The FCC was accepting comments on ATSC 3, including this issue, back in the summer. Probably that period has closed, but it’s worth looking at.

In my case, I have 4 local stations who have consolidated their ATSC 3 tests at a point less than 10 miles from my house, where the ATSC 1 for two channels is behind mountains or trees. Right now, only one channel has DRM turned on, and their ATSC 1 station is easily tuned so that’s okay. But the two stations that the ATSC 1 is problematic for would kill me if they enable DRM.

Eventually, if ATSC 3 progresses out of test phase, the ATSC 3 channels will move back to the main antennas and I’m going to lose ABC year round and CBS 7 months out of the year (due to leaves) regardless, but NBC’s DRM would take them away, too.

I’m wondering how much it would cost fancybits to license the DRM and if that could be an optional pass through to us?