Events took an unexpected turn in London Tuesday at the Cambridge Wireless Technology and Engineering Conference when Qualcomm Vice President-Technology Kent Walker took the podium to speak on the subject of “ATSC 3.0 and TV integration.” Walker was going to cover ATSC 3.0's "implications for Europe" and argue that U.S. TV networks "would be significantly more efficient if the new technologies being specified in ATSC 3.0 and DVB T2 and 3 could be more aggressively deployed." The result, the conference program said, "would be a step function improvement in the delivery economics of terrestrial broadcast and a substantially improved (and hence higher value) user experience." Instead, Walker said ATSC didn’t want him talking about ATSC 3.0. “Whoever spoke to me when we were setting this up said that I was going to talk a lot about ATSC,” Walker said in introductory remarks. He said ATSC “doesn’t want me to talk about what’s going on at ATSC, so I’ll talk about what Qualcomm thinks about television.” He twice uttered the word, “lawyers,” with no further explanation. "ATSC lawyers have not had interaction with Kent or Qualcomm," emailed ATSC President Mark Richer Tuesday. Meanwhile, at Qualcomm, "I was heavily involved with MediaFLO and can tell you the technology worked, but the business plan didn't," Walker said of the technology developed by the company and later abandoned for transmitting audio, video and data to portable devices. "We never got to more than 10 percent penetration and 3 percent adoption." Consumers who bought into MediaFLO "were very loyal, but the business plan was wrong," he said. Technologies like dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP taught Qualcomm the value of running "your TV service in a browser," he said. "Why a browser? A browser works. You can download an app. You can have encryption and DRM [digital rights management]. We should have thought of that sooner for MediaFLO."
All three ATSC 3.0 audio system proponents delivered detailed system proposals on time by the Monday deadline, marking the formal beginning of the review, ATSC said Tuesday. The three proponents are Dolby Labs, DTS and the MPEG-H audio consortium of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor. Their systems will be tested "discretely and in their entirety" this summer "as comprehensive, end-to-end systems" for use as the audio layer for the ATSC 3.0 signal, with the goal to complete a candidate standard for ATSC 3.0's audio component this fall, ATSC said.Though DTS has yet to formally introduce its DTS:X object-based surround technology, the ATSC released the most comprehensive summary of the technology disclosed so far. "DTS:X is the next-generation object-based codec technology from DTS," said the summary submitted to and released by ATSC. "This release is the successor to DTS-HD and marks another milestone in DTS's long line of industry-leading sound innovations. DTS:X delivers the ultimate in flexibility, immersion and interactivity to listeners of all forms of entertainment. The DTS:X solution for ATSC 3.0 is an end-to-end broadcast chain that includes support for key elements including both audio channels and objects, advanced loudness and dynamics management, device and environmental playback processing, and is integrated with DTS's Headphone:X technology." DTS:X will be delivered "with the industry support and certification that has made DTS the trusted partner for industry professionals all over the world," the summary said. "Manufacturers representing nearly 90 percent of the home AV receiver and surround processor market, as well as several integrated circuit providers, have agreed to launch products supporting DTS:X in 2015. DTS is also working with a wide range of infrastructure partners to ensure broadcasters have choices when building a complete system." Much more has been disclosed about the Dolby and MPEG-H technologies, though the ATSC-released summary of Dolby's proposal offered the first confirmation that the Dolby AC-4 codec is at the heart of its ATSC 3.0 audio proposal (see 1501210023). "Rooted in generations of broadcast audio experience, Dolby AC-4 provides the content and device industries a strong foundation to collaboratively build leading-edge audio experiences that meet the needs of consumers of varied interests and abilities," Dolby's summary said.
The ATSC is “on track” to move to an ATSC 3.0 “candidate standard” later this year, said Luke Fay, a Sony Electronics software systems engineer and chairman of the ATSC’s S32 specialist group, in the March issue of The Standard. Once a candidate standard is done, “those who would implement the details will have a chance to build equipment and test the Candidate Standard in a real world environment,” Fay said in the ATSC monthly newsletter released Tuesday. “That’s where all of the poking and prodding will be done with the elements of the system. It’s a trial of new technology, and a chance to see if anything was overlooked when developing the standard.” Next in the process, ATSC 3.0 as a “proposed standard” will be balloted on, he said: Once approved, ATSC 3.0 will be done. The upcoming audio system tests for ATSC 3.0 “will be world’s first to evaluate immersive sound for a broadcast television standard,” the newsletter said. Three immersive audio formats will be tested, it said: (1) A 7.1 surround system ("7.1+4") with four height channels added in a square above the listener; (2) The 22.2-channel three-dimensional surround format pioneered by NHK as part of its Super Hi-Vision system, (3) High-Order Ambisonics (HOA), a “scene-based” format that’s independent of channels and "can be rendered and optimally mapped into whatever reproduction channels are available to the listener." ATSC will test HOA "as rendered" to 22.2 channels, the newsletter said. ATSC’s S34-2 ad hoc group on ATSC 3.0 audio has selected about 60 sound tracks for testing the three audio systems that have been proposed for ATSC 3.0, it said. The three proponents are Dolby Labs, DTS and the MPEG-H consortium of Fraunhofer, Qualcomm and Technicolor (see 1501130054). March 9 is the deadline for all three proponents to deliver detailed technical proposals to the S34-2 ad hoc group, ATSC President Mark Richer said in the newsletter. In all, about 12-14 clips have been selected for each of the five different channel formats being tested, the newsletter said. They include Suzanne Vega’s "Tom’s Diner," a rare a cappella solo, with very little reverb added, which is why it originally came into use for this purpose, pieces from the Henry Mancini orchestra rendering of "Moon River," a live version of "Whole Lotta Love" from Robert Plant, Fleetwood Mac’s "Never Going Back Again," a clip from the soundtrack from the filmed version of Chicago featuring Catherine Zeta-Jones, and an excerpt from NBC Nightly News. “The rest are from lesser known classical or jazz artists, specialized solo-instrument recordings, applause, sports commentary/game sounds (golf and hockey), ambient recordings and cinematic sound effects,” the newsletter said.
