Tag Archives: ATSC 3.0

Weekly output: FuboTV rate hike, Varjo, NextGen TV, Washington Apple Pi, sustainability at CES, Twitter apps, Mark Vena podcast

Posted on by
Reply

You can imagine how much I appreciate having this holiday weekend follow CES. I came home last Sunday morning exhausted and with a cold–but fortunately not Covid, as verified by three negative tests since then.

(Speaking of CES, Patreon readers got a post sharing more of my notes from the show.)

1/9/2023: FuboTV Increases Rates by $5 a Month, Tacks on ‘RSN’ Fee, PCMag

I have to wonder if Fubo doesn’t have some kind of a death wish, because there’s little else to explain why it would want to adopt one of cable TV’s more loathsome practices by sticking subscribers with a new surcharge for regional sports networks–and doing so on the same day it hikes its advertised rates by $5.

1/10/2023: On the Virtual Road With Varjo’s XR-3 Mixed-Reality Headset, PCMag

I got to try out this high-end headset at the end of a long Friday at CES and came away impressed–not that there’s much consumer-relevant in a device with a five-figure price tag.

Screengrab of the story as seen in Safari on an iPad mini.1/12/2023: NEXTGEN TV’s CES sales pitch: strength in numbers, Fierce Video

I thought I’d see more manufacturers shipping TVs with NextGen (aka ATSC 3.0) tuners, but on the other hand I didn’t expect to learn that those sets made up 8% of all TVs shipped to U.S. dealers last year. That already makes NextGen much more relevant than 8K TV.

1/12/2023: Afternoon Learners SIG, Washington Apple Pi

I joined the virtual meeting of this group (SIG being short for “special interest group”) via Zoom for about an hour to share my impressions of CES and answer questions.

1/13/2023: Green tech and trends at CES 2023 point to environmental progress, Fast Company

After noting all of the green shoots I saw at CES, I had to remind readers of how much Las Vegas remains a monument to car supremacy.

1/13/2023: Third-Party Twitter Apps Stop Working in What Appears to Be a Widespread Outage, PCMag

The fact that Twitter management remains silent about blocking third-party clients shows a colossal amount of disrespect for both the developers of those apps and their customers.

1/14/2023: S03 E43 – SmartTechCheck Podcast, Mark Vena

I shared my impressions of CES and discussed smart-home technology in the first 2023 edition of this podcast, also available via video.

Advertisement

Weekly output: CES 2022 recap (x3), NextGen TV, RCS explained, terms-of-service bill, Mark Vena podcast, Facebook class-action suit, DirecTV to dump OANN

Posted on by
Reply

Instead of trying to get out of D.C. while snow was falling–my situation two Mondays ago–I got to play in the snow this afternoon and evening. That was a lot more fun.

1/10/2022: What it was like to cover a very uncrowded CES during a pandemic, Fast Company

I didn’t start writing this recap of my CES experience until two days after coming home–meaning after I’d had two negative antigen tests.

Screen shot of the story as seen in Safari on an iPad mini 5.1/10/2022: Signals for NEXTGEN TV get a little stronger at CES 2022, FierceVideo

I wrote most of this on my flight back from Vegas, aided by my inflight-productivity hack of not connecting to the WiFi until I had the piece almost entirely written.

1/11/2022: Exploring the Practical and the Fantastical in 5G, Virginia Economic Review

I missed this (non-bylined) feature when it posted; in it, I unpack some interesting work researchers and business types are doing with 5G wireless in my state.

1/11/2022: RCS Explained: Why Google Is Riled Up About It, and Why You Probably Haven’t Used It Yet, PCMag

Google isn’t wrong to complain about Apple leaving iOS-to-Android phone messaging mired in an old, insecure standard, but Google has a lot of work to do in its own house.

1/13/2022: ‘TLDR’ Bill Would Make a Federal Case Out of Unreadable Terms of Service

If a tech-policy story gives you a reasonable opportunity to quote a John Oliver line, you should probably write it.

1/14/2022: SmartTechCheck PodcastS02 E01, Mark Vena

I didn’t join this podcast until the last third of it, owing to a video parent-teacher conference running later than I’d thought possible.

1/14/2022: Pending Facebook Class-Action Suit in UK Claims $3.15B in Damages, PCMag

I made sure to note that the people announcing this lawsuit hadn’t actually filed a complaint, making it hard to judge the merits of their argument.

1/14/2022: CES Virtual Roundtable, Globant

This software consultancy had me on to talk to some of their executives and clients about what I saw at CES.

1/15/2022: Clubhouse Saturday, Washington Apple Pi

I joined this virtual meeting of the local Apple user group for some post-CES Q&A.

1/15/2022: OANN and Done? DirecTV to Dump One America News, PCMag

I enjoyed writing about the impending demise of the sugar-daddy deal this hoax-soaked “news” channel has enjoyed with DirecTV, a bizarre arrangement I critiqued at Forbes two Novembers ago.

