Consumer Reports is running an article titled Free Over-the-Air TV Is Going to Get Better. They're rolling out a new standard, ATSC 3.0.
According to the article, you'll be able to watch OTA (over the air) TV on your phone or tablet! I wrote an article a few years back wondering why you couldn't already.
It's a fairly long and very informative article, but very much worth a read. It only talks about American broadcasts, no word about when or if it will reach other countries, but my guess is it won't be long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @09:43PM (1 child)
Ah, but you misunderstand who it was "better" for.
It was better for the content providers, as now everything is digital they can tack on DRM as they like. Better for you the consumer, was never on the table.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday May 29 2017, @10:55PM
Well, I wouldn't say never was--it was just long ago. In the United States, licensed radio (since 1927) and television (since 1934) broadcasters are required by the Federal Communications Commission to serve in the public interest. This was begun during a time when "serving in the public interest" actually meant acting in the interest of public service.
Commonly "public service announcements" are one tool that they use to meet this goal. News and weather broadcasts were also started for the purpose of the benefit to society and communities they would provide, not because they looked like good ways to make money or serve the interests of content providers.
That's pretty much all in the past, of course, but I am old enough to remember when it was taken seriously, and I grew up against that framework. I was actually surprised when the digital disaster happened--in the public interest it would have been added to conventional broadcasting ability, and not have completely replaced it. It was not lost on me, as it seems to have been on so many others, that the radio spectrum formerly devoted to television was sold for cash not long after, despite digital's failures in coverage area and signal degradation.
The More You Know(tm):
http://jux.law/public-service-announcement-requirements/ [jux.law]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_service_announcement [wikipedia.org]
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm [unt.edu]
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101541768 [npr.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_effect [wikipedia.org]