The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition joined NAB as an associate member to protect low-power TV and TV translators in the incentive auction and repacking process, the coalition said in an email Friday. It also will work with NAB to see if the ATSC 3.0 standard will be developed before 2016, so LPTV broadcasters can use the standard during the post-auction repacking process, it said. The FCC is closely monitoring the development of the ATSC 3.0 standard (see 1502250051).
Corrections: Phoenix Center's Larry Spiwak, not Wilkinson Barker's Russell Hanser, said that the FCC order granting petitions to pre-empt municipal broadband laws in North Carolina and Tennessee contained logic that would let state utility regulators pre-empt laws created by their state legislatures and likely will face legal challenges that will send the FCC legal view on Telecom Act Section 706 authority “crashing down” (see 1502250069) ... NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay, not Hanser, said that the Supreme Court’s Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League was based more on how pre-emption clashed with the 10th Amendment than with language in Communications Act Section 253 (see 1501220063) ... Mark Aitken of Sinclair chairs the ATSC's Specialist Group on Mobile DTV (see 1502250051); Glenn Reitmeier of NBC Universal is ATSC chairman.
The FCC is closely watching the development of the ATSC 3.0 standard for potential use in the incentive auction repacking process, said Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake in a low-power TV LEARN webinar Tuesday (see 1502240071). Broadcasters disagreed the next day in interviews about ATSC 3.0’s time frame. Some said the commission could recover more spectrum in the auction with 3.0.
Public TV has the opportunity to provide trusted communication during emergencies, said Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, at a session Monday at the Association of Public Television Stations Summit. Public TV needs to work with FEMA to provide emergency coverage, said APTS CEO Patrick Butler at the session. Stations have to “market” their ability to provide coverage during emergencies, even when cable and The Weather Channel goes out, Fugate said.
The ATSC formed a new “implementation team” for advanced emergency alerting as a "key element" of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 DTV standard, the group said Thursday. “Advanced emergency alerting promises to create new significant value for viewers, consumer electronics manufacturers, broadcasters and the public safety community," ATSC President Mark Richer said. "The addition of advanced emergency alerting capability and the accompanying rich-media warning information represents a compelling ATSC 3.0 application.” The implementation team, chaired by Jay Adrick, a technology adviser to Gates Air, won't develop standards or recommended practices, but may make recommendations to ATSC and other standards development organizations "as appropriate," the group said.
With the end of the AWS-3 auction, the upcoming incentive auction will be costlier, panelists at a spectrum conference sponsored by PwC said Thursday. It’s unclear how that will affect broadcasters on the reverse side of the upcoming incentive auction, said Eric Wolf, vice president of technology strategy and management at the Public Broadcasting Service. “There will be a lot more demand for spectrum,” said John Hane, a Pillsbury communications lawyer. “Another view is the AWS-3 auction is fundamentally different from the 600 MHz auction. AWS was a fairly straightforward auction -- people knew what they were bidding on. The 600 auction is very complex, even on the forward side of the auction.” The industry has “essentially forced consumers to stitch together the services that they want,” Wolf said. It can disaggregate and break up service from infrastructure, Hane said. He said he’s optimistic that ATSC 3.0 will be adopted. The “3.0 will make it a lot easier,” said John Lawson, principal of Convergence Services. “It seems like it’s happening, but there’s no structure to make these devices interoperable. We’re still in this scenario with silos.” Wolf said, “Don’t think about it as how many dollars per hertz or bits you can extract. Think about it as how can you help the consumer?” The FCC should be thinking of the consumer, too, and beyond the dollars, he said. “By 2025, I see the FCC trying to auction the T-band,” said Mike Gravino, director of the LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition. “I see a constant struggle between the wireless industry and broadcast industry, even though we want to be the same, a struggle over this bandwidth.”
Intrado hires Kim Robert Scovill, ex-TCS, as vice president-government, external and legal affairs ... National Music Publishers’ Association hires Amelia Wang, ex-aide to Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., as vice president-industry relations and government affairs ... ZwillGen Subpoena Compliance promotes Abby Liebeskind to legal compliance attorney and hires two from Yahoo: Shannon Kontinos as manager, legal compliance services and Darcy Riedell as supervisor, legal compliance services ... Fletcher Heald hires David Janet, technology lawyer, as member, representing software, Web content, wireless and other companies ... Gray Television hires Jacqueline Policastro, ex-Lilly Broadcasting, as chief of Gray's new Washington bureau.