talking of the resolution from the old shows.. Which are most of what I watch.

But then I don't have a 'Bigger than life' TV.

Bout time!!!!

I'm pretty tired of watching good old SD (Standard Definition) material on the channels. We always try to watch HD (High Definition) channels if possible, but as a consequence we pass up a lot of otherwise great material that is just too fuzzy in SD to concentrate on content.

We have a 4K big screen TV and HD material looks so great on it upconverted to 4K that we don't "need" 4K material to really enjoy the images it puts out. Screen size and viewing distance has a lot to do with it. With a small enough screen or sitting back far enough from a large screen ... I guess that SD video content could be tolerable.