Updated 1/23/20222 to add the Virginia Economic Review article.

Weekly output: Internet Assocation, Mercedes EQS, NextGen TV in D.C., DJI investment ban, TikTok hysteria

Posted on by
1

I did not plan to spend so many hours this week in a fruitless search for at-home COVID tests–the worst kind of holiday shopping ever.

12/15/2021: After Microsoft and Uber Flee, The Internet Association Logs Off, PCMag

This post gave me an excuse to dust off some notes from IA events I’d attended in the Before Times.

Screenshot of the PCMag story as seen on an iPad mini 512/16/2021: Like an Electric Spaceship: Hitting the Road in the Mercedes-Benz EQS, PCMag

The EQS 580 I test-drove around Tysons was, at $120,000, easily the most expensive vehicle I have ever taken out for a spin. This was a fun post to write, even if dealing with Tesla fanboys on Twitter afterwards was not so much fun. (Remember, the block button is there for a reason; online malcontents are not entitled to waste your time.)

12/16/2021: ‘NextGen TV’ Broadcasts Now on the Air in DC, PCMag

Almost five years after I first wrote about this upgrade to broadcast television, NextGen TV (originally known as “ATSC 3.0”) is finally on the air in Washington, courtesy of Howard University’s WHUT hosting the signals of the four major network stations here. Another thing that’s changed since the early days of this standard: Compatible sets have gotten much cheaper, even if some major manufacturers continue to sit out NextGen.

12/17/2021: Feds Ground All US Investments in DJI, PCMag

Once the lede for this popped into my head, the rest pretty much wrote itself. Which is a good feeling!

12/18/2021: TikTok school-threat hysteria, Al Jazeera

As my friend Mike Masnick wrote at Techdirt, this wasn’t really a TikTok story but a pack-journalism story: Traditional media outlets raced to cover an alleged post or posts threatening violance against schools without ever pointing to specific posts making such a threat. Note that TikTok says they couldn’t find any such thing.

Weekly output: ATSC 3.0, password managers, AT&T TV, ShowStoppers TV, CDA 230, CES recap, 8K TV, TV tech at CES (x2)

Posted on by
4

Although my Google Maps timeline shows no evidence of CES having happened over the past few days, my calendar and published work (in addition to the posts below, I wrote an extra recap Saturday for Patreon subscribers) leave no doubt that I spent this week “at” this year’s digital-only edition of this trade show.

1/12/2021: ATSC 3.0 backers tout brighter prospects for NEXTGEN TV, FierceVideo

I revisited a subject I covered at CES 2020 for my fave trade-pub client: an upgrade to broadcast TV that might reach more viewers’ homes, especially if TV manufacturers would stop ignoring it.

1/12/2021: Password Managers, U.S. News & World Report

My second project for U.S. News followed the outline of the guides to local Internet providers I helped write a few months ago; after editors analyzed third-party reviews to rank the companies involved, I provided my own context in a profile of each. I thought I knew this category before, but after researching Bitwarden, Keeper, LastPass, Dashlane, 1Password, LogMeOnce, NordPass, KeePassXC, RoboForm, Sticky Password, McAfee True Key, and Zoho Vault (plus head-to-head comparisons of 1Password vs LastPass, Dashlane vs LastPass, and Dashlane vs 1Password), I think I have a much deeper grounding. In the bargain, this work reminded me that I’d been neglecting some useful features in my own password manager, 1Password.

1/12/2021: AT&T TV NotNow: Telco Giant Reshuffles Streaming Services, Forbes

AT&T closing its AT&T TV Now streaming-TV service to new subscribers and making AT&T TV its core video service looked like a welcome stab at simplicity, but then I checked out the fine print in AT&T TV’s two-year-contract option.

1/13/2021: ShowStoppers TV, ShowStoppers

As I did last summer, I emceed the product presentations of three tech companies at an event hosted by the PR firm that, in the Before Times, helped organize my trips to IFA and a few other tech events. Unlike last summer, one of these firms wound up not presenting because they could not get their audio working.

1/13/2021: Special Broadband Breakfast Live Online Town Hall on Section 230, Broadband Breakfast

Twitter’s overdue decision to boot Donald Trump off the service led to this online panel about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that lets online forums remove content that’s legal but “otherwise objectionable.” My fellow panelists: Ranking Digital Rights’ Jessica Dheere, the Cato Institute’s Will Duffield, the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s Ali Sternburg, and tech lawyer Cathy Gellis, with Broadband Breakfast editor and publisher Drew Clark moderating our conversation. The next day, Broadband Breakfast’s Samuel Triginelli wrote up the conversation that you can also watch in the embed below.

