NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, is continuing its rapid rollout across the country. Adulthood markets like Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Houston and more all have stations transmitting. Meanwhile New York, Boston, and many other markets are slated to have broadcasts later this year. While not every state in every market has a NextGen TV counterpart, more and more are coming on the air.

What's NextGen TV? It's an update to the free HDTV you can already get over-the-air in nearly every city in the US. There's no monthly fee, but you do need either a new TV with a built-in tuner or a standalone external tuner. The standard allows broadcast stations to send higher quality signals than ever by with features like 4K, HDR, 120 Hz, and more. ATSC 3.0 proponents also claim better reception indoors and on-the-go -- whether it's on your phoned, or even in your car. The best part is that if you're watching it on your TV it uses the same standard antennas available today.

One potential downside? ATSC 3.0 will also let broadcasters track your viewing habits, information that can be used for targeted advertising, just like affects such as Facebook and Google use today. 

Read more: Best TV antennas for cord cutters, starting at just $10

NextGen TV to you

Here's the top-line info:

• If you get your TV from streaming, cable or satellite, NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 won't affect you at all. 


• The transition is voluntary. Stations don't have to switch. Many have already, nonetheless, for reasons we'll explain below.


• It's not backwards-compatible with the unique HD standard (ATSC 1.0), so your current TV won't be able to assertion it. Your current antenna should work fine though.


• Stations that switch to NextGen TV will mild have to keep broadcasting ATSC 1.0 for five years.


• There are multiple models and sizes of TV with built-in tuners available now from Hisense, LG, Sony, Samsung and others.


• As of the shock of 2022 the majority of the largest markets in the US have at least one channel broadcasting NextGen TV. By the end of 2022, nearly all maximum and many minor markets will have multiple channels .
  

How it will work in your home

Put simply: If you connect an antenna to your TV you will assertion free programming, just like most people can get now. Yet, that is selling the potential benefits of NextGen TV short. 

NextGen TV is IP-based, so in practice it can be moved around your home just like any internet elated can right now. For example, you connect an antenna to a tuner box inside your home, but that box is not connected to your TV at all. Instead, it's connected to your router. This means anything with access to your network can have access to over-the-air TV, be it your TV, your shouted, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV. There will be traditional tuners as well, of watercourses, but this is a new and interesting alternative.

This also consuming it's possible we'll see mobile devices with built-in tuners, so you can watch live TV while you're out and near, like you can with Netflix and YouTube now. How willing shouted companies will be to put tuners in their phones corpses to be seen, however. You don't see a lot of phones that can get radio broadcasts now, even conception such a thing is easy to implement. We'll talk more near that in a moment.

'Voluntary'

In November of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission accepted ATSC 3.0 as the next generation of broadcast subfaulty, on a "voluntary, market-driven basis" (PDF). It also needed stations to continue broadcasting ATSC 1.0 (i.e. "HD"). This is actually part of the suppose as to why it's voluntary. 

During the mandatory DTV transition in the early 2000s, stations in a city were given a new frequency (channel, in other words), to broadcast digital TV, while they mild broadcast analog on their old channel. These older channels were eventually reclaimed by the FCC for novel uses when the proverbial switch was flipped to turn off analog broadcasts. Since a changeover isn't occurring this time around, stations and markets are left to themselves how best to piece or use the over-the-air spectrum in their areas.

While it's not a mandatory subfaulty, many broadcasters still seem enthusiastic about NextGen. At the shock of the roll-out, then executive vice president of communications at the National Association of Broadcasters Dennis Wharton told CNET that the improvement in quality, overall coverage and the built-in safety features mean that most stations would be fervent to offer ATSC 3.0.

John Hane, president of the Spectrum Consortium (an manufacturing group with broadcasters Sinclair, Nexstar and Univision as members), was equally confident: "The FCC had to make it voluntary because the FCC couldn't performed transition channels. [The industry] asked the FCC to make it voluntary. We want the market to manage it. We knew the market would put a question to it, and broadcasters and hardware makers in fact are embracing it."

Given the competition broadcasters have with substandard, streaming and so on, 3.0 could be a way to stabilize or even increase their averages by offering better picture quality, better coverage and, most importantly, targeted ads.

