ATSC Sees More Than 50 Member Groups Showcasing ATSC 3.0's 'Key Elements' at NAB Show
ATSC estimates more than 50 of its “member organizations” will showcase “key elements” of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system within the ATSC Technology Pavilion of the Las Vegas Convention Center’s North Hall on the main floor of the NAB Show, ATSC said in a Thursday announcement. If ATSC remains on schedule, this NAB Show, which opens April 13 for a four-day run, will be the last before ATSC 3.0 becomes a “candidate standard” by the end of 2015.
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Industry “is gearing up to provide the products necessary for a successful upgrade” to ATSC 3.0, said ATSC President Mark Richer in a statement. At NAB, “we’re expecting to see a number of elements shown from a variety of proponents,” Richer said.
ATSC singled out for mention several entities that will use NAB to demo technologies key to ATSC 3.0 They include a joint demonstration by Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute and Spain’s University of the Basque Country to showcase layered division multiplexing (LDM) technology. LDM uses spectrum overlay techniques and signal cancellation to transmit two independent signals within a single 6-MHz TV channel, ATSC said. The demo will show how LDM can be used in “different application scenarios” for ATSC 3.0, it said.
Verance, another participant in the exhibit, will demo its VP1 audio watermark technology and show how VP1 will enable broadcasters to deliver interactive services and other “enhanced” content “to any device through any distribution path,” ATSC said. Verance is one of six watermarking proponents that submitted detailed technical proposals nearly a year ago to ATSC’s “S33-3" ad hoc group on interactive services (see 1405090074). The audio and video watermarks that are chosen are needed to activate “automatic content recognition” functionality that would enable certain interactive features of ATSC 3.0, S33-3 representatives have said. In choosing the winning audio and video watermark proposals, S33-3 doesn't foresee combining a mix of the best technological attributes of several systems because that would create compatibility problems in the field, they have said.
In other ATSC 3.0 developments, ATSC expects the “initial elements” of the “physical layer” for ATSC 3.0 transmission “likely moving” to balloting for a candidate standard “in the coming days,” Richer said in the April issue of ATSC’s monthly online newsletter, The Standard, published Thursday. One proponent vying to be chosen as ATSC 3.0's physical layer, Futurecast, said Thursday it’s preparing to field-test the system on Cleveland’s experimental Channel 31 later this spring.
GatesAir, one of Futurecast’s developers along with LG Electronics and Zenith, has landed a special temporary experimental broadcast license from the FCC to operate a full-power Channel 31 transmitter in the Cleveland area, the Futurecast announcement said. “The capability for conducting both daytime and nighttime experimental broadcasts in Cleveland will build on the success” of overnight field tests Futurecast conducted last year with WKOW in Madison, Wisconsin (see 1410170031), Futurecast said. “These 2014 tests collected nearly 50,000 pieces of data from scores of reception sites including challenging reception areas inside buildings, in fast-moving vehicles and at locations ranging from downtown to 50 miles from the transmitter.”