1/14/2021: Afternoon Learners SIG, Washington Apple Pi

I joined this meeting of one of WAP’s special interest groups via Zoom to share my thoughts on CES. We lost a good 10 minutes to audio glitches that I couldn’t hear but my audience could, so I stuck around for an extra 10 minutes.

1/14/2021: If You Want To Watch 8K Video On Your 8K TV, You May Have To Record It Yourself, Forbes

Yes, I remain deeply skeptical of 8K TV, even if Samsung’s newest line of smartphones can record in the format.

1/15/2021: Yes, you can have — and deserve — a bigger TV. That’s the theme on display at CES trade show, USA Today

No CES is complete for me without a state-of-the-TV piece. My industry-analyst friend Carolina Milanesi provided an opening quote that was more colorful than usual for this type of story.

1/15/2021: TVs at CES, WLW

This Cincinnati radio station had me on their afternoon drive-time show to talk about TVs. I flubbed a question from the hosts about the price for a 70-inch 4K TV: Because I hadn’t thought to leave a browser tab open to any retailer’s TV listings, I had to try to remember the prices I’d seen at Costco three weeks prior and then overshot the going rate by about 50 percent.

Updated 1/18/2021 to add links to my Patreon post, three other posts in the U.S. News password-manager guide, and Broadband Breakfast’s video and recap. 

Weekly output: OurStreets, ATSC 3.0, innovation in 2020, 5G meets retail, connected-TV privacy, Last Gadget Standing, Korean smart-city tech, best of CES

Posted on by
3

Yet another CES is in the books. It was a tiring week, but once again I got an enormous amount out of the show. And it is nice to think that less than two weeks into the year, I’ve already finished the year’s toughest business trip.

Earlier this evening, I put together a Flickr album of my pictures from the gadget show; at some point in the next few days, I will write up the more interesting bits from my notes for Patreon subscribers.

1/6/2020: This app helps pedestrians and cyclists wage war on terrible drivers, Fast Company

The second-to-last piece I filed in 2019 ran a week later–a look at an upcoming app that will help pedestrians and cyclists report bad behavior by drivers.

1/8/2020: ATSC 3.0 draws selective, if not scant, support at CES 2020, FierceVideo

Industry support for a long-awaited upgrade to broadcast-TV technology is a somewhat wonky topic compared to, say, robots bearing toilet paper, but that’s why it’s handy to have a trade-pub client that deals in wonky stuff all the time.

1/8/2020: What’s Next for Innovation in 2020?, VentureFuel

I debated fellow tech journalists Eric Savitz and Rick Limpert in a panel discussion hosted by this New York-based consultancy before a small audience of investor and founder types.

1/8/2020: 5G Meets Retail, CES

My contribution to the show’s high-tech retailing track was this talk with Nokia 5G market-development director Jason Elliott and Verizon connected-solutions managing director Arvin Singh about what 5G could do for the retail experience–in a shop and along its supply chain.

Yes, this was my second manel of CES. I should have said something about that when I was asked to join each panel but did not, and feeling strung out by December’s cognitive overload is a weak excuse.

 

1/9/2020: CES: Your smart TV is watching you. Will Samsung, LG, Vizio do more to protect privacy?, USA Today

Think of this column as a sequel to the one I wrote for USAT from Google I/O in May. Where Google showed it could speak in detail–if not as much as I’d like–about adopting such data-minimization techniques as federated learning, TV manufacturers at CES appeared to be grossly unready for that sort of privacy discussion.

1/9/2020: Last Gadget Standing, Living in Digital Times

Once again, I helped judge this competition and then introduced two contenders on stage Thursday: the Octobo connected toy and the Flic 2 programmable smart button.

1/9/2020: A Look At Korea’s Smart-City Ambitions At CES, Ubergizmo

Friends at this gadget blog asked if I could help with their coverage by writing up one set of exhibits in the Eureka Park startup space. They offered a suitable rate, so I said that would be fine.

1/9/2020: CES 2020: Our best of show, USA Today

I contributed a paragraph about Hyundai’s air-taxi venture with Uber that ended with a contrary comment from an aviation-safety professional who’s understandably skeptical about the odds of this and other attempts at urban air mobility. If you’re not in the mood to read that much, you can also hear my spoken-word rendition of this piece (recorded on a Vegas sidewalk Wednesday night) on Jefferson Graham’s Talking Tech podcast.

Updated 1/16/2020 to correct the spelling of Elliott’s last name; updated 1/29/2020 to add a YouTube embed of the panel.

Weekly output: watching baseball online, ATSC 3.0, 5G media, CDA 230, alternative DNS, Lyft vs. Uber

Posted on by
Reply

My college newspaper celebrated its 50th anniversary this weekend, which both let me catch up with not enough of my long-ago colleagues and contemplate anew how important the Georgetown Voice was to this business I’ve chosen. Without all those insane (and unpaid) hours, I might have still made my way into journalism–but I wouldn’t have had four years of learning to report, write creatively but quickly, deal with frequently-brutal edits by peers, and get back to it for the next issue.

