Candidate Standards on ATSC 3.0 Audio, Video Due by Early 2016, Richer Says
ATSC President Mark Richer expects a decision on an audio codec for ATSC 3.0 “either very late this year or the very beginning of next year,” he told us Friday. Dec. 8 marks a year since ATSC released its call for proposals on ATSC 3.0 audio (see 1412090019). The decision will boil down to a choice between Dolby AC-4 and the MPEG-H consortium of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor, the two contestants that have entered the ATSC 3.0 audio derby.
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By early 2016, “I think we’ll be able to go to candidate standard on the audio,” Richer said. Though Richer has said H.265 will be the likely choice for ATSC 3.0's video codec (see 1411060033), neither the audio nor the video codec is published as a candidate standard document, he said.
Richer expects the video and audio codecs either will be published as candidate standards together or that there will be “a small gap” between their release, he said. “We’re making great progress in both groups, so I don’t see any significant problems or reasons why it would be held up,” he said. “We’ll have at least four more documents that will go to candidate standard, I think, either before the end of the year, or right into the new year,” he said. “And those make up some of the most important layers in terms of what receiver manufacturers need to know to start building a product.”
The same is true on the professional equipment side, Richer said. Companies that are going to offer “some of the products for stations to buy to get on the air with ATSC 3.0, they’ll have certainly enough knowledge at that point” to start to build them, he said. “My understanding is there are companies working on these products already. They have a big interest in making sure we stay on schedule.”
ATSC is on track to complete work on final ATSC 3.0 standards by Q1 2017, Richer said. At that point, there will be “a lot of heavy lifting to be done by a number of organizations,” he said. ATSC as a body “doesn’t really get too involved in the commercial side of coming up with services and products,” he said. “We do react to input from the industry about additional requirements, enhancements and new features.” In that role, “we might be working to add stuff to add new capabilities to ATSC 3.0,” he said. “If you ask me what comes after ATSC 3.0, I would tell you ATSC 3.01, and a series of documents like that that would revise the core standards, to clarify issues as we learn about them or find an alternate or optimized way to do something.”
Richer also foresees ATSC at that point “working on a number of recommended practices that would be helpful” to broadcasters and makers of consumer electronics “and a lot of things in between,” he said. “There definitely will be things that need to be clarified or corrected as the marketplace gears up” for ATSC 3.0, he said.
Historically, “from a regulatory standpoint,” ATSC as a group has tended “not to get involved in the issues with the FCC,” he said. “However, in the past, we’ve been asked to come in and give a technical briefing, a mini-seminar. I’m guessing that we might do that at some point in the not-too-distant future.” ATSC also might file comments in an FCC proceeding if it thinks “the record needs to be corrected,” he said. “The same is true of regulators in other countries.”
Based on growing participation in the ATSC 3.0 process among broadcasters and networks, Richer doubts their embracing of ATSC 3.0 as a commercial reality will be “lukewarm,” he said. “In every industry, there’s always first adopters that are out in front,” he said. “I’m sure that will happen here.”
In ATSC 3.0 proceedings, “virtually every major broadcasting group is involved,” Richer said. “They are members, they attend meetings, they’re contributing. So I can't imagine doing this just because it’s fun. It’s a lot of hard work and takes up a lot of time. So not only are the broadcasters stepping up to become members, they’re putting people on committees.”
Richer concedes some broadcaster members within ATSC think ATSC 3.0 will take a long time to reach commercial fruition, “and they don’t want to worry about it right now,” he said. At the other end of the scale are broadcasters thinking ATSC 3.0 “is necessary for the survival of the terrestrial broadcasting industry,” he said. Richer’s personal view is that ATSC 3.0 will be a “transformative” technology that gives broadcasters the chance “to re-invent themselves, as well as to expand their current markets,” he said. “So I think it’s very exciting and that most people are very excited by it.”