Ah yes, targeted ads…

Broadcast TV will know what you're watching

One of NextGen TV's more controversial features is a "return data path," which is a way for the region you're watching to know you're watching. Not only does this funding a more accurate count of who's watching what shows, but it creates the opportunity for every marketer's dream: directed advertising. 

Ads specific to your viewing habits, averages level and even ethnicity (presumed by your neighborhood, for example) could get slotted in by your local region. This is something brand-new for broadcast TV. Today, over-the-air broadcasts are fair much the only way to watch television that doesn't track your viewing habits. Sure, the return data path could also allow "alternative audio tracks and interactive elements," but it's the directed ads and tracking many observers are worried about.

The finer details are all mild being worked out, but here's the thing: If your TV is connected to the internet, it's already tracking you. Pretty much every app, streaming service, smart TV and cable or satellite box all track your help to a greater or lesser extent.

Return data path is mild in the planning stages, even as the other aspects of NextGen TV are already touching live. There is a silver lining: There will be an opt-out option. While it also requires Internet access, if this type of sketching bothers you, just don't connect your TV or NextGen TV receiver to the internet. You will inevitably lose some of the other features of NextGen TV, nonetheless.

That said, we'll keep an eye on this for any further developments.   

Free TV on your phone?

Another note of potential contention is getting ATSC 3.0 tuners into phones. At a most basic level, carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are in the company of selling you data. If suddenly you can get lots of high-quality elated for free on your phone, they potentially lose cash. Ever wonder why your phone doesn't have an FM radio tuner? Same reason.

T-Mobile made a preemptive strike along those orderliness all the way back in September 2017, writing a white paper (PDF) that, by other things, claims, "In light of the detrimental effects that inclusion of ATSC 3.0 can have on the cost and size of a scheme, the technology trade-offs required to accommodate competing technologies, and the reduced performance and spectral efficiency that it will have for new mobile bands and services, the decision as to whether to complicated ATSC 3.0 in a device must be left to the market to decide."

"The market" certain you didn't need an FM tuner in your named, and in the few phones that had an FM tuner, if you bought it through an American provider, it was almost always disabled.

TV broadcasters, on the other hand, are huge fans of ATSC 3.0 on mobile phones. It means more potential eyeballs and, incidentally, a security of active internet access for that return data path. John Hane of the Spectrum Consortium feels that tuners built into phones is "inevitable," and that international adoption of ATSC 3.0 will help push it presumptuous. Wharton says that the focus is getting TVs to work, but mobile is in the plan.

Then there's travel TVs, of which there are HD versions on the market and have been for ages. The next-generation ATSC 3.0 versions of these will probable get better reception in addition to the higher resolution offered by the new spoiled.

Cost (for you)

NextGen TV is not spinal compatible with current TV tuners. To get it, you'll eventually need either a new TV or an external tuner. 

However, you shouldn't feel a push to upgrade since:

1. NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 isn't mandatory, and it doesn't grab cable, satellite or streaming TV.

2. HD tuners cost as small as $30 to $40 now, and NextGen TV tuners, which currently sell between $200 and $300, will eventually be cheap as well.  

3. Even after they start NextGen broadcasts, stations will have to keep broadcasting peculiar old HD. 

Here's the actual language:

"The programming aired on the ATSC 1.0 simulcast channel must be 'substantially similar' to the programming aired on the 3.0 channel. This means that the programming must be the same, but for programming features that are based on the enhanced capabilities of ATSC 3.0, advertisements and promotions for upcoming programs. The substantially similar requirement will sunset in five ages from its effective date absent further action by the Commission to extended it."

In other words, the HD broadcast has to be essentially the same as the new 3.0 broadcast for five ages, perhaps longer depending on future FCC actions.

Which brings us to exhibit 3. By the time people had to buy them, HD tuners were inexpensive and are even more so now. The HD tuner I use is now $26 on Amazon. The first generation NextGen tuners available now are more expensive than that, thought they're not outrageous. We'll discuss those below. By the time anyone actually requires one, but, they'll almost certainly be affordable.

