Work Continues at ATSC on Mobile DTV Candidate Standard
Fine-tuning of the candidate standard document that lays out the framework for U.S. broadcasters to offer a mobile DTV service will continue until year-end, though the Advanced TV Systems Committee approved the plan last week. The system is based on LG’s and Harris’ Mobile Pedestrian Handheld system (CD May 15 p2), said Brett Jenkins, Ion Media director of technology strategy and development. He said the higher layers describing how receivers will switch channels, display and onscreen guide and other advanced features rely on other mobile TV work done by the Open Mobile Alliance. “The ATSC working group spent a lot of time thinking about what needed to be reinvented and what didn’t,” Jenkins said. “One reason why this standard was able to be moved so quickly was because there already has been a lot of work done.”
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Though ATSC members approved the standard in November, their ballots included editorial comments that will be worked into the published document, ATSC President Mark Richer said. The group is shooting to have a final standard approved by early Q3 of 2009, but the candidate standard will be continually updated as feedback comes in, he said. It will be a “very dynamic” document he said. “The whole point is to get feedback about it and revise it as necessary.”
Meanwhile ATSC is working to incorporate those ballot comments before year-end, Richer said. About two-thirds of the comments are purely editorial, said Mark Aitken of Sinclair, chair of the ATSC technology and standards group responsible for mobile DTV work. “The substantive comments will undergo thorough discussion and consensus building inside the ATSC,” he said. “We hope to reconcile those comments in the first quarter of 2009.”
Incorporating so much work from OMA should ease the process of getting the mobile industry to adopt the new technology, said Anne Schelle, president of the Open Mobile Video Coalition. “The carriers have certain certification procedures and test methodologies,” she said. “If they're used to this already, it makes it much easier for them.” Though broadcasters don’t have much experience working with mobile carriers, many of the companies whose work went into the mobile DTV technology do, Schelle said. “There isn’t currently a member of ATSC that’s a carrier, but we got a lot of input from existing video providers to the carriers that understand that process.”
Carrier interest in mobile DTV will be important, Aitken said. “Any carrier who were to step forward and make a request of the supply chain to provide mobile DTV capability would open a floodgate of activity with respect to moving the target closer for broadcasters,” he said.
The candidate standard is also designed to give broadcasters flexibility in the types of services they can offer, Jenkins said. “This standard will give broadcasters the tools if they want to really maximize quality and blow consumers away in terms of quality, or to do a lot of services,” he said. “One broadcaster might be able to do as many of 10 to 12 channels if all they have is another standard definition channel running along the side.” A high- quality 500 Mbps mobile DTV stream will take up about 2 Mbps of a broadcasters spectrum to deliver, depending on the environment, he said. “If you want to back that off, depending on the broadcast environment you have, that might only take 1 megabit per second.”