Sinclair Launches Long-Awaited ATSC 3.0 SFN in Baltimore, DC
The first-ever ATSC 3.0-based single frequency network began broadcasting Monday in Baltimore and Washington under special temporary authority from the FCC, Sinclair said in a Tuesday announcement. Launching the SFN “validates, in a real world environment, the operation and performance of new and innovative concepts relative to an ATSC 3.0 SFN deployment” that will include a “full range” of services, including “fixed, portable and mobile capabilities,” said Sinclair. It worked with its One Media subsidiary and with broadcast equipment supplier TeamCast on the deployment.
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Sinclair thinks the Baltimore-Washington SFN is the first of “hundreds” it and other broadcasters will roll out in adopting ATSC 3.0, it said. Development work already is underway to extend the SFN to Richmond, Sinclair and One Media executives told us at CES. Actual deployment of the Baltimore-Washington SFN on channel 43 had been expected for months (see 1509040046). It comes just under four weeks before the opening of the NAB Show, where ATSC 3.0 demonstrations are expected to figure prominently, and days before the full ATSC membership is expected to approve by ballot elevating the first ingredient of ATSC 3.0 to the status of a final standard (see 1602240064).
By deploying an SFN for ATSC 3.0, “we’re taking the same approach the telcos are, where they have multiple towers, but we’re not making it a dense tower set-up,” Kevin Gage, One Media chief technology officer, told us at CES. “We may have four to five towers, so you have your main tower and three to four other towers that surround a DMA,” Gage said of a designated market area. “Now what does that enable? It enables us now to have really good indoor reception. It enables us to have really good mobile reception. And because it’s an IP-based network, it enables us to create services that follow you from DMA to DMA.” With the first SFN towers already up in Baltimore and Washington and another soon to follow in Richmond, “we’re going to allow you literally to drive through the D.C. area and have services follow you from Baltimore down to Richmond,” Gage said.
An SFN has “a multiplicity of uses,” Mark Aitken, Sinclair vice president-advanced technology, told us at CES. “It allows you to raise the level of RF energy that’s in the market," Aitken said. "And as you raise the RF energy, you actually have the capability of propagating more bits” for signal robustness and for more ATSC 3.0 services, “because you’re further away from the noise floor,” Aitken said. “Imagine how simple it becomes for a consumer to go on Amazon, order a TV, the drone drops it off on your porch two hours later, and you grab it and take it out of the box and plug it into the wall and you’ve got television. There’s no climbing up on the peak of the roof or into the attic, but you’ve elevated the power in a market in simple embedded antennas, and suddenly you allow broadcast television hassle-free.”