A new effort by Sinclair to bring about the creation of a new TV standard by designing technology to allow broadcasters to send their signals over wireless networks is not likely to capture the attention of an FCC consumed by the incentive auction, said several industry observers in interviews. “Once you get into a new standard it would delay everything,” while the FCC is focused on completing the auction on schedule, said broadcast engineer Don Everist, president of Cohen, Dippell.
"Flexibility” in service options will be a keystone of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 DTV broadcast system, including the opportunity for terrestrial broadcasters to beam “hybrid” content services to fixed and mobile receivers over the air as well as via broadband, Rich Chernock, chief science officer at Triveni Digital, told the “ATSC 3.0 Boot Camp” conference Wednesday.
ONE Media, created by Sinclair and Coherent Logix, will build a “Next Generation Broadcast Platform” that offers wireless access to “premium video content” without a data cap, said ONE Media in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1hvpfjT). The platform will “harmonize television broadcasting with LTE-based mobile infrastructure” and will be used on TVs in the home, over Wi-Fi on mobile devices, or over mobile broadband, said ONE Media. The “Open Network Enabled broadcast/broadband converged Media platform” will extend 3GPP LTE standards “to accommodate existing high power/tall tower broadcast infrastructure” and “eliminate the technical limitations of a conventional mobile TV standard to penetrate mobile devices,” it said. The platform can be built and demonstrated within 12 months, said ONE Media CEO Tommy Eng. The platform is intended to “align the business interests of various parties” to facilitate the Advanced Television Systems Committee 3.0 standardization process,” said ONE Media. “The challenge of meeting broadcaster needs through the current ‘Next Generation’ (ATSC 3.0) activity within the ATSC organization is difficult due to there being little business alignment between broadcast consumer electronics (CE), and other wireless industries,” it said. “A standards development organization is not a suitable forum in which to align business interests."
Details were scarce at our deadline about the outcome of the multi-group meeting Thursday in Las Vegas that organizers had convened to get the ball rolling on talks to standardize high-dynamic-range (HDR) content and displays. Word of the meeting involving delegates from the Advanced Television Systems Committee, CEA, NCTA, and the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers was disclosed by a senior executive at Harmonic, who described the lack of HDR standards as perhaps Ultra HD’s “biggest roadblock.” Of the groups we canvassed for comment on the meeting and the lack of HDR standardization that brought it about, only ATSC President Mark Richer responded with a statement that addressed the HDR issue, if only in the most general terms. “HDR is one of the many issues being considered in the development of ATSC 3.0,” Richer said. “The industry recognizes that there are many technical parameters in addition to total pixel count that determines perceived quality. Since ATSC is focused on the standardization of the transmission to the home, a lot will depend on the plans of the production and consumer electronics industries.” At the NAB Show, the chairwoman of the ATSC’s “S34” specialist group responsible for ATSC 3.0’s audio and video codecs, closed captioning and its other “applications and presentations” said her group would “definitely” study HDR, but she said little more on the subject (CD April 8 p11). Brian Markwalter, CEA senior vice president-research and standards, declined comment on HDR standards. Recently, he said there was much industry “discussion” taking place about getting together this year and devising more up-to-date Ultra HD definitions, logos and certifications than was possible when CEA adopted its Ultra HD nomenclature in fall 2012, but whether that update effort would involve studying HDR standards remains to be seen. At NCTA, “we don’t really have any comment on the HDR standards issue as it is early on with this topic,” said a spokeswoman by email.
Corrections: What Computer and Communications Industry Association Vice President-Government Relations Cathy Sloan said she hopes happens this month on the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) is a committee markup (CD April 8 p13) … “SG32” is the ATSC specialist group that’s working to complete ATSC 3.0’s physical layer (CD April 8 p11).
Broadcasters Should Focus on OTT, Channel Sharing, ATSC 3.0 to Remain Competitive, Wheeler Tells NAB
LAS VEGAS -- Broadcasting is at “an inflection point” where it can move from “being disrupted to the disruptor,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a highly anticipated speech to a packed room at the NAB Show Tuesday. In the speech and a subsequent chat with NAB CEO Gordon Smith, Wheeler offered up a list of “opportunities where the FCC could help broadcasters remain competitive.”
