The FCC could take up a proceeding on approving ATSC 3.0 before the end of 2016, NAB CEO Gordon Smith said at NAB's Broadcast Innovations event Wednesday. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Smith the new standard would become a priority for the commission after "a few things" are taken off the FCC's agenda, Smith said. If a new standard is approved in 2016, broadcasters could be transmitting in the new standard by summer 2017, Smith said. ATSC 3.0 would allow broadcasters to offer better visuals and audio, such as UltraHD, said NBCUniversal Senior Vice President-Advanced Technology Glenn Reitmeier on a panel. Cable and satellite providers don't require regulatory approval to offer services like UltraHD, so it's important for broadcasters to have the new standard approved, Reitmeier said.
Broadcasters that adopt ATSC 3.0 will need to decide how best to serve both high-dynamic-range streams to HDR TVs and standard-dynamic-range streams “to legacy TVs over the ATSC 3.0 environment,” but after the FCC incentive auction won’t have “the ability to simulcast or use two-layer delivery systems to light up SDR and HDR screens simultaneously.” So said a new white paper, "HDR over ATSC 3.0: A Technology Impact Analysis for Broadcast Industry," co-authored by Alan Stein, Technicolor vice president-R&D, and Gérard Faria, chief technology officer at broadcast-equipment supplier TeamCast.
Three months before a presidential election that could signal the end of his time in the driver’s seat, has Chairman Tom Wheeler’s FCC done what he said it would when he took office? Based on interviews with FCC officials, pay-TV executives and communications attorneys of many stripes, the answer is, “Mostly.”
ATSC 3.0 will allow broadcasters to “datacast," which will create opportunities for public TV stations, said America's Public Television Stations in an ex parte filing posted Thursday in FCC docket 16-142. “Next Gen datacasting will allow Public Television to deliver encrypted and targetable IP data, including video and other large files, and thereby provide a wireless IP delivery network that is natively multicast and not subject to congestion or delay, like the television signals carrying it,” APTS said. “Public Television is eager to embrace the non-broadcast datacasting opportunities that Next Gen presents to enhance the public services we offer.” ATSC 3.0 would allow noncommercial stations to support FirstNet and first responders, send educational materials to schools, and perform a “C-SPAN-like” service for state legislative proceedings, the association said. The service also could present a nonbroadcast revenue opportunity for public stations by allowing them to provide datacast services to local businesses, it said.
“Timing of availability” of ATSC 3.0 receivers will depend primarily on how quickly the FCC moves to authorize use of 3.0's physical transmission layer, America’s Public TV Stations, CTA and NAB told the FCC in Aug. 2 meetings with members of the Media Bureau, Office of Engineering and Technology and International Bureau, NAB said in a joint ex parte filing Thursday in docket 16-142. The associations want the FCC to launch a rulemaking on the transition by Oct. 1, they told the commission in reply comments in late June (see 1606280068). Consumer equipment manufacturers are unlikely to begin building ATSC 3.0 receivers into their products until the FCC “allows the voluntary use of the standard and there is something for those receivers to receive,” the ex parte filing said. Attendees included Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, CTA Senior Vice President-Research and Standards Brian Markwalter, APTS CEO Patrick Butler and NAB officials including General Counsel Rick Kaplan. ATSC 3.0 receiver costs "will fall over time as the standard becomes more widely used and consumer demand spurs broader manufacture of Next Generation TV receivers,” said NAB. CTIA’s concerns are “unfounded” about the potential for ATSC 3.0 to interfere with wireless operations in the 600 MHz band, the groups told the commission. “CTIA supports the broadcast industry’s efforts to evolve, as long as it does not delay or disrupt the use of new 600 MHz licenses purchased at auction,” Scott Bergmann, vice president-regulatory affairs, emailed us Monday through a spokeswoman. CTIA used the identical language in its June 27 reply comments to summarize its position on ATSC 3.0. Further testing of the interference potential between wireless LTE and ATSC 3.0 “is unlikely to provide useful results,” APTS, CTA and NAB told the FCC. “There is no technical reason to believe that ATSC 3.0 creates a higher risk of potential inter-service interference” than the existing ATSC 1.0 service, they said.
That the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE) recently backed speedy FCC approval of the ATSC 3.0 transmission system is further evidence the next-generation broadcast standard will “move through this regulatory process at a fairly quick pace,” said Sinclair CEO David Smith on a Wednesday earnings call. AFCCE “finds no technical reason” to delay authorization of the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard and so urges the FCC “to take the requisite actions necessary for expedited consideration,” it told the commission in July 19 comments. Smith also thinks ATSC 3.0 “over time” will be adopted as “a global standard,” following its endorsement by South Korea, he said. “The long-term consequences of that as a function of our intellectual property is going to be very interesting to watch,” he said.