Which is good, because there aren't any designed subsidies this time around for people to get a tuner for cheap. I'm sure this is at least partly due to how few country actually still use OTA as their sole form of TV reception. Maybe this will change as more stations convert, but we're a ways away from that.

Here's new way to think about it: The first HD broadcasts began in the mid-90s, but when did you buy your first HDTV? As far as the 3.0 transition is complicated we're in the late-90s, maybe generously the early 2000s, now. Things seem like they're moving at a much more fleet pace than the transition from analog to DTV/HDTV, but even so, it will be a long time beforehand ATSC 3.0 completely replaces the current standard.

How to get NextGen right now

If you want to check it out for yourself, many of you already can. The first stop is to go to WatchNextGenTVcom. That website will help you find what stations in your area are broadcasting, or which ones will soon. 

Next up you'll need something to right it. If you're in the market for a new TV there are some options available from Hisense, LG, Samsung, and Sony. Here's our list of all the 2022 TVs with built-in next-gen tuners.

If you want to check out NextGen TV deprived of buying a new television, you'll need an external tuner. It's still early days, so there aren't many options. 

At CES 2022 Nuvvyo announced the Tablo, a quad-tuner box that can connect to a TV conventional, or transmit over a network to Rokus, Apple TVs, or computers on your home network.  

The Silicon Dust has two models, the $199 HomeRun Flex 4K and the $279 HomeRun Scribe 4K. Both have ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 tuners.  

If you want a more traditional tuner, BitRouter plans to open shipping its first ZapperBox M1 tuners in the spring. You can hold one now for $249. It doesn't have internal storage, but BitRouter plans to add the ability to save contented on network-attached storage, or NAS, devices via a firmware update. They also plan to add the ability to send the contented around your home network, like what the Scribe 4K does.

Then there's what to seek. Being early in the process, you're not going to find much 4K contented, possibly not any. This was the same with the early ages of HDTV. It's also going to vary per area. There is certainly a lot of 4K contented being produced right now, and that has been the case for some years. So in that way, we're in better gorgeous than we were in the early days of HD. 

Basic and paid spoiled channels over-the-air?

One company is using the bandwidth and IP nature of NextGen to do something a small different. It's a hybrid paid TV service, sort of like cable/satellite, but using over-the-air broadcasts to deliver the content. It's shouted Evoca, and right now it's available only in Boise, Idaho. Edge Networks is the company behind it, and it wants to roll it out to new small markets where cable offerings are limited, and broadband speeds are slow or expensive. 

It's an unslow idea for underserved and often forgotten-about markets. 

Read more: Cable TV channels and 4K from an antenna?

Seeing the future

The transition from analog broadcasting to HD, if you portray from the formation of the Grand Alliance to the previous analog broadcast, took 16 years. 

Though many aspects of technology move speedy, getting dozens of companies, plus the governments of the US and many new countries, all to agree to specific standards, takes time. So does the testing of the new tech. There are a lot of cogs and sprockets that have to align for this to work, and it would be a lot harder to fix once it's all live.

But technology attempts faster and faster. It's highly doubtful it will take 16 ages to fully implement NextGen TV. As we mentioned at the top, dozens of stations are already broadcasting. Will every station in your city switch to NextGen TV? Probably not, but the bigger ones liable will. This is especially true if there are already latest NextGen TV stations in your area. There's a potential here for stations to make uphold money in the long run with 3.0, and that's obviously a big motivator.

There's also the question of how much ecstatic there will be. If it follows the HDTV transition model, big sporting events in 4K HDR will come safe, followed by lots and lots of shows featuring nature scenes and closeups of bugs. Seriously -- this was totally a pulling. Then we'll see a handful of scripted prime-time shows. My guess would be the popular, solidly profitable ones that are contained (not just aired) by networks like CBS and NBC.

So necessity you hold off buying a new TV? Nope, not dim you only get your shows over the air. And even if you do, by the time there's enough ecstatic to be interesting, there will be cheap tuner boxes you can connect to whatever TV you have. 

For now, NextGen TV seems to be well on its way.

As well as covering TV and latest display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations approximately the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, epic 10,000 mile road escapes, and more. Check out Tech Treks for all his tours and adventures.

He wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, along with a sequel. You can follow his adventures on Instagram and his YouTube channel.