LAS VEGAS -- Beginning late summer, over-the-air field trials are planned by broadcasters in four markets of “Futurecast,” the technology that LG, Zenith Labs and GatesAir submitted to the ATSC as their proposal for next-gen ATSC 3.0’s physical layer, executives with those companies said Tuesday at the NAB Show.
LAS VEGAS -- The Media Bureau will recommend the FCC issue a rulemaking on the effects of the incentive auction on low-power TV after the auction report and order is issued this spring, bureau Chief Bill Lake told low-power broadcasters at an information session Monday at the 2014 NAB Show. The proposed rulemaking notice is designed to answer questions about the impact of the auction on LPTV that the bureau can’t, Lake said. It would consider extending DTV transition deadlines for LPTV, propose authorizing voluntary LP-channel sharing, seek comment on creating digital replacement translators for full-power stations affected by the auction, and discuss offering LP stations the chance to use the FCC’s repacking software to find new channels, Lake said.
LAS VEGAS -- The Advanced TV Systems Committee’s “S34” specialist group, assigned to fashion the “applications and presentations” of the next-generation ATSC 3.0 DTV system, thinks it’s “not in scope” to include 8K resolution in the proposed “candidate standard” that’s expected next April, the group’s chairwoman said in an “ATSC 3.0 Update” panel Sunday at the NAB Show’s Broadcast Engineering Conference. “We are looking at a very flexible service model, with the idea being that you as broadcasters can choose different aspects of services that you want to deliver, but also allowing wide flexibility on the consumer side,” said S34 Chairwoman Madeleine Noland, an LG consultant. S34 also is to pick ATSC 3.0’s audio and video codecs, and is responsible for its closed-captioning, personalization and interactivity, she said: “If you see it on the screen, that’s what we do.”
Channel sharing on both a physical and virtual level can be done, said a technical report on a Los Angeles TV channel sharing project. The report, released Friday by CTIA and Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA, shared technical achievements and limitations of channel sharing. The report is a result of a pilot project to determine whether channel sharing can help free up spectrum in the TV incentive auction (CD Jan 29 p4). The stations have provided real world evidence that channel sharing presents a significant opportunity “for broadcasters to continue their existing business on shared spectrum and take home a check for spectrum they voluntarily relinquish in the incentive auction,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1gz5GdL). He said he hopes broadcasters will closely study the report. The report also found that all the TVs and tuners tested were able to receive and correctly parse all the required information, and that it’s technically feasible “for two 720p high definition streams to be combined into a single Advanced Television System Committee [ATSC] channel,” it said (http://bit.ly/1h0VciA). The report cautioned that careful thought must be put into the radio frequency transition, “whether for repacking or sharing, by the FCC and broadcasters to find a solution that will minimize viewer complaints,” it said. Because broadcasters have no control over the final display format at home, “it makes sense to use the most efficient encoding structure for final distribution over the air,” it said. The stations compared PBS Newshour episodes in the 720p and 1080i HD formats. In 720p, “we found a surprisingly better DMOS [Differential Mean Opinion Score] at approximately 50 percent of the bitrate of 1080i,” it said. With ATSC 3.0, the use of High Efficiency Video Coding codec is envisioned, it said. What isn’t known today is the bitrates that 4K and 8K will require in the future, it said. It also isn’t known whether 4K and 8K will be a viable business opportunity for a broadcaster “or will be delivered through alternate paths,” it said. Many technical issues identified in the report are very familiar to broadcasters “as part of the industry’s extensive experience with multicasting,” NAB said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1o8Gujr). NAB noted in a blog post that while Wheeler “is making a big channel sharing push,” he also is working to eliminate sharing arrangements through joint sales agreements (http://bit.ly/1h3JwLX). Wheeler is essentially saying he wants to see broadcasters share facilities “because that is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but that broadcasters must unwind agreements they voluntarily entered, with commission approval, regarding sharing other resources, because that’s bad,” it said. The FCC is scheduled to vote Monday on an order that is expected to make JSAs attributable for ownership cap purposes (CD March 28 p1).