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FCC Working on 4K TV Broadcasting Over the Air

posted by on Monday February 06 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the mine-eyes-have-seen-the-glory dept.

mcgrew writes:

A couple of weeks ago in news of someone coming out with 8K resolution televisions, I left a comment to the effect that I have a 4K TV, but there's no 4K content, so an 8K TV was a bit silly. Someone said they thought Netflix had a couple of 4K offerings.

I recently ran across news that I'll have 4K content in the nebulous future. The FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] is taking its first steps toward over the air 4K broadcasts. but it appears that it may be a while before I see it.

There's more about it here at CNet. But all three articles raise questions that aren't answered, primarily, what about bandwidth? It seems to me that without extremely tight lossy compression, it would take four times the bandwidth of 1080p. Will quality be much better than 1080p after they compress the signal?

How will they get around that? Will I lose some side channels? What do you folks have to say?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @04:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @04:14PM (#463478)

    Most people don't understand that the Cable/Satellite providers "compress" the HDTV signals. If your TV has a coax input, get an antenna and watch OverTheAir (OTA) and you will see the difference. Don't want to watch commercials, get a MythTV or other PVR box and record OTA and skip the commercials.

    You could also have a cheap TV that can't properly decode the signals, but my bet is on your cable/satellite provider as who you need to complain to.

    My wife is amazed that OTA is better than any other source.