The Future of TV

Hi everyone,

I'm wrapping up my trip to Las Vegas for the annual PBS TechCon and NAB Shows. The former was attended by 600 technical people from PBS stations across the country. The latter was attended by 103,000 people (vendors and attendees), all trying to figure out what the future of broadcasting looks like, and what equipment they should buy, and from whom.

Since the TV industry affects everyone in some way (shows we all like to watch, etc), I figured I'd write a little update on its status. I've tried to make it as non-technical as possible, but inevitably will stray into that area a little. Sorry it's so long!

Some of the biggest topics discussed were:

PBS TechCon:

• PBS Kids 24/7
• PBS has seen a huge increase in viewership following the recent launch of their PBS Kids 24/7 channel. If you're unaware of this new channel, basically, your kids can now watch PBS cartoons at any hour of the day, either on TV from your local PBS station, and/or viewed online at pbskids.org (under video and then Live Video).
• People have written letters and emails to PBS saying how happy they are that their kids can now watch shows in the evening, and learn while doing it.
• As Sarah and I can both attest, Camille has learned so much from PBS shows like Curious George and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood...and I feel like she doesn't even watch that much TV.
• Along with the launch of the PBS Kids 24/7 live stream on its website, PBS plans to add correlating games in between videos, so your child can learn more about the topic just discussed in the show (if they want to).
• PBS will produce some of its scripted dramas in UHD (4k), but they won't air that way anytime soon.
• By the end of the year, PBS will transition the way they send their national shows to local stations, from a satellite data delivery method, to a delivery platform in the cloud through private network connections to said cloud.
• Potential loss of funding from the federal government.
• They feel confident that they'll be able to convince members of congress and the senate to leave the funding in place. Apparently this has been threatened by many a past republican president, only to find it added back in by congress and the senate.
• Public Broadcasting serves a unique need that many people don't understand, or care to understand..."just cut it," they say. Just because a particular person doesn't see public broadcasting as useful, doesn't mean it's worthless and should be eliminated. There are many people who use it as an educational method for low income households (or ours, which I wouldn't consider low income), who would otherwise receive no other education in their early years...so yes, a single mother from Detroit needs public broadcasting! 
• All the topics below were also discussed.

NAB Show 2017

• UHD-1. The public generally knows this as 4k.
• The TV market continues to walk hesitantly towards UHD, as it waits for equipment to catch up in features and for prices to drop.
• Some broadcasters are starting to use UHD from the camera side, but can't distribute it to a TV via over-the-air, cable or satellite methods.
• Live TV shows (especially sports) are also much more complicated to do in UHD, than in HD, so those are still very few in number.
• HDR--High Dynamic Range.
• In my opinion., this one is a pretty subjective feature enhancement.
• Basically it makes it so there is more range in the brightness and darkness of the picture. The shadows aren't as dark and lacking detail, and your TVs can get brighter...pretty significantly brighter.
• It makes TVs behave more like your eyes. Of course that's a good thing, but I think it will be hard for people to notice the difference, if they're not presented with a side-by-side comparison.
• WCG--Wide Color Gamut
• Current TVs are quite limited in the range of colors they can display. I often found this to be the case when, for example, TCU would wear their purple uniforms, only to find out they showed up blue on TV.
• The new color range will include the range of all printable and dye-able colors. It still won't include all visible colors, for technical reasons. It should be a huge improvement, but again, this will be hard for the person at home watching their TV to notice.
• Over-the-Air Repack
• The cell phone industry pushed the FCC to do a frequency reduction on the TV industry. Right now, in each TV market, there are a number of TV stations, but never so many that they filled up all the available slots. So, the FCC decided to reduce the available slots, and "give" it to the cell phone industry, at a substantial cost (in the $billions). 
• The plans are now laid as to which stations will have to move to a different frequency. This is a non-trivial task, as it basically requires all those TV transmitters be replaced (you can't simply re-tune a TV transmitter). Those TV transmitters cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, each.
• This means that over the next 4 years, your favorite over-the-air TV station may have to move to a different frequency. It likely won't start for a year or so, but after they move, you will have to rescan your TV, to find them on their new frequency. They will still have the same channel number on your TV, as that hasn't actually been their true channel number since 2009's transition to digital. They call it a virtual number.
• ATSC 3.0--Next Generation Over-the-Air TV.
• This will be a rough transition over the next 5-15 years. Remember how back in 2009 the country went through a TV transition, where people had to buy little converter boxes, or buy a new TV, in order to watch over-the-TV? That was the transition from analog transmitters to digital transmitters. With that transition, you started getting more TV channels, as analog didn't support more than one per station, and digital does.
• Well, guess what? We're going to do it again, sort of. This time, TV will go from digital TV, that is a linear TV service (this show is live on the air now, with the next show and the next and the next, ...), and will transition to a much different model.
• Essentially, you can think of your local TV stations as a mini-Netflix, or YouTube, using TV radio waves (of their own content of course). Using technology similar to cell phones, TV transmitters will be able to bi-directionally communicate directly with your (new) TVs (or converter boxes) and present choices for what you want to watch, and when, all from your TV. This will be kind of like your cell phone does with data and Netflix, but this would all be free, over the air, with just your TV and an antenna.
• The idea is that over-the-air TV will become an on-demand service, provided locally over the radio waves. It will include a ton more features, but those become a long list. Broadcasters may supplement that service with the help of your local internet connection, but it wouldn't have to, if you don't have internet, or if it's down at the moment (in a natural disaster emergency).
• TV stations will be required to still broadcast their linear channels over the air, using the current technology, for some indeterminate amount of time...I'm guessing a while. There will be both formats available, depending on when each station makes the switch. Or some stations will wait a long time to add ATSC 3.0.
• IP video
• Along with the upgrade to UHD (4k), a lot of manufacturers are advising broadcasters to switch from highly expensive, highly customized equipment to more flexible IP equipment, so we can utilize the vast infrastructure that the IT industry has already created. There are ways this makes sense, but it also complicates things in some situations, so time will tell how this transition actually occurs.
• This may also shift a lot of broadcasting over to facilities like Joseph's datacenter.

Well, the list didn't start out that long, but it kept growing as I thought of other pieces to the TV puzzle update. Good job if you made it through it all! Now, you know a little bit of what I do in my job as a TV Engineer.

-Brian