The FCC might have opted not to change the rules for retransmission consent negotiations, but it could be signaling more willingness to intercede when those talks are going awry, some cable industry officials and allies tell us, pointing to Sinclair’s $9.49 million settlement (see 1607290067) last week over an array of good-faith negotiating and licensing rule violations. But other multichannel video programming distributor allies -- plus broadcasters -- see that idea as wishful thinking. The agency has broad statutory authority to investigate and impose penalties, but the question of whether the Sinclair consent decree is a turn in FCC enforcement policy remains to be seen, one lawyer who represents cable interests told us.
Sinclair Broadcast agreed to a $9.49 million settlement with the FCC over violations of the good faith negotiation and licensing rules, said a consent decree released Friday. The consent decree included the dismissal of all pending claims against Sinclair in the Media Bureau, and the FCC now will issue license renewals for 90 TV stations, Sinclair said in a news release. “This Consent Decree and the dismissals of other pending matters, brings closure to all of these issues and allows Sinclair to focus on the future,” Sinclair said in the release. According to the consent decree, the Media Bureau found that Sinclair represented numerous stations it had sharing agreements with in retrans negotiations, after the FCC had implemented rules against joint negotiation, the consent decree said. It also resolves complaints filed against Sinclair for violations of the news distortion policy and local television ownership rule, the consent decree said. Sinclair also agreed to create a compliance plan for self-reporting rule violations, the consent decree said. "2017 will begin a new era for broadcasting, with the post-auction repack and the initial rollout of Next Generation TV (or ATSC 3.0), and clearing this backlog sets the stage for that," Rebecca Hanson, Sinclair's senior vice president-strategy and policy, said in the release.
ATSC’s Technology Group 3 agreed Thursday to extend the candidate standard period on the ATSC 3.0 video document (A/341) by two months to Sept. 30, as expected (see 1606160052), the group said Monday in the July/August issue of its newsletter, The Standard. ATSC 3.0's framers pushed last month for the extension to give themselves more time to pick a winning high-dynamic-range technology for 3.0 video. A/341 was one of seven candidate standards for which TG3 extended the expiration dates to Sept. 30. But each of those candidate standards is “moving apace within the TG3 process” toward elevation as proposed standards, ATSC said. In two days of HDR demos and comparative tests hosted last month by CBS in New York, six HDR proponents vying to be chosen for A/341 (see 1605200031) “were given an opportunity to demonstrate their technology in any way they wished, using any of the available equipment and content,” said Madeleine Noland, the LG consultant who chairs ATSC’s S34 specialist group on ATSC 3.0 video, in a write-up in The Standard. During the event, “detailed comparative demonstrations were conducted using common pro-reference monitors and common content for apples-to-apples comparisons among the systems,” Noland said: “An expert viewing area was set up with a wall of monitors -- five consumer displays and 10 professional reference displays. Equipment also included a number of cameras, encoders, video servers, and more. Two live sets were constructed -- one predominantly light and the other dark. The sets were carefully designed to provide a range of luminance and colors to both show off and challenge the proposed technologies. In addition to content captured live, the demonstrations used pre-recorded content prepared in advance.” Noland didn’t indicate which of the six proponent systems fared best.
The FCC should apply the lessons from the spectrum frontiers proceeding to the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking, said NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan in a blog post Wednesday. “The Commission’s approach has been to “promote a flexible regulatory environment for the next generation of wireless services,” Kaplan said. “5G’s nascent status has not prevented the Commission from moving forward in the Spectrum Frontiers proceeding, and it shouldn’t stop the Commission from moving forward with authorizing Next Gen TV. As it did for 5G, the FCC should reject calls for delay to study ATSC 3.0," Kaplan said. “Delays in approving voluntary use of a new television transmission standard could affect U.S. leadership in broadcast television and deprive consumers of new features and services.” Since broadcasters and CTA have asked for an Oct. 1 NPRM, a nine-month timeline similar to the spectrum frontiers proceeding would lead to final ATSC 3.0 rules being issued in July 2017, Kaplan said. “Just one year from now, the Commission should be in the admirable position of having laid the foundation for the future of both the wireless and television industries.” Commissioners are voting Thursday on the spectrum frontiers order.