4/1/2019: Why these 6 baseball teams still won’t let you watch their games online, Yahoo Finance

For the third year in a row, I ranted about regional sports networks–yes, I very much have the Nats’ Mid-Atlantic Sports Network in mind–that still limit their distribution to traditional cable and satellite bundles instead of following cord-cutting viewers to streaming TV services.

4/2/2019: ATSC 3.0 hits the road at NAB 2019, FierceVideo

I wrote a short post for this trade publication about likely storylines at the National Association of Broadcasters’ trade show involving this next-generation broadcast-TV standard.

4/2/2019: 5G brings optimism and concern to NAB Show 2019, FierceVideo

My second NAB-show preview outlined what this conference, happening this week in Las Vegas, might have to say about media ventures built on 5G wireless.

4/3/2019: Why killing a law that shields tech companies would actually cement the dominance of Facebook, Google, and Twitter, Yahoo Finance

When I wrote this post unpacking a recent bout of criticism of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act–the statute that says online forums aren’t publishers and can’t be held liable for everything their users post–it came in at well over a thousand words. It took multiple rounds of editing to get my precious prose down to a manageable size (sound familiar, my former Voice editors?).

4/4/2019: Primer: When (and how) to dump your Internet provider’s DNS service, The Parallax

I wrote a how-to post about using such alternative domain name services as Google and Cloudflare to work around reliability and privacy issues you can run into if you stick to your Internet provider’s DNS.

4/4/2019: Lyft exec says ‘we’re a company of values’ when asked about Uber, Yahoo Finance

I wasn’t sure the lunchtime talk by Lyft public-policy chief Anthony Foxx at the Washington Auto Show Thursday would yield a story until he answered an audience question about how his employer differentiates itself from Uber with that company-of-values line. I’m not sure how many of my readers bought that self-assessment; at UberPeople.net, a forum for ride-hailing-service drivers, the reaction was distinctly cynical.

Weekly output: wireless plans (x2), broadband infrastructure, ATSC 3.0, wireless discounts

Posted on by
1

BARCELONA–I arrived here Saturday morning for my fifth Mobile World Congress trade show. Most of that afternoon was spent wandering around Barcelona and trying to stay awake, while today involved a series of press events scattered around town. The show formally starts tomorrow morning, which is also when I start owing copy to various editors. I’m here through Thursday morning, so if you have questions about upcoming (non-Apple) smartphones, this would be a good time to ask them.

2/20/2017: Unlimited-data plans, WTOP

This interview was supposed to happen, as my conversations with Washington’s news station usually do, over Skype. But the app kept dropping the call within seconds of my clicking to answer it, so the producers punted and called my cell phone instead. Microsoft, please try to make Skype less painful to use.

2/22/2017: Broadband companies can’t build out their networks, and it’s hurting consumers, Yahoo Finance

Not for the first time this week, I got to revisit a topic I’d first covered in any detail several years ago.

Screenshot of story from NYT iPad app2/22/2017: Picking a New Phone Plan? Here Are Your Best Bets, The New York Times

The NYT’s Brian Chen interviewed me, in my role as maintainer of the (Times-owned) Wirecutter’s guide to wireless service, for this story breaking down recent changes to the big four carriers’ rate plans. The analyst he talked to gave recommendations I wouldn’t agree with, but on the other hand Chen gave me the last word in the story.

This, incidentally, represents the second time I’ve been quoted in the Times and the first time I’ve been quoted correctly. That other time happened in 1993, when the NYT’s Frank Prial wrote a feature on how Georgetown University had changed since Bill Clinton’s undergrad days. He interviewed a bunch of students at the Georgetown Voice’s offices and attributed a quote from somebody else (I’m guessing then-photo editor Darren Carroll) to me.

Lest it seem like I’m complaining about my treatment by Timesmen, I should note that looking up that 24-year-old story also led me to a few NYT pieces about my dad’s exploits playing football for Columbia University, including this section-front story about his game-winning field goal against Brown. Yes, they spelled our last name correctly.

2/23/2017: The FCC just gave you a reason to hold off on buying a 4K TV, Yahoo Finance

This post provided this week’s other stroll down memory lane. (Does this column I wrote just after the end of analog broadcasts in 2009 suggest a certain amount of built-up cynicism?) I’m cautiously optimistic about the coming, voluntary transition to “ATSC 3.0” broadcasts. I’m also content in my decision to hold off on buying a new TV until it includes a tuner for this new broadcast standard.

2/26/2017: The hidden wireless discounts you might be missing, USA Today

If you use AT&T, Sprint or Verizon, you may be able to chip 10 percent or so off your bill by taking advantage of your connection to an employer, a school or an association.