Category: Cord Cutting

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Send In The Clones! Cloning the Silver Sensor

The Zenith Silver Sensor.

For many years one of our favorite antennas, and our go-to antenna for on-the-road OTA, was the venerable Silver Sensor. It’s on the compact side and has an interesting reception pattern – it’s somewhat directional and rejects signals from the back, but has a rather wide reception from the front.  We had one since the early 2000s and for a time it was even mast-mounted outdoors, serving as a household main antenna for a DIRECTV TiVo HR10-250 beta unit. More recently its been on trips throughout California, Nevada and Arizona to tangle with ATSC 3.0 emissions.

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The Project Entangle EX

 

Project Entangle – our platform for exploring ways of obtaining and consuming media – was developed on PCs and up until now Entangle platforms have largely been laptops or NUCs. They make great development environments and have a plethora of tools often missing from embedded platforms. But even “thin and light” laptops are big and power-hungry compared to most set-top boxes, and, we’ve always kept an eye out for ways we might piece together a more compact version. And we finally took our first step in that direction with a Raspberry Pi 4 and HDHomerun Flex 4k packaged in a DeskPi Pro chassis.

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Koherence’s response to FCC Docket 16-142 and ATSC 3.0 DRM

As broadcasters have started turning on DRM for their services, viewers using HDHomeruns and other devices have started to lose access to those services. Here in the SF Bay Area, CBS, NBC, and Univision stations have encrypted their services while ABC, FOX, and the independent KRON remain in the clear. On a recent trip to Honolulu we also noted a number services have flipped the protection switch since our previous trip in February. As a result we have switched back to the ATSC 1.0 versions of these services, where we an record, watch, trick play, and stream throughout and outside the home via Project Entangle. (We are pleased that to date ABC has resisted the urge to protect their 3.0 service and enjoy ABC Nightly News via KGO’s 3.0 service.)

In response to the frustrations of losing access to protected 3.0 services, Lon Seidman started a change.org petition urging the FCC to take action and prevent broadcasters from encrypting their services. Readers of this blog know that we do not view protection of 3.0 services favorably – in particular services which are comparable to existing free and in-the-clear ATSC 1.0 services (which is at present basically all 3.0 services). There is a place for DRM in ATSC 3.0, and Evoca’s service was a great example.

If you haven’t signed the change.org petition, we urge you to do so. It can be found at:

https://www.change.org/p/tell-the-fcc-no-drm-encryption-of-atsc-3-0-broadcasts

Lon Seidman also filed a complaint with the FCC. In their reply the FCC provided a way for consumers to share their experiences and how they are harmed by ATSC 3.0 DRM. We encourage you to submit a comment via

https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express

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Enhancing OTA ATSC Reception Through Diversity

One of the goals of Project Entangle is to receive The Perfect Broadcast – a transport stream with no bits missing or in error. As anyone using OTA ATSC (and since you’re reading this you’re probably one of them) knows, this can be a challenging endeavor. Signals can be too weak, and ironically too strong. Multipath can turn an otherwise strong  signal error-prone. Dynamic multipath is even harder to deal with as the demodulator needs to adapt to the changing properties of the signal.

But hard doesn’t mean impossible. One of the methods for obtaining The Perfect Broadcast that Project Entangle has been investigating is diversity. Essentially, diversity involves receiving two or more versions of a broadcast in different ways. The various versions are then combined to yield a signal that’s better than any of the individually received ones.
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DIRECTV Now: A Good Start, Hoping For More Later

DIRECTV Now is a service I’d really like to succeed. After dropping Comcast there were a few channels that I missed. Like Science and BBC America. (We’ll ignore the little detail that one of the reasons I dropped Comcast, aside from their ever-increasing prices, was their seeming inability to actually deliver a reliable signal in the first place…) DIRECTV Now seemed like a godsend. Their initial promotion had the Go Big package for $35/month. No hidden taxes or fees. No years-long commitment. Plus, no cables to run or satellite dishes to mount.

I eagerly signed up for DIRECTV Now soon after it launched in late 2016, and was initially quite impressed. The video quality via AppleTV on a 55″ TV or on my iPad was quite good. No buffering or other issues which one might associate with streaming. There was the occasional bout of block noise, but these were infrequent and transient. But after waiting patiently for a year and a half for a decent DVR service, I finally cancelled my subscription. DIRECTV Now is a great solution for those of you who like to watch linear TV linearly. But it’s not so great if you’re used to trick modes or do a lot of time shifting.

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