ATSC Chief Sees Market-By-Market Rollout Of Next-Gen ATSC 3.0

The "basic premise of the work" the ad hoc group has conducted since being formed during the summer "is that there will be a transition where broadcasters do need to move to a new platform at some point," Richer said. Transitioning to ATSC 3.0 from the current ATSC 1.0 DTV broadcast system "probably won’t be the same as the transition from analog to digital, and so the thinking has to be a little relative to that out of the box," he said. "The board members who are working on this, as well as the board members who have been briefed on this, I think understand there’s a lot of power in the technology we’re developing as well as in what we have in ATSC 1.0. There’s a lot of flexibility in those technologies that with some creative thinking can help us make the transition, even though some of the challenges are greater than those in the last transition."

The ATSC board hopes the ad hoc group can come up with "solid conclusions" that industry can use to best implement and transition to ATSC 3.0, Richer said. "In terms of the FCC, of course in the United States, it’s always in the back of everyone’s mind. But I say this, we are approaching it more as an industry effort that will need to take place. That doesn’t mean the FCC won’t have a role. We don’t really know. I mean there’s some role, obviously. But it’s got to be a plan that the industry comes up with and that the industry can make work."

Members of the ATSC board and its ad hoc group are representative of "different segments of our industry, so it’s kind of a good place to have those discussions," Richer said. "We’re sticking mostly to the sort of technical operational issues rather than the pure business issues, so that you’ll know how to approach it in a given market. One thing I think will be different this time is that there won’t be a one-size-fits-all when it comes to the transition. For the analog-to-digital transition, basically everybody got a channel, started their digital transmission and then eventually shut off their analog channel. It was basically the same formula for every broadcast station."

Another point of differentiation about ATSC 3.0 is that "it may very well be managed on a market-by-market basis, with broadcasters working together to come up with a collaborative way to get each other on the air, without disenfranchising the current users of over-the-air digital," Richer said. As for how soon broadcasters will migrate to ATSC 3.0, "it’s going to be different for different broadcasters in different markets," Richer said. "That’s another example how this is not one size fits all."

In some markets, "you may have ATSC 1.0 on for longer than" elsewhere, Richer said. "Some markets will get to ATSC 3.0 sooner. Different stations in different markets may do different things. For the most part, there’s an assumption that there’s going to be some kind of channel-sharing. We’re going to use the capabilities of the technologies to provide multiple services on an RF channel and work out a business and operational arrangement with the broadcasters in a given market." ATSC may well provide "some guidance," but the operational and business decisions "would be up to the broadcasters," he said.

Though the technology to be used hasn’t been finalized, ATSC 3.0's "physical layer," coupled with its video and audio compression codecs, will allow a next-gen system that will be "far more efficient, far more robust and far more flexible than ATSC 1.0," Richer said. "That will give you the ability to change the way you approach introducing services and coverage." HEVC is the likely choice for ATSC 3.0's video codec, Richer said. ATSC soon will release a request for proposals on ATSC 3.0's audio codec, he said. To reduce interference, "you’ll also have the ability to put channel repeaters in your marketplace, if that’s helpful," he said. "All these things give you flexibility that may enable certain strategies for transition. We don’t even necessarily know what all those are yet, but we know that flexible is good."

Though Richer envisions a market-by-market ATSC 3.0 rollout, that’s not to suggest it will be so limited in scope as to deprive CE makers of the economies of scale they need to build ATSC 3.0 receivers in big volumes, Richer said. "Specific organization and arrangement may be market-by-market," he said. "But I think we would hope there would be a significant national rollout across the country, across other countries, in fact, so that there’s impetus for the consumer electronics manufacturers to build receivers into their products and create products that are dongles that could plug into existing receivers or computers. We want to make sure that there’s the impetus to do that. Broadcasting probably has to have a national rollout. That doesn’t mean every station in every market will be on at first. And it doesn’t mean that every market will approach it the same way in terms of how they configure their services."

Though spectrum availability is a big unknown that the ad hoc group is factoring into its scenario discussions, Richer believes the ATSC 3.0 launch need not await the completion of the FCC incentive auction or the repacking process that follows, he said. "From an engineering standpoint, my personal view is that everything should be looked at together and we should come up with the best solution taking into account the repack and the transition to ATSC 3.0," he said. "That makes the most sense. That’s the way you would try to design a system. So I hope that happens, but we’re not basing our work on that hope."

ATSC 3.0's framers will enter "crunch time" these next few months as the group tries to meet its self-imposed deadline of finalizing a "candidate standard" by the end of 2015, Richer said. "There’s a lot of moving parts, and a lot of people." Following more experimental broadcasts next year and field trials in 2016, Richer thinks it’s possible the first ATSC 3.0 broadcast services to actual consumer receivers can begin by 2017, he told us. "That’s my personal crystal ball. I don’t personally know. I don’t know the business minds of broadcasters."