# ATSC 2.0 almost here, ATSC 3.0 coming in a few years



## WooferHound (Dec 8, 2010)

ATSC 2.0 expected to be voted on this year.
It will enable over-the-air video-on-demand, online interactivity, push alerts to sleeping TVs, and the ability to watch two channels simultaneously on a single screen, among other functions. It will be compatible and continue to support the type of linear service now enabled by ATSC 1.0.

ATSC 3.0 expected to be voted on in 2016
It will be a radical departure from the current standard. ATSC 1.0 was developed around 20 years ago, when cellphones were analog and streaming was unheard of. It relies 8-VSB modulation capable of delivering 19.39 Mbps in a 6 MHz TV channel—enough to carry a ultra-high-definition program with a resolution of 3840×2160 at 60 fps compressed by a factor of 50 using MPEG-2 to a fixed receiver.
The most differentiating characteristic of ATSC 3.0 is that it will not be backward-compatible with 1.0 or even 2.0, which is now in development. In other words, televisions now capable of processing over-the-air TV signals will not be able to decode ATSC 3.0 signals.

Full Story
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/tv-tomorrow-atsc--advances/221069
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Television_Systems_Committee_standards#Future


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## WooferHound (Dec 8, 2010)

Will we ever get away from using Converter Boxes for our TVs ?


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