The Advanced Television Systems Committee approved the specifications for a mobile emergency alert system to be delivered using the ATSC A/153 Mobile Digital TV standard. The M-EAS enhancements to the standard will provide capabilities for delivering multimedia alerts “to mobile DTV-equipped cellphones, tablets, laptops, netbooks and in-car navigation systems,” ATSC said in a press release (http://bit.ly/YIqeD3). Using mobile DTV for emergency alerting “requires no additional spectrum and is an additional use of existing TV transmitters and towers,” it said. M-EAS is backwards compatible and will not affect the performance of mobile TV products already in consumer hands, it said. Partners in the M-EAS effort said that completion of the standardization will lead to the implementation of the system and commercialization of the equipment (CD Feb 26 p8).
Partners in the mobile emergency alert system effort are nearing the end of the technology standardization process and moving toward commercialization of the equipment and implementation of the system, said Harris Broadcast, Mobile500 Alliance and other partners. Commercial and noncommercial broadcasters have demonstrated the technology and are planning to take it up, they said. The effort began as a pilot project headed by PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting aimed at distributing emergency alerts to the public using video, text messages and other media (CD June 6 p11). Mobile EAS uses the mobile DTV equipment infrastructure.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee (ATSC) set up new implementation teams for bringing ATSC 2.0 and Mobile-EAS to market, it said. Cox Media’s David Siegler will chair the ATSC 2.0 team while Harris’s Jay Adrick will chair the Mobile-EAS team. The new implementation teams “underscores our progress and will help drive next-generation technologies toward marketplace introduction,” said Mark Richer, ATSC’s president.
ATSC 2.0 will emerge as a new candidate broadcast standard early this year with a goal of deploying it in CE products by year-end, Richard Chernock, chairman of the ATSC technology and standards group, told us. The candidate standard designation is a precursor to formal implementation of ATSC 2.0, he said.
ESPN has no visible roadmap for beaming live sports in native 4K, except possibly to use 4K technology for special viewing enhancements on its regular HD programming, executives at the network told Consumer Electronics Daily.
Small and medium multichannel video programming distributors requested streamlined financial hardship waivers of the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act rules for one year. The requests were filed in docket 11-93. Sweetwater Cable Television in Wyoming said it needs the waiver “to avoid the financial hardship that would otherwise be imposed if it were required to obtain sooner the necessary upgraded ad insertion equipment and purchase audio monitoring equipment” (http://xrl.us/bnqoes). Wire Tele-View Corp. in Pottsville, Pa., also requested a waiver (http://xrl.us/bnqodz), attributing its financial hardship to the “700 percent increase in non-regulated retransmission fees from local off-air networks” and the state of the economy in Schuylkill County, Pa. Agape Church in Little Rock, Ark., requested waivers for its three small broadcast stations. Due to legacy analog equipment, the stations “do not have current capabilities to send audio metadata to the ATSC encoders,” it said (http://xrl.us/bnqofg). The American Cable Association supports NCTA’s petition for reconsideration on implementation of the CALM Act, it said in comments in the same docket (http://xrl.us/bnqodi). In the petition filed this year, NCTA urged the FCC to limit the rules to commercial ads, clarify that a cable operator won’t be held liable when it has notified a network of its non-compliance and not to “prohibit cable operators from contacting program networks when performing spot checks” (http://xrl.us/bnoike). The commission finds no policy or legal reason to exempt commercial advertisements promoting TV programming, or promos, from the scope of its rules, ACA said. The commission should reverse its position “and grant NCTA’s request to exclude promos from being covered by the statute’s requirements,” it said. The recommended practice should only require MVPDs that implemented AC-3 technology “to pass through without alteration the dialnorm metadata in commercial advertisements inserted upstream by programmers.” MVPDs should be able to contact programmers while conducting spot checks, ACA said.
Progress in the rollout by two broadcaster technology coalitions of mobile DTV, now commercially available to about half of Americans, was cited by senior House Communications Subcommittee members of both parties. Speaking at a Capitol Hill mobile DTV and mobile emergency alert system (M-EAS) demo Thursday, they said those new technologies’ use of spectrum already allocated to broadcasters helps meet increasing consumer demand for streaming video. Lawmakers recognized consumption of mobile DTV -- TV stations sending live shows to portable devices and as of this summer one model of Samsung cellphone on MetroPCS (CD Aug 10 p10) -- doesn’t use wireless spectrum or incur data consumption charges to cellphone subscribers.
Capitol Broadcasting’s WRAL-TV Raleigh, N.C., will demonstrate a mobile Emergency Alert System using the ATSC mobile DTV standard. Watch the demo here Thursday at 6 p.m. EDT: http://www.wral.com/11477194.
SAN FRANCISCO -- A review of the first wireless mobile DTV service affiliated with the Dyle group of TV stations found it was easy to set up the Samsung phone getting MetroPCS service, though there were some reception issues. The prepaid carrier Friday began selling the new Samsung smartphone, the first on the market equipped with a mobile DTV receiver capable of picking up TV station signals using the Advanced Television Systems Committee M/H standard (CD Aug 6 p17). A handful of stations in major U.S. markets are broadcasting in that format and Communications Daily purchased a phone Friday to test the service around the San Francisco-Oakland market.
The Advanced TV Systems Committee approved a new delivery standard for “non-real-time” content, it said Tuesday. The delivery of non-real-time services via the backward-compatible “A/103” standard “will now allow broadcasters to deliver file-based content, including programs and clips, information for emergency alerts and even commercial applications such as digital signage,” the ATSC said. The standard supports terrestrial transmission to fixed and mobile DTV receivers that are outfitted with “the new flexibility,” it said. The standard “gives broadcasters the capability to deliver all types of file-based content to consumers,” President Mark Richer said. “Using broadcast television, programmers will be able to send content that a viewer may watch at their convenience."