Dolby Atmos is coming to free-to-air TV at last — no internet, no fee, and no next-gen tuner, but still immersive audio

• Dolby Atmos audio will be broadcast freely over the air for the first time
• A Mexican broadcaster will be the first to offer the tech
• It will use ATSC 1.0 rather than 3.0 / NextGen TV

Something exciting is happening in Mexico for home theater fans. Dolby Laboratories and broadcaster TV Azteca have joined forces to bring Dolby Atmos to free-to-view broadcast TV — not streaming — and they're doing it over the widely available ATSC 1.0 standard.

That's significant because while the current US and Mexico standard for broadcasting 4K TV is NextGen TV, aka ATSC 3.0, support for version 3.0 is still pretty patchy.

ATSC 1.0 tops out at 1080p HD for visual resolution, but it's been around since 1996 so it's much more widely supported than the newer version — and ATSC 3.0 devices are backwards compatible. That means Dolby Atmos over ATSC 1.0 should be available to a lot of people in the future, assuming it takes off.

For now this project is only happening in Mexico, but it raises some interesting possibilities elsewhere — and it suggests that there's still plenty of life in the free broadcasting model even in an age of streaming subscriptions.

What is Dolby Atmos doing over ATSC?

According to Pankaj Kedia, vice president of Americas, commercial partnerships at Dolby Laboratories, Atmos will be especially tempting for sporting events. "Imagine watching a game from your living room and hearing where every cheer in the stands comes from, the sound of the ball, and the voice of the commentator moving around you. That is what Dolby Atmos makes possible today in Mexico.”

That's obviously nothing new for sports if you want over a more premium cable or streaming service, but a lot of people haven't had access to these. Although I'm not 100% sure I want the commentary "moving around" me…

TV Azteca's chief technical officer Pedro Manuel Carmona Ortiz says the collaboration is a "technological milestone... We are collaborating with Dolby to demonstrate that innovation in audio can transform free-to-air television."

That innovation could be used by broadcasters in other territories too. ATSC 1.0 is widely used in the US, Canada and Mexico, and its intended replacement by ATSC 3.0 has been moved back several times.

Current proposals in the US suggest sunsetting ATSC 1.0 from 2028 to 2030 but those are based on broadcasters doing so voluntarily. Earlier this year, America's Public Television Stations (APTS) and PBS wrote to the FCC asking the regulator not to set a firm date for ending ATSC 1.0 broadcasting; other broadcasters are urging the FCC to do exactly that to boost adoption of ATSC 3.0.

On top of that, ATSC 3.0 is still hit and miss in even the best TVs. LG actually stopped including ATSC 3.0, while Samsung has also stopped (having only included them in limited models in the past).

Improving a 30-year-old broadcast standard may seem strange when most of the free-to-view hype has focused on streaming rather than broadcast TV thanks to the fast-growing free-TV services from the likes of Roku, Google TV and, in the UK, Freely.

But internet speeds and service have never reached the reliability of over-the-air broadcasts in many areas, so having an immersive audio upgrade delivered no matter your connection options is a win for everyone.

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1. Best overall:
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