ATSC is “pleased” the FCC in its ATSC 3.0 rules is requiring broadcasters to use the A/322 physical-layer protocol document for a five-year sunset window alongside the A/321 bootstrap physical-layer document, ATSC President Mark Richer told us Friday. Requiring 3.0 broadcasters “to adhere to A/322 for an appropriate transitional period, and only on their primary video programming stream,” will “balance our goals of protecting consumers while promoting innovation,” the commission said in its draft 3.0 order released Thursday, setting the stage for a 3.0 authorization vote at the FCC’s next agenda meeting Nov. 16.
“Capacity constraints inherent” to SiriusXM’s satellite system “will fall away” with deployment of the 360L connected-car platform with “a major automaker" to be announced at January's CES, CEO Jim Meyer said on a Wednesday earnings call. “With a better, more adaptable user interface, we will drive new functionality, such as time-shifting content on demand, personalizing music stations, and improving the display and accessibility of our sports content.” Embedded two-way connectivity of future cars "will enable us to understand user behavior in 360L cars and, over time, develop sophisticated recommendation engines to aid discovery across our deep line of content," he said. The company’s biggest challenge in contacting would-be paid subscribers is “breaking through the clutter, highlighting our exceptional content and easy-to-use service, and speaking directly to our trial customers," and improved “data analytics” through 360L deployment “will greatly benefit these marketing efforts," Meyer said. SiriusXM soon will begin beta-testing a new version of its Android and iOS apps and it “will be rolled out fully in 2018,” offering subscribers “a new way to personalize our music stations,” he said. Having recently closed on the final phase of its $480 million “strategic investment” buy of 19 percent of Pandora (see 1709210035), “eventually, there will be areas where it makes sense for SiriusXM and Pandora to work together,” he said. “We will take our time getting to know their business and thoughtfully considering these options.” Meyer and Chief Financial Officer David Frear “are spending a prudent amount of time understanding how things work” at Pandora, mostly on the streaming service’s “advertising side,” just “understanding how their model works and what the various levers are,” Meyer said in Q&A.
Though EPA seeks comment by Nov. 7 on the “revised final draft” of the Energy Star Version 8.0 TV spec it released Tuesday (see 1710240066), CTA didn’t wait to say the changes proposed “would put EPA in the business of control, deciding how consumers receive and use technology.” The final spec, to be released soon “after the comment period ends,” takes effect July 1, EPA said. The revised draft spec proposes limits to a TV’s “average screen luminance” at various ambient-lighting conditions when automatic brightness control (ABC) is enabled by default in the set’s “brightest selectable preset picture setting.” Doug Johnson, CTA vice president-technology policy, said the proposal “means the American living room would look a little more like how the government thinks it should” and "if ABC is enabled by default in all preset picture modes, these modes will look very similar and, more troubling, negatively impact the consumer experience.” The Natural Resources Defense Council, which supported the changes included in the revised final draft, “is pleased that EPA is closer to finalizing its update to the ENERGY STAR specification for TVs,” Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz emailed us.
Industry is “seeing the dilemma between push and pull,” cinematographer Pierre Routhier said when we asked him at SMPTE's conference in Hollywood (see 1710240073) to reconcile his findings that 8K has no place in the living room, even as NHK rushes to start 8K broadcasting services in 2018 and TV makers talk increasingly of introducing 8K product in the U.S. next year. “We are pushing forward with increased spatial resolution, but I’ve not seen the pull from the clients.” The Korean Broadcasting System, meanwhile, successfully implemented a “basic” closed-captioning system for the ATSC 3.0-based Ultra HD broadcasting services that debuted to the South Korean public in May, said Yunhyoung Kim, KBS research engineer. Implementation had its “difficulties,” most having to do with building the crucial “timing” mechanisms into the closed-captioning feeds, he said. ATSC’s A/343 document defines required technology for closed caption and subtitle tracks, but contains “no explicit expressions” of how to use the timing mechanisms in a practical implementation, so KBS improvised, he said. That prompted an audience questioner who said he was involved in 3.0's framing to approach the mic and declare: “Unfortunately, the structure of the ATSC 3.0 document set is not implementer-friendly.” Framers “argued repeatedly in a number of meetings about that,” said the questioner, who didn’t give his name, and our attempts to talk to him were unsuccessful. “All of the shell statements are present that you absolutely need, but they’re spread over about 20 documents,” he said. ATSC’s supervisors told 3.0's framers they would draft a “recommended practice to tell people how it all fits together,” said the questioner: “They haven’t done that.” To Kim, who stood onstage listening to the remarks with no visible expression, the questioner said: “Unfortunately, you’re the first guy that had to do it. I feel sorry for you, but congratulations on getting a working implementation.” ATSC President Mark Richer in a Wednesday statement told us, “Certainly ATSC will develop a Recommended Practice for closed-captioning with ATSC 3.0, just as we have done with the current digital TV standard." More than 20 different standards "will comprise the full ATSC 3.0 system, and we have drafts of several Recommended Practices that are now in development,” said Richer. An order on ATSC 3.0 is expected to be voted on by FCC members Nov. 16.
EPA released additional tweaks Tuesday in its Energy Star Version 8.0 TV spec, but in a “revised final draft,” not the actual final spec that the agency said it would release mid-August. EPA continues to grapple with how low to set a TV screen’s required minimum brightness when the set is viewed in dark rooms with the energy-saving automatic brightness control feature enabled. EPA sees the rule as critical for discouraging consumers from disabling ABC because the screen is too dark in ambient room light of 3 lux. EPA originally set the minimum brightness at 150 nits at 3 lux on Imaging Science Foundation recommendations, lowering it to 125 nits after TV makers complained the minimum setting would be too bright (see 1705190033). After July 18 release of the final draft spec, three TV makers that EPA didn't name stepped forward to argue that the 125-nit requirement would still be too bright, said a Tuesday agency cover memo. EPA “has subsequently become aware” of the SMPTE standard (ST 2080) for content editing on HDTVs, which calls for a 100-nit screen luminance, the agency said. “In the absence of industry-wide consensus on optimal brightness for dark room viewing, and given this additional point of reference, EPA is lowering the requirement for luminance at 3 lux to greater than or equal to” 100 nits, it said. Comments are due Nov. 7. EPA representatives didn’t comment further, and the memo said V8.0's effective date was pushed back to July 1 from April 16.
There’s “a lot more innovation to do to solve the core problem” of developing a glass-based “transparent material” for smartphones that won’t break when dropped, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks told investors Tuesday. There are “many generations ahead of us” in further perfecting its Gorilla Glass, now in its fifth generation, he said. Strong Gorilla performance so far helps the company in “putting glass in new places, like the back of the phone,” he said. Future such opportunities “depend on how much we can continue to improve the glass to make sure that the customer’s ultimate experience of this product has all the great benefits of glass -- wireless charging, improved reception, improved aesthetics -- but at the same time to have the type of durability” one would get from “more opaque materials,” Weeks said. Corning shares closed up 6.4 percent to $31.94.
HOLLYWOOD -- With rise of virtual reality “storytelling,” the rectangular “frame” for displaying content “will be as quaint a memory as the theater,” cinematographer Andrew Shulkind told the SMPTE Conference Tuesday. “In an age of rapid acceleration, that time is coming faster than we think.”
There’s “nothing really stopping” broadcasters under the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards from transmitting “540p, high-dynamic-range, wide-color-gamut” pictures “if they wish,” LG Electronics consultant Madeleine Noland told the NAB Show New York (see 1710180023) Thursday during an Ultra HD primer workshop. Noland chairs ATSC’s S34 specialist group supervising the framing of 3.0 audio and video and the Ultra HD Forum’s guidelines working group. “Broadcasters are allowed to mix-and-match within the ATSC 3 system in order to make sure that they’re getting the best bang for their bit, and making the best business decisions they can for their customers,” said Noland. In implementing 3.0, U.S. broadcasters “may rely actually heavily on a 2K service at first, looking at 2K, plus HDR, wide color gamut, next-generation audio,” she said. “We did not get a whole nice big pile of spectrum to play with in order to make this transition.” The “bandwidth challenges” make 2K-based broadcast services “a very attractive offering at the outset,” she said. ATSC 3.0 "right now goes to 2160p," Noland told a questioner who asked whether the standard could accommodate 8K. "One of the most important things we built into ATSC 3.0 is extensability," she said. "So the expectation is that, over time, more things will be added," she said. Her S34 specialist group is "already looking at next pieces of some of the video, and ultimately 8K may be one of those things," she said. The Ultra HD Forum canvassed service operators worldwide to gauge their “two-to-five-year outlook” on commercializing Ultra HD “technologies” like 4K resolution, HDR and wide color gamut, said Noland. “We found strong support for 2K UHD formats, interestingly, but also strong support for 4K UHD formats.” HDR and wide color gamut are “high on everyone’s lists,” she said. “But people are a little bit concerned about all the complexities that go along with having multiple technologies available.” The survey found service operators aren't very worried about the pace of future Ultra HD consumer adoption, she said.
Since CTA’s June filing urging the FCC in ATSC 3.0 rules only to “encourage” adoption of ATSC’s A/322 document on physical-layer protocol, without requiring it (see 1706090026), member companies "indicated a need for more certainty regarding the transmission standard to ensure a uniform and smooth transition to NextGen TV,” said Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards. That was CTA’s rationale for writing to all five commissioners to incorporate A/322 into 3.0 rules, not just the A/321 document on system discovery and signaling (see 1710190048), said Markwalter Thursday. Keeping with the 3.0 transition's voluntary, market-driven nature, CTA previously told the FCC it wasn't seeking “a requirement to implement A/322.”
As the FCC winds its way toward completing and releasing an order, possibly as soon as next week, authorizing the voluntary deployment of ATSC 3.0 (see 1710170048), CTA wrote the commission Thursday that it thinks “more certainty is needed regarding the modulation system to be used by broadcasters” for their 3.0 transmissions. On that basis, CTA intensified its call for the FCC to incorporate the ATSC's A/322 document on physical-layer protocol into the rules, not just the A/321 document on system discovery and signaling.