The FCC shouldn't impose any new burdens on multichannel video programming distributors as part of the transition to ATSC 3.0, