The ATSC Broadcast Monitoring systems monitor the OTA broadcast signals and the multi-program transport streams they deliver for signal or encoding anomalies. The systems provide 24/7 coverage for monitored broadcasts. At present there is one monitoring system in production located in the Monta Loma neighborhood of Mountain View, CA. As OTA reception can vary greatly by region, we would like to deploy additional monitoring systems. If you’re interested in hosting a monitoring system please contact us.
For a writeup about the charts in action see our blog entry at in-koherence.com.
The monitoring system is an internal project of Koherence, LLC and based on the Project Entangle platform.
The Charts & Reports
The monitoring systems upload data to the SFBayATSC servers periodically (currently every 5 minutes), where it is used to create various charts and reports.
For more information on the charts and reports generated by the monitor, please see:
- About: Tuner & Demodulator Charts
- About: MPTS Statistics
- About: PSI/PSIP Statistics
- About: Bitrate Charts
If you’d like to understand where various statistics are generated as the MPTS flows through the monitor, then please see About: Statistics Generation.
MPTS Capture
In addition to generating statistics about the signal and transport stream, the monitors record the full MPTS of each broadcast. The amount of MPTS stored varies by monitor – a day’s worth of MPTS for one RF channel is about 210 GB. A system monitoring 8 channels and having 16 TB of storage holds the last 9 days’ or so worth of broadcast.
The MPTS is not available for download, however if you have a need for it (or would like us to examine it for some property) please get in touch with us via the Contact page or email.
Bookmarking Charts & Reports
If you would like to bookmark the chart or report for a specific broadcast, you can do so using query parameters with the charts launch pages. The launch page for ATSC 1.0 is https://sfbayatsc.koherence.com/index.php/atsc-3-0-broadcast-monitor-launch. It accepts the parameters “bmon_channel=XX” where XX specifies an RF channel and “bmon_chart=YY” where YY is one of Tuner (RF and Demodulation chart), PSIP, MPTS, or Program (Program & Bitrates chart). For example, to bookmark the tuner/demodulator chart for RF 35, bookmark the URL:
https://sfbayatsc.koherence.com/index.php/atsc-1-0-broadcast-monitor-launch/?bmon_channel=35&bmon_chart=Tuner
For the ATSC 3.0 charts the launch URL is https://sfbayatsc.koherence.com/index.php/atsc-3-0-broadcast-monitor-launch. It also accepts “bmon_channel” for specifying the RF channel of interest, and “bmon_chart” can have the values Tuner, PLP, Service, or Signaling.
Maintenance & Downtime
The monitors need to be taken down periodically for software/hardware updates, and as with all software and hardware experiences failures from time to time. We’ll try to keep a log of downtime on the Maintenance History page so you’ll know why there’s a hole in the charts or reports.
Feature Requests & Bug Reports
Like the base Project Entangle platform its based on, the monitoring system undergoes constant improvement. If you have a feature request we’d love to hear about it.
And if you run into a problem with the monitoring system, please send us a message via the Contact page or drop us an email.
(And if you have an idea for a name other than “the ATSC monitoring system” please drop us a note too!)
How can I help?
As mentioned earlier, we’d like to deploy additional monitors to get better coverage over the Bay Area. If you’re interested in hosting one and can provide a good antenna feed, broadband access, and some electricity get in touch with us.
If you’d like to help fund the monitoring system, please use the Amazon.com search bar on the front page whenever you’re looking to shop there. We’ll get a small commission on your purchase.
And as always, keep watching OTA and supporting your local broadcasters!