New addition to ATSC over the air DTV: Mobile DTV approved
 

link : http://www.tvtechnology.com/channel/nab-show/78256

If I were a TV set manufacturer, I'd include this mobile TV reception function in the ATSC tuner, so I could still have the ability to show a lower resolution picture and sound if the rest of the ATSC signal goes bad.

Portable ATSC
 

Eviant is introducing a line of portable digital TV sets with ATSC tuners built in. These look more compact and refined that the Insignia models out a year or two ago. I don't think it will be long before digital portable TV comes into its own.

www.eviantusa.com

They even come in cool Seventies colors. oooh.

Last week I had a guy come in with a conversion van; he bought a boomerang antenna and wanted it painted and installed. I don't know what his plan is; inside he had the original 13" tv that was about 20 years old, plus a GE Spacemaker undercounter set. I didn't feel like getting into the whole digital TV discussion with him.

Maybe he is driving to Mexico. I don't expect they will be switching to digital there.

Like a CD player with anti skip protection, there should be a buffer in ATSC signals, perhaps allowing an extra few seconds of video to collect in the buffer while the stream plays. In the event of a signal loss, the tuner could take data from the buffer to keep the video playing smoothly and at full resolution until the signal could be restored.

MRX is right, all OTA digital equipment should utilize this type of buffer. IIRC, some (most) of the new DTV cable boxes use buffers. On more than one occasion my HD box 'skipped'/got choppy and replayed the show from the problem point.

From what little I have learned of this mobile ATSC add-on standard so far, it seems that it takes bandwidth (meaning "takes away quality") from the existing channel(s) in the ATSC signal, just what we need. People need to find better things to do while in moving vehicles or carrying cell phones than to watch live video programming.

Worst case, why didn't they just make this "low-definition TV" scheme a whole separate service from real broadcast TV? With the ATSC standard, there will be plenty of channels available that could not have been used in the NTSC era.

because this will give them a quick and easy transmission of low res that is able to be decoded by a small CPU in a phone, probably just by a new piece of software on the encoder that does the other transmission.

DVB-H is totally different, and it doesnt suprise me that the US is going their own way yet again with things so that will be more incompatible handsets when travelling.