The ATSC, through its S34-2 ad hoc group, plans a thorough, but fast-track process for choosing a proponent audio system for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system (see 1412080040), in keeping with ATSC’s self-imposed deadline of finishing the ATSC 3.0 standard by year-end 2015, says the ATSC in a Call for Proposals (CFP) published Monday and released publicly Tuesday.
The ATSC plans to release publicly Tuesday its call for proposals on audio codecs for the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, sources close to the ATSC told us Monday. Release of the call for proposals, which had been expected for the past month (see 1411060033), is a major step toward building the audio and video compression components of ATSC 3.0. When coupled with its new physical layer, ATSC 3.0's video and audio codecs will make for a next-gen system that will be "far more efficient, far more robust and far more flexible" than the existing ATSC DTV broadcast system, its framers said. HEVC likely will be the backbone video codec for ATSC 3.0, they said. ATSC’s "S34-2" ad hoc group on ATSC 3.0 audio is charged with drafting specs that would allow an "immersive" experience, said the group’s chairman, Jim Starzynski, director and principal audio engineer at NBCUniversal Advanced Engineering, at an ATSC 3.0 "Boot Camp" conference last spring. ATSC 3.0 audio is expected to have two parts, its "personalization" aspect and its immersive home theater surround component, the ad hoc group said. For ATSC 3.0 surround, the ad hoc group for months has been "zoning in" on an object-based, height-rich format it calls "7.1 plus 4," which includes four height speakers, it has said. The announcement to be released Tuesday stresses the personalized and immersive audio experiences ATSC hopes to gain through ATSC 3.0. "Personalization includes enhancement to the control of dialog, use of alternate audio tracks and mixing of assistive audio services, other-language dialog, special commentary, and music and effects," it quotes ATSC President Mark Richer as saying. "Plus, the system will support both the normalization of content loudness and contouring of dynamic range, based on the specific capabilities of a user's fixed or mobile device and its unique sound environment." As for its "immersive audio functionality," it’s hoped ATSC 3.0 will envelop "the listener with precise sound source localization in azimuth, elevation and distance, and provides an increased sense of presence," Richer says in the announcement. "These features can be supported over the listening area, without the need for a large number of physical speakers." Systems submitted in the call for proposals "will be judged discretely and in their entirety, as comprehensive, end-to-end systems for emission of the ATSC signal," the announcement will say. It requests that proponents submit "only complete audio solutions that satisfy ATSC 3.0 system needs, because the ATSC does not intend to develop the ATSC 3.0 audio system out of independent components from multiple sources." The ATSC 3.0 audio system is expected to support audio with video content as well as audio-only content, it says.
Engineers who work with AM stations are divided over a proposal that the FCC mandate AM receiver standards. The proposal was submitted to the FCC this year in a letter from Tom King, president of Kintronic Labs. Some AM radio professionals cautioned that establishing such standards would deter receiver manufacturers from building AM receivers altogether.
Broadcasters and the media technology industry are continuing to look ahead to broader mobile DTV and mobile emergency alert system (M-EAS) capability, they said. Following pilot projects over the past few years, participants in the development and implementation of next-generation EAS will try to enhance the technology and include it in the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, they said.
When it comes to deployment of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, "I think there’s going to be a good business proposition and a good financial proposition for 4K," Dave Siegler, vice president-technical operations at Cox, told us at NAB's Content and Communications World conference in New York Wednesday. Emphasizing that he was speaking in the context of Cox’s broadcast as well as its cable interests, Siegler said: "So much of it comes into implementation."
There has been "progress" and "a lot of discussion" on high dynamic range and wide color gamut within the ATSC’s S34-1 ad hoc group assigned to write specs for the video component of the next-gen ATSC 3.0 broadcast system, said ATSC President Mark Richer in an interview. "I don’t believe there are any final decisions" on HDR and wide color gamut, Richer said. "But these are areas that the whole industry has been looking at." The "production community" has been looking at HDR and wide color gamut, as have standards groups like the ITU and the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers as well as CE manufacturers, he said. "There’s also other work around the world," such as at the European Broadcasting Union, "where they’re taking a look at the ramifications," he said. "The one thing I can say -- and this is not specific to ATSC -- but the industry is coming to the realization that it isn’t just about more pixels, it’s about the quality of those pixels and how we can make them better. So there’s real interest in those things, and exactly where we’re going to end up in ATSC 3.0, I really can’t say yet. But we certainly will address the issue, and we’re communicating with the other standards organizations to make sure what we’re doing complements what they’re doing."
As framers of the ATSC 3.0 next-gen broadcast system march toward their self-imposed deadline of completing work on a "candidate standard" by the end of 2015, the group's board formed an "ad hoc group" to begin studying the various "scenarios" under which ATSC 3.0 might be introduced commercially to the viewing public later in the decade, possibly as soon as 2017. The ad hoc group, under the chairmanship of Sam Matheny, NAB chief technology officer, is "exploratory in nature, trying to take a look at what the possibilities are, and what some of the ramifications of the different possibilities are," said ATSC President Mark Richer in an interview.
Meredith Corp. asked the FCC to direct PMCM TV to stop using Virtual Channel 3.10 for broadcast operations of WJLP-TV Middletown Township, New Jersey. WJLP’s unilateral arrogation of that channel openly defies the Media Bureau’s order assigning Virtual Channel 33 to WJLP, Meredith Corp. said in a letter posted in docket 14-150. Meredith’s complaint that its virtual channel is being modified or commandeered “is plainly erroneous,” PMCM said in reply comments. Its virtual channel remains exactly as it has always been, it said. It loses nothing by PMCM’s use of Virtual Channel 3.10, nor does Meredith have any claim to all minor channels associated with major Channel 3 “since the ATSC A/65 protocols explicitly envision coincident use of major channels by independent licensees,” it said. WJLP hasn’t received a single complaint from viewers about confusion, “and we must assume that CBS and Meredith have been similarly free from complaints or we would surely have heard about it,” it said.
Quincy Broadcast Group’s WKOW Madison, Wisconsin, planned to go off the air in the wee hours of Wednesday morning to accommodate the second round of "real-world broadcast field testing" of "Futurecast," the technology developed by LG, its Zenith research and development labs and GatesAir. Futurecast is proposed as the physical layer for the next-gen Advanced Television Systems Committee 3.0 broadcast system.
Ion, Meredith Corp. and Turner Broadcasting oppose broadcaster PMCM’s plan to occupy the same program and system information protocol (PSIP) channel as Meredith‘s WFSB Hartford, Connecticut, while using a virtual channel number that PMCM’s opponents say should be associated with WFSB (see 1409160043). WFSB uses RF Channel 33, while PMCM’s WJLP Middletown, New Jersey, uses RF 3. The stations’ signals overlap, and WJLP is broadcasting on virtual channel 3.10, while WFSB has long used channel 3.1 and its associated subchannels, Meredith said in comments on its request for a declaratory ruling in FCC docket 14-150 (http://bit.ly/ZLWbCz). Though PMCM has the New Jersey Broadcasters Association's support (http://bit.ly/1FsKa5B) and said in its own comments that it has found hundreds of situations in which overlapping stations occupy the same PSIP, Meredith said the request is without precedent. PMCM hasn’t shown any examples where the FCC “subdivided a major channel number to assign separate chunks of the channel to separately owned stations for concurrent use in the same area," Meredith said.