ATSC 3.0: The future of broadcast TV spent another year stuck in neutral

For the past five years running, I’ve written an annual check-in on ATSC 3.0 (or “NextGen TV”), the broadcast standard that’s supposed to greatly improve over-the-air TV. Every year, it’s been a story of baby steps.

As 2025 gets underway, that story hasn’t really changed. While ATSC 3.0 is starting to deliver more of what it initially promised—most notably big events in HDR—you might still need to go out of your way to get a compatible TV or external tuner box. ATSC 3.0’s interactive elements remain limited as well, with one promising effort having stalled over the last year. More on that later.

All of which means that the existing ATSC 1.0 standard, which is supported by nearly all televisions today, will stay viable for years to come. The bigger question is whether over-the-air TV will remain viable along with it.

A quick ATSC 3.0 refresher

When the broadcast TV industry first announced ATSC 3.0 in 2019, it touted a handful of key benefits:

• Up to 4K-resolution video
• High dynamic range (HDR) video
• Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive audio formats
• Dolby dialog enhancement
• Additional stations and on-demand video, discovered over the air but delivered over the internet

The standard also comes with some pitfalls for viewers: Its internet-connected nature allows broadcasters to collect viewing data and serve targeted ads over the air, and its use of DRM puts new limits on the ability to record local channels.

To access ATSC 3.0, your local broadcast stations need to offer it, and you need either a TV or an external tuner box that supports the new standard. But even if you meet those criteria, your local stations might only offer a subset of ATSC 3.0 features. Getting all the pieces into place has been a slog, with only modest progress made each year.

Hardware support stalls

If you buy a new TV in 2025, there’s a good chance it won’t support ATSC 3.0. Many TV makers only offer it in higher-end sets, and some have even scaled back or halted ATSC 3.0 support after offering it in previous years.

Samsung, for instance, stopped shipping ATSC 3.0 tuners in its OLED TVs last year and will exclude them again from its 2025 OLED sets. (The company still offers ATSC 3.0 on its Neo QLED line.) LG won’t be bringing ATSC 3.0 back to its TVs this year either, after dropping support in 2024 sets over a patent dispute.

ATSC 3.0 has brought on some new supporters: RCA will offer ATSC 3.0 in its 55- and 65-inch Mini LED TVs for 2025, and Panasonic has included ATSC 3.0 support in the Fire TV OLED and LED sets that debuted late last year.

Not much else has changed. While Hisense includes ATSC 3.0 tuners in most (but not all) of its Mini-LED TVs and laser projectors, TCL and Sony reserve the feature for some of their higher-end sets. Shipment projections from the CTA reflect this reality: The tech trade group previously expected 5.5 million ATSC 3.0 TVs to ship in 2024, but the actual figure was around 4 million, and now it expects just 5 million shipments for 2025.

If your TV doesn’t support ATSC 3.0, you can access it through an external tuner, but the cost remains high. ADTH sells a NextGen TV tuner for $90, although it requires an internet connection to decrypt ATSC 3.0 channels that use DRM. Zinwell’s tuner with offline DRM support, which is sold by Channel Master, costs more at $149. Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV broadcast consortium, told me at CES that we may see a sub-$50 tuner, but not until sometime next year.

Over-the-air DVR support is limited as well. The most compelling option this year could come from an upstart device brand called MyVelo TV, which plans to launch a $100 Android TV box with ATSC 3.0 playback and DVR features this spring. For now, though, Bitrouter’s ZapperBox M1 is the only complete solution that can play and record encrypted channels. Bitrouter has started shipping satellite boxes for whole-home DVR, but the company’s founder and president, Gopal Miglani, says streaming encrypted channels or recordings from one tuner box to another is still a few months away.

MyVelo TV

You can see a list of ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs and tuner boxes on the WatchNextGenTV website.

OTA HDR expands

4K remains largely non-existent on ATSC 3.0 channels. Delivering broadcasts at that resolution requires a lot of extra bandwidth, which isn’t feasible while stations are still simulcasting in ATSC 1.0.

In the meantime, broadcasters are focusing on HDR, which provides a more vibrant picture by allowing light and dark images to convey more color detail. More than 80 million homes now have access to at least one over-the-air channel with HDR support, and some stations are starting to support either Dolby Vision or HDR10+, both of which provide more accurate color adjustments on a per-scene basis.

The upcoming Super Bowl LIX on Fox should be a major showcase for over-the-air HDR, although it won’t be a native HDR broadcast. Instead it’ll be up-converted from standard dynamic range, just like Fox’s live stream on Tubi. (The latter, though, will also be upscaled to 4K, versus 1080p for Fox’s over-the-air broadcast.)

Jared Newman / Foundry

To see which ATSC 3.0 stations support HDR in your area, check the WatchNextGenTV website. Unfortunately there’s no way to tell which stations offer HDR10+ or Dolby Vision unless your TV provides this information.

Waiting for interactivity

At the CES trade show last year, a U.K.-based company called Roxi showed off an impressive demo of ATSC 3.0’s interactive features. Using the standard over-the-air channel guide, users could tune into one of Roxi’s live streaming music channels, then flip through row of additional genre-based channel options. Rob Lewis, Roxi’s CEO, said at the time that it was partnering with the major broadcaster Sinclair to launch ATSC 3.0 music channels around the country by that March.

One year later, and those plans have not materialized. Sky News reported last year that Roxi was racing to raise money, and was later nearing a deal to sell its assets to a new company called FastStream. (Roxi had previously used the “FastStream” name for its underlying technology.) The company has not responded to requests for comment.

For now, ATSC is pointing to other interactivity advancements instead.

Spokesperson Dave Arland said that roughly 100 ATSC 3.0 channels now offer some level of interactivity—which can be as simple as local weather forecasts—and pointed to pause-and-rewind features that NBC has been offering on its owned-and-operated stations. ATSC will also begin offering a “starter” application framework that will help more broadcasters offer basic features such as traffic and weather alerts. (It will also help facilitate the aforementioned data collection on people’s viewing habits.) Meanwhile, a firm called GameLoop hopes to deliver casual games through ATSC 3.0 later this year.

Still, it’s unclear whether these features will do much to move the needle for ATSC 3.0. Bitrouter’s Gopal Miglani says interactive features aren’t a major priority for the ZapperBox, which doesn’t support them currently, because the demand isn’t there.

“Not a single customer asks for them,” he said. “It’s not going to help me sell more boxes.”

Should you care about ATSC 3.0?

ATSC 1.0 isn’t going away anytime soon. FCC rules require broadcasters to simulcast their main stations using the old standard until at least July 2027, and at the current rate of ATSC 3.0 adoption, an extension seems possible.

In the meantime, ATSC 3.0 faces some more existential questions. For instance, if you can stream the Super Bowl for free in 4K HDR on Tubi, why bother with an over-the-air ATSC 3.0 version that doesn’t support 4K (and, depending on tuner hardware, might still require an internet connection)? If the major networks are already delivering breakthrough interactivity in their streaming apps, what more could ATSC 3.0’s interactive channels offer? More importantly, what’s the future for over-the-air TV as networks dial back programming investments and streaming services gobble up more sports rights?

Without clear answers to those questions, ATSC 3.0 probably won’t rejuvenate over-the-air TV, but those local broadcasts still have value in their current form. Thus my advice is the same as it’s always been: Go with whatever TV or over-the-air DVR best suits your needs today, whether it supports the new broadcast standard or not.

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