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Broadcast TV is in trouble, and for a long time now, a lot of people have pointed to a new broadcast standard, ATSC 3.0, as the way it can be saved and finally compete against streaming, YouTube, and TikTok. And finally, after years of hype that failed to deliver, there’s an actual glimmer of hope for your local TV stations. Local news is about to get a lot more interactive.
Part of that’s because of Roxi, a company we covered back at CES. Then, the company was showing off an app that streamed music over the airwaves to your ATSC 3.0-outfitted TV and let you skip tracks, choose genres, and interact with it like you would a traditional smart TV app. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones utterly delighted by the technology Roxi showed off. CEO Rob Lewis told me last week he had broadcasters from all over the country (and from a few other countries as well) coming to his door eager to see the tech in action— including at least one literally banging on the door to get in.
From all of that came a partnership with Pearl TV, an organization of nearly every major broadcaster in the US, including: Sinclair, Scripps, Hearst, Nexstar, and Cox. But this new partnership isn’t for Roxi’s music app; it’s for the underlying technology, dubbed FastStream, that can allow people to essentially have a DVR for live TV, no additional hardware, Wi-Fi, or fees required.
The new partnership won’t be quite that expansive, but it will mean ATSC 3.0-equipped stations in the US will soon begin airing local news that you can skip through, pause, or even restart from the beginning. That’s still a small number of the TV stations in this country — ATSC 3.0 adoption has been slow so far — but the number is improving.
www.theverge.com
Part of that’s because of Roxi, a company we covered back at CES. Then, the company was showing off an app that streamed music over the airwaves to your ATSC 3.0-outfitted TV and let you skip tracks, choose genres, and interact with it like you would a traditional smart TV app. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones utterly delighted by the technology Roxi showed off. CEO Rob Lewis told me last week he had broadcasters from all over the country (and from a few other countries as well) coming to his door eager to see the tech in action— including at least one literally banging on the door to get in.
From all of that came a partnership with Pearl TV, an organization of nearly every major broadcaster in the US, including: Sinclair, Scripps, Hearst, Nexstar, and Cox. But this new partnership isn’t for Roxi’s music app; it’s for the underlying technology, dubbed FastStream, that can allow people to essentially have a DVR for live TV, no additional hardware, Wi-Fi, or fees required.
The new partnership won’t be quite that expansive, but it will mean ATSC 3.0-equipped stations in the US will soon begin airing local news that you can skip through, pause, or even restart from the beginning. That’s still a small number of the TV stations in this country — ATSC 3.0 adoption has been slow so far — but the number is improving.
Broadcast TV still exists, and now it’s sort of getting a built-in DVR
You’ll be able to pause live TV without a DVR or smart TV.
www.theverge.com
