Patent attributes
Techniques are described for expanding and/or improving the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 television protocol. In an ATSC 3.0 environment, receivers (including consumer and professional receivers) have signal reception parameters and antenna factors available to them. These reception parameters, together with time and location data are transmitted to one or more servers that maintain databases of reception characteristics. This data is analyzed such that a set of likely receivable signals (based on reception parameters, date/time, location, geographical features, transmitter information, etc.) is identified. Receivers query the servers to receive information indicating the set of likely receivable signals to reduce channel scan time by scanning only or first for more-receivable channels. Also, difficult reception locations identified in the data collected by the servers are used in aggregate to guide RF improvements (e.g., adding SFN transmitters). Further, the data collected by the servers may provide data to be used to feed “MFN” data.
