Though ATSC President Mark Richer “can't name a specific date for the work of a subcommittee, the process to select audio technology for use in ATSC 3.0 is making great progress and is generally on track," he emailed us Friday. Under ATSC’s call for audio proposals issued in December, the S34-2 ad hoc group that’s studying ATSC 3.0 audio proposals faces an Aug. 14 deadline for delivering a recommended audio standard to its parent S34 specialist group on "applications and presentation" chaired by Madeleine Noland, an LG Electronics consultant. Dolby Labs CEO Kevin Yeaman on a Wednesday earnings call generally sidestepped questions about Dolby’s fate in the ATSC 3.0 audio selection process, though he said "we’ve been highly engaged in that process.” Dolby’s AC-4 technology is one of the proposals that the S34-2 ad hoc group is considering for adoption, along with a second proposal from the MPEG-H audio alliance of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor. A third proponent, DTS, dropped out of the running days before the NAB Show opened in mid-April (see 1504130030). “We have a fantastic solution that both increases efficiency and also opens up possibilities for new and enhanced audio experiences,” Yeaman said of Dolby AC-4. “We feel good about where we are at this stage in the game,” though “we’re still ways off from any broad implementation,” he said. Pressed in Q&A on when ATSC might pick an audio winner for ATSC 3.0, Yeaman said: “I don’t think we have a firm date from them.”
Broadcasters planning to take advantage of the capabilities of the upcoming ATSC 3.0 technological shift to lease spectrum to wireless carriers would be better served by participating in the TV incentive auction, said Incentive Auction Task Force Vice Chairman Howard Symons during a webinar Thursday. Largely about the incentive auction, the webinar, hosted by Broadcasting and Cable, also touched on the new broadcast standard and repacking.
CLEVELAND -- ATSC President Mark Richer thinks commercial launches of ATSC 3.0 TVs and broadcast services (see 1504130028) are possible by the end of the decade, perhaps sooner, he said Thursday at field trials to showcase the LG-Zenith-GatesAir Futurecast technology proposal for ATSC 3.0. Richer was among a group of several dozen broadcast industry dignitaries, including Lynn Claudy, NAB senior vice president-technology, and ATSC Chairman Glenn Reitmeier of NBCUniversal invited to Cleveland to witness the Futurecast field trials in action.
Though there’s still “a lot of work to do” to finish the next-gen ATSC 3.0 DTV broadcast standard, ATSC President Mark Richer is “confident” that “our standardization work is on track,” he said in the July issue of ATSC’s monthly newsletter, The Standard, published Tuesday.
Pay-TV technology supplier Motive Television developed what it’s calling the world’s first ATSC-format DVR for mobile devices. The new mobile DVR provides the ability to time-shift over-the-air programs on tablets and mobile devices, it said in a Thursday announcement. It works with the existing TabletTV app and TPod antenna that Motive developed jointly with Granite Broadcasting, it said. The DVR “uses an intuitive functionality and interface, similar to the functions consumers have used in the home for the past 20+ years,” it said. Users can schedule the DVR to record programs up to seven days in advance and then watch them for their personal use later, it said. TabletTV previously had a one-touch recording feature that permits pausing, playing and recording a current program, but the new DVR will extend that capability to recording future programs for later viewing, it said. Motive plans this month to introduce the DVR in a beta version to existing TabletTV users and will distribute the DVR to the larger “general market” in September, it said. Motive also later plans to license the DVR software to CE makers and app developers, it said.
Sinclair Broadcast is considering participating in the TV incentive auction, said CEO David Amy on a panel of broadcast executives at the SNL Kagan TV and Radio Finance Summit Thursday. “There are some markets where it could make sense,” such as designated market areas where Sinclair has duopolies and could sell spectrum while maintaining the same presence through channel sharing, Amy said. Amy's profession of interest in the auction was just 10 days after losing a court challenge along with NAB against the auction in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan conceded Thursday that the decision's language means future court challenges against the FCC aren't likely to succeed. Litigation “is not a major threat” to the auction happening on time, Kaplan said. The auction and a transition to ATSC 3.0 aren't likely to synchronize, he said.
Sinclair is “bullish on whatever allows us to bring consumers together with advertisers in the television environment,” Mark Aitken, vice president-advanced technology, told us on whether Sinclair’s ATSC 3.0 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Samsung and Pearl TV, announced Wednesday, means his company is committed to broadcasting in Ultra HD.
Broadcasters deny wanting an incentive auction delay for the adoption of ATSC 3.0, but the Expanding Opportunities For Broadcasters Coalition, Public Knowledge, wireless carriers and several wireless trade organizations issued a joint statement against that possibility last week. They “strongly support" the planned first-quarter 2016 start of the incentive auction and oppose delaying the auction “in an attempt to synchronize" the post-auction repacking and the transition to ATSC 3.0,” the statement said.
The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition will lobby Congress to hold an auction of low-power TV spectrum separate from the incentive auction, said Director Mike Gravino. Under the coalition's proposal, the federal government would purchase the LPTV spectrum now but not auction it off until after the incentive auction is completed. The promise of future gains from the sale of the LPTV spectrum could be used to justify adding more money to the incentive auction’s relocation fund, or to put off the incentive auction to allow the repacking to coincide with the adoption of ATSC 3.0.,Gravino said. “It’s a Christmas tree bill” that could be used to fix “everything wrong” with the incentive auction, and provide a future source of valuable spectrum, Gravino said. Gravino told us he had been scheduled to brief NAB on the proposal, but he said the meeting was canceled by the broadcast association after we contacted NAB for confirmation. An NAB spokesman said his association has no meetings scheduled with Gravino. In the group's Monday newsletter, it took aim at CEA CEO Gary Shapiro for not knowing some of the intricacies of LPTV. At an ATSC meeting last week, Gravino wrote, he had spoken with Shapiro about the "tax credit plan to free up spectrum and pay LPTV." Shapiro, "as intense as everyone says he is," "simply did not know the basic facts about LPTV, nor the auction process itself," wrote Gravino. "He certainly did not know about the potential impacts on LPTV from the auction, nor how LPTV can screw up the auction process. But there is a reason he is considered the toughest guy in the room when it comes to lobbying and TV. He listened very carefully to the distilled data I presented, was literally shocked by it, and asked my permission to quote me when he was on the panel." At the panel, Shapiro challenged NAB CEO Gordon Smith to agree that broadcasters wouldn't further try to delay the auction (see 1505140040). CEA had no comment Tuesday.
Center for Copyright Information hires Jim Kohlenberger, JK Strategies, as executive director, succeeding Jill Lesser, named senior adviser, and adds Stephen Balkam, Family Online Safety Institute, to advisory board ... Sony Electronics Senior Staff Engineer Luke Fay wins 2015 Bernard Lechner award for outstanding contributions to ATSC ... Lobbyist registration: Cyber Security and Defense Super PAC, Socci and Associates, effective May 1.