#nextgen-tv — Public Fediverse posts

Weekly output: tech for creators, Xfinity Mobile plans, how 1Password eyes AI, cheaper NextGen TV tuners

This coming week will not be like the last six and change because my calendar has me sleeping in my own bed every night. That is an exciting prospect after a string of trips that took me to Austin, L.A., Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose and Las Vegas… but this workweek isn’t free of travel, as I’m taking a day trip to NYC for Uber’s Go-Get press event Wednesday.

4/21/2026: Out and About with Jefferson and Jules, NAB Show

I went to the National Association of Broadcasters’ conference for the first time since 2015 for about the same reason as that previous trip: speaking on a panel. This one featured my former USA Today colleague Jefferson Graham and travel journalist Juliana Broste (the last name rhymes with “frosty”) talking about the tools they use to take and share photos and videos from interesting places. Having two people well-versed in speaking on camera on the same stage made my job as a panel moderator easy.

4/22/2026: Comcast Adds 2 Premium Xfinity Mobile Plans With Global Roaming Included, PCMag

This post was kind of a disaster, in that Comcast’s embargoed press release left out important details about these new plans and then my PR contact provided also-unhelpful answers to my questions. After seeing the details of these plans Wednesday morning, I rewrote a large chunk of the post from the United lounge at LAS before boarding my flight out of Vegas.

4/23/2026: 1Password sees AI as both threat and tool, Fast Company

I interviewed 1Password’s new chief technology officer Nancy Wang in the speaker lounge at HumanX in San Francisco as that room was getting closed down at the end of that conference. I did not write up the interview that night, as I was meeting an old friend for dinner, and then did not get around to writing the story on the flight home.

4/24/2026: NextGen TV Backers Aim to Advance the Standard With Cheaper Converter Boxes, PCMag

I returned to the topic of this upgrade to broadcast TV (also known as “ATSC 3.0”) for the first time since 2024 (I think) to cover an initiative aired at NAB to lower the cost of watching NextGen TV broadcasts on sets without compatible tuners. Most new TVs still fall under that description, which is not something I would have predicted four years ago.

Nothing like having to tell your tuner to rescan because #ATSC tuners are too smart to just lock onto anything and show whatever you got, but too stupid to figure out where the channels are on the fly...

And #ATSC3 aka #NextGenTV is 100% horseshit and I'm kinda glad to see the viewing public just straight up reject it and the DRM that comes with it.

#Television

Due to the non-magic of my filing two longer pieces earlier and then having two stories break hours apart in the same morning, Wednesday saw more than 3,200 words appear under my byline at two different sites.

Patreon readers got one extra post this week, my recap of what I learned at VidCon from YouTubers, streamers and other content creators without boldface names about making a living and making their way through that industry.

6/26/2024: 1Password CEO on why good online security doesn’t have to be complicated, Fast Company

Jeff Shiner has somehow become the tech CEO I interview at least once a year–for PCMag in 2022, onstage at Web Summit Rio in 2023, and now for Fast Company after a conversation we had at Collision in Toronto.

6/26/2024: Your TV Probably Has a ‘NextGen’ Perk You’ve Never Heard Of, PCMag

The conference at which I did most of this reporting happened two weeks ago, but then being out of town the week after got in the way of my writing it even as I realized I needed a few more details to fill out the story.

6/26/2024: Cheap Netflix? Verizon Adds Streaming Bundles to Home Broadband Plans, PCMag

I had figured that somebody on staff would cover this news, but instead one of my editors asked if I could field it. With some work on our house to be paid off, I quickly said yes, then I realized I could bring another angle to the story by covering a recent stealth rate hike on Fios plans such as my own.

6/26/2024: Supreme Court: The Feds Can Tell Social Media Platforms to Enforce Their Rules, PCMag

The piece that I wrote for The New Republic last summer, in which multiple First Amendment issues critiqued the profound unseriousness of the ruling that kicked off this case, held up very well.

6/28/2024: Could 5G carriers ink a spectrum deal with TV broadcasters?, Light Reading

The other piece that I wrote from the NextGen conference took almost as long to write, with my last interview for it happening the day I got home from Toronto and the last e-mailed response coming Monday..

6/29/2024: Twitter Influencers: The Money Is Terrible, But We’re Not Going Anywhere, PCMag

Looking over the VidCon schedule in advance, this panel seemed the most likely one to yield a story. It did not disappoint, even I was a little disappointed to see that none of the panelists showed any interest in exploring alternatives to Twitter (none of them called it “X” onstage) for their short-form social output.

6/29/2024: White House Social Team Is Fighting the Algorithms Just Like the Rest of Us, PCMag

The journalist who sat next to me at a press breakfast Panasonic hosted Wednesday suggested I check out this panel, and she was not wrong.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/06/30/weekly-output-1passwords-jeff-shiner-nextgen-tv-x2-verizons-myhome-deals-supreme-court-on-content-moderation-whither-twitter-white-house-social-media/

#1Password #Anaheim #ATSC30 #BidenSocialMedia #Collision #contentModeration #incentiveAuction #JeffShiner #MurthyVMissouri #NetflixDeal #NextGenTV #SCOTUS #SupremeCourt #TwitterInfluencers #VerizonMyHome #VidCon #WhiteHouse

I filed my last copy for this week at 10 p.m. Friday, and then it was a delight to have Saturday be my first legit work-free day since… um, Jan. 1.

1/16/2024: Don’t Engage: ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams Start With a Text, End in Financial Ruin, PCMag

One reason I couldn’t unplug from work last Sunday: I had to watch my friend Sean Gallagher’s very good walkthrough of pig-butchering scams at the ShmooCon information-security conference in D.C. I did, however, opt to watch the livestream of his talk that morning instead of heading over to the Washington Hilton for the third day in a row.

1/17/2024: NextGen TV Airwave Upgrade Flies Under the Radar at CES, PCMag

This CES recap ran several days after the show ended because I needed to verify some Consumer Technology Association forecasts of sales of NextGen-equipped TV sets. And because I needed some uninterrupted time to finish writing the thing.

1/19/2024: Biden Admin OKs $150 Million in Grants to Fix Broken Public EV Chargers, PCMag

I spent Thursday afternoon at the Washington Auto Show’s public-policy day and came away with this update on the Biden administration’s latest efforts to ease electric-car adoption, in which I also noted how the White House’s plan to underwrite a nationwide network of fast chargers on highways has yet to yield much usable hardware. I ended the post by calling out ignorant remarks by two Republican congressmen on a panel that afternoon in which they characterized EVs as some sort of big-government plot.

1/19/2024: Ep 96 SmartTechCheck Podcast CES 2024 Recap, Mark Vena

I joined my industry-analyst friend’s podcast to compare notes about CES with Mark and my fellow tech scribe Stewart Wolpin–who drew on his deep knowledge of the business with a recap of the slow and halting adoption of color TV when our host asked about bumps in the road to EV adoption.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/01/21/weekly-output-pig-butchering-nextgen-tv-ev-charging-mark-vena-podcast/

#ATSC30 #batteryElectricVehicle #broadcastTV #ces #consumerElectronicsShow #electricCarCharging #EVCharging #MarkVena #NextGenTV #overTheAirTV #pigButchering #Shmoocon #WashingtonAutoShow

#NextGenTV--aka "ATSC 3.0"--has some intriguing potential and already delivers notable upgrades over the ATSC 1.0 digital-broadcast standard we've had for 25+ years. But hardware support remains inconsistent, stations encrypting their broadcasts can complicate using add-on-tuners, and the retail presentation of NextGen-compatible TVs is often left as an exercise to the shopper. https://www.pcmag.com/news/nextgen-tv-airwave-upgrade-flies-under-the-radar-at-ces

@BalooUriza

Interesting. Thanks for posting this.

#NextGenTV #ATSC3

So, looks like all the major broadcasters, except CW, launched at once:
https://www.morningstar.com/news/business-wire/20230330005516/major-broadcasters-launch-nextgen-tv-on-six-local-television-stations-in-the-san-francisco-bay-area

#NextGenTV #ATSC30

I’m not watching the same Fox Super Bowl pregame as most of you—instead, I’ve tuned into the #NextGenTV (aka ATSC 3.0) over-the-air signal of D.C.’s WTTG using a ZapperBox M1 tuner. One notable upgrade from this station’s regular (ATSC 1.0) digital broadcast: The 3.0 version is in 1080p resolution, up from 720p on the 1.0 signal.