{"id":4286,"date":"2021-07-17T23:32:10","date_gmt":"2021-07-18T03:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/?p=4286"},"modified":"2021-07-17T23:32:11","modified_gmt":"2021-07-18T03:32:11","slug":"via-hackaday-end-of-an-era-ntsc-finally-goes-dark-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/2021\/07\/17\/via-hackaday-end-of-an-era-ntsc-finally-goes-dark-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"via HACKADAY: End Of An Era: NTSC Finally Goes Dark In America"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"max-width: 600px;\" src=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/ntsc-tv-featured.jpg?w=800\" \/>A significant event in the history of technology happened yesterday, and it passed so quietly that we almost missed it.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CarissaHolohan\/status\/1415133765047889924?s=03\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The last few remaining NTSC transmitters in the USA finally came off air<\/a>, marking the end of over seven decades of continuous 525-line American analogue TV broadcasts.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2021\/01\/29\/the-last-few-analogue-tv-stations-in-north-america\/\">We\u2019ve previously reported on the output of these channels<\/a>, largely the so-called \u201cFrankenFM\u201d stations left over after the 2009 digital switchover whose sound carrier lay at the bottom of the FM dial as radio stations, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2021\/03\/13\/times-almost-up-for-the-frankenfms-the-impending-switchoff-of-analog-tv\/\">noted their impending demise<\/a>. We\u2019ve even\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2016\/10\/06\/never-twice-the-same-color-why-ntsc-is-so-weird\/\">reported on some of the intricacies of the NTSC system<\/a>, but we\u2019ve never taken a look at what will replace these last few FrankenFM stations.<\/p>\n<p>If you are an American you may have heard of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ATSC_3.0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ATSC 3.0<\/a>, perhaps by its marketing name of NextGen TV. Just like the DVB-T2 standard found in other parts of the world, it\u2019s an upgrade to digital TV standards to allow for more recent video compression technologies and higher definition broadcasts. It has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/ATSC_3.0#Analog_audio_fallback\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an interesting backwards compatibility feature absent in previous ATSC versions<\/a>; there is the option of narrowing the digital bandwidth from 6 MHz to 5.5 MHz, and transmitting an analogue FM subcarrier where the old NTSC sound carrier on the same channel would have sat. Thus the FrankenFM stations have the option of upgrading to ATSC 3.0 and transmitting a digital channel package alongside their existing FM radio station. It\u2019s reported that this switchover is happening, with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov\/dataentry\/public\/tv\/draftCopy.html?displayType=html&amp;appKey=25076f917a52ec2c017a5a0364801ca5&amp;id=25076f917a52ec2c017a5a0364801ca5&amp;goBack=N\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one example<\/a>\u00a0given in the Twitter thread linked above.<\/p>\n<div>via Blog \u2013 Hackaday <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2021\/07\/14\/end-of-an-era-ntsc-finally-goes-dark-in-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2021\/07\/14\/end-of-an-era-ntsc-finally-goes-dark-in-america\/<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A significant event in the history of technology happened yesterday, and it passed so quietly&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_16139062_16139062":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,108,4],"tags":[653,1539,1168,110,103,111,27,1540,1529,649],"class_list":["post-4286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hackaday","category-makers","category-newsreel","tag-analog-tv","tag-atsc","tag-frankenfm","tag-hackaday","tag-ifttt","tag-makerspace","tag-news","tag-nextgen-tv","tag-ntsc","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4358,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4286\/revisions\/4358"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twiar.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}