TVs Possibly Could Be ATSC 3.0-Upgradable Via Software Updates, Says CTA Point Man

Markwalter conceded he doesn’t know “that level of detail” to give a definitive answer whether such updates for ATSC 3.0 compatibility would be possible or practical, he said. “But my sense is that if the basic tuner and demod portion that gets the bits out knows how” to convey the ATSC 3.0 information, “then it’s much more likely, because a lot of the other processing is done in the software,” he said. He cautioned that doing software updates for ATSC 3.0 compatibility would entail “complex engineering decisions” for assurances they won’t somehow mar the consumer viewing experience, he said. “Clearly, it’s becoming more common” in the TV industry to do software updates, he said. “But there’s more to the math,” because TV makers need to be “super-careful not to break stuff,” he said. “That’s the way TV manufacturers are going to think about it.”

With the last TV transition to digital from analog, “we were really pushing the limit of what we could do reasonably well for consumers,” Markwalter told an earlier NAB Show workshop on the ATSC 3.0 migration. “Flat-panels were not mainstreamed yet,” so the first digital TVs “were CRTs and they were really big and heavy and hard to do,” he said.

By comparison, with ATSC 3.0, “we’re in a position where the silicon is pretty much ready to go,” and the ready availability of 4K panels will mean “less of a pushing of the envelope,” Markwalter said. “We’re going to be in a position to transition more easily,” he said. By the time receiver manufacturers like LG and Samsung are able to launch ATSC 3.0-ready TVs in the U.S. market, they will have gone through several “iterations” of chip development in preparing products for the launch of ATSC 3.0 in South Korea, said Markwalter. “So we’ll have a lot of experience with that,” he said.

The consumer tech industry also is “in a world now where much of the cool stuff happens in software,” Markwalter said. “We do much more of the processing in the software,” which makes for products that are “much more flexible” than in the past, he said. Markwalter doesn’t want to “trivialize” a manufacturer's product development process or getting regulatory approvals for new ATSC 3.0 products, he said: “But much of the engineering, at least getting bits to the TV and making pictures, has been done.”

The suite of ATSC 3.0 standards is “about 80 percent” complete, Markwalter said. “It’s never great to predict with any precision when a big suite of standards like this is going to be done, but we do expect to be finalized by the end of Q2,” he said. “All the key information” that broadcast equipment makers, chip suppliers and receiver manufacturers need to build products for ATSC 3.0 “is pretty much available,” he said. “We’re really quite far along.”

Pearl TV likely sees “a progressive rollout” of ATSC 3.0 broadcasts that will be “sort of gated” by the 39-month spectrum repack, Managing Director Anne Schelle told the workshop. Markets will move toward ATSC 3.0 in a “phased approach,” she said. “It will be a little bit of a Swiss cheese build, is what I like to call it. But I think that’s OK. The business model that we’re looking at to start with is a core-enhanced service, and you can do that with that kind of buildout time frame.”

Broadcasters “need to think consumer-first,” when deciding which ATSC 3.0-capable services to debut, Schelle said. “Consumers, they want on-command, on-demand. Millennials are watching more video than ever. They’re actually watching a tremendous amount in-home, but they’re watching a lot cross-platform. Their live content and their OTT [over-the-top] content -- they want it all together, they want a seamless navigation, they want a Netflix-like environment, and they want it to always work. They want a Starbucks experience. So ATSC can deliver that.”

Schelle thinks “as soon as we’re allowed to transmit, you’ll start to see a proliferation” of ATSC 3.0 services debut. “Off the bat,” ATSC 3.0 will give broadcasters the opportunity to “provide a pretty compelling service, that then can be innovated on over time, because it’s a platform,” she said. “I really believe you’re going to have a ton of innovation, not only on the content side. Just think VR, 360 -- there’s the ability to bring that to this platform.”

Receiver makers “expect to be able to introduce products” for ATSC 3.0, and to do so “voluntarily, just like the broadcasters have asked about voluntarily being able to transmit the signal,” Markwalter said. The remark prompted one audience questioner to ask whether ATSC 3.0, lacking regulatory mandates on products or services, risks incurring the same weak transition that plagued the radio industry’s voluntary migration to HD Radio.

Pearl studied “what went wrong” with HD Radio’s “implementation,” and “we see this as very different,” Schelle said in response of ATSC 3.0. “Don’t forget that the TV sets that are going to be sold with 3.0 will also have 1.0 in them,” she said. “So you can start to see the market for consumers. You can also address these TV sets, so you can let the consumers know when these services are available, as long as there’s a return channel.” The Pearl studies found millennial consumers have “incredibly high interest” in smart TVs and in 4K, she said. “Consumers want 4K. We live in also a very different time. It’s the iPhone generation. They’re used to flipping out and wanting better. There’s a tremendous fear of not having the better technology out there amongst millennials, and so they’re more willing to go out and buy a new device that has that.”

Schelle thinks that “early on,” Pearl will be “a little constrained” to use ATSC 3.0 to beam 4K content, she told us after the workshop. “I think in some markets, where we can offer it, we’ll offer it,” she said. With the ability under ATSC 3.0 to “do enhanced layers, we can bring it in,” despite the lack of “new spectrum,” she said. Pearl is “highly aware of wanting to get there as fast as we can, so we’ve got plans to figure that out,” she said of 4K. “I can’t talk about how we’re going to do that, but there is a way to do it.”