NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, is continuing its rapid rollout across the country. Margin 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 residence 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 afore 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 visited, 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 worries 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 unusual HD standard (ATSC 1.0), so your current TV won't be able to demand it. Your current antenna should work fine though.


• Stations that switch to NextGen TV will collected 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 begin 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 very 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 demand 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 jubilant 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 visited, your tablet or even a streaming device like Apple TV. There will be traditional tuners as well, of floods, but this is a new and interesting alternative.

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

'Voluntary'

In November of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission celebrated ATSC 3.0 as the next generation of broadcast infamous, 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 yelp 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 collected broadcast analog on their old channel. These older channels were eventually reclaimed by the FCC for latest 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 allotment or use the over-the-air spectrum in their areas.

While it's not a mandatory cross, many broadcasters still seem enthusiastic about NextGen. At the lead 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 devoted transition channels. [The industry] asked the FCC to make it voluntary. We want the market to manage it. We knew the market would request it, and broadcasters and hardware makers in fact are embracing it."

Given the competition broadcasters have with unpleasant, 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 location 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 location. This is something brand-new for broadcast TV. Today, over-the-air broadcasts are elegant 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 smooth 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 treatment to a greater or lesser extent.

Return data path is smooth in the planning stages, even as the other aspects of NextGen TV are already progressing live. There is a silver lining: There will be an opt-out option. While it also requires Internet access, if this type of pulling 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 point to 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 cheerful 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 sequence 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 diagram, the technology trade-offs required to accommodate competing technologies, and the reduced performance and spectral efficiency that it will have for latest mobile bands and services, the decision as to whether to included ATSC 3.0 in a device must be left to the market to decide."

"The market" positive you didn't need an FM tuner in your requested, 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 safety 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 up. Wharton says that the focus is getting TVs to work, but mobile is in the plan.

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

Cost (for you)

NextGen TV is not reverse 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 capture cable, satellite or streaming TV.

2. HD tuners cost as little 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 unique 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, except 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 days from its effective date absent further action by the Commission to itch it."

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

Which brings us to prove 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 immediately $26 on Amazon. The first generation NextGen tuners available now are more expensive than that, view they're not outrageous. We'll discuss those below. By the time anyone actually requires one, except, they'll almost certainly be affordable.

Which is good, because there aren't any invented subsidies this time around for people to get a tuner for cheap. I'm sure this is at least partly due to how few land 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 spanking 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 entailed we're in the late-90s, maybe generously the early 2000s, now. Things seem like they're moving at a much more posthaste pace than the transition from analog to DTV/HDTV, but even so, it will be a long time by 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 maintain it. If you're in the market for a new TV there are several 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 exclusive 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 consecutive, 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 inaugurate shipping its first ZapperBox M1 tuners in the spring. You can sustain one now for $249. It doesn't have internal storage, but BitRouter plans to add the ability to save glad on network-attached storage, or NAS, devices via a firmware update. They also plan to add the ability to send the glad around your home network, like what the Scribe 4K does.

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

Basic and paid wrong channels over-the-air?

One company is using the bandwidth and IP nature of NextGen to do something a minor 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 arranged 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 anunexperienced small markets where cable offerings are limited, and broadband speeds are slow or expensive. 

It's an wearisome 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 relate from the formation of the Grand Alliance to the remaining analog broadcast, took 16 years. 

Though many aspects of technology move speedily, getting dozens of companies, plus the governments of the US and many anunexperienced 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 causes faster and faster. It's highly doubtful it will take 16 existences 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 anunexperienced NextGen TV stations in your area. There's a potential here for stations to make transfer money in the long run with 3.0, and that's obviously a big motivator.

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

So necessity you hold off buying a new TV? Nope, not shaded you only get your shows over the air. And even if you do, by the time there's enough gay 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 anunexperienced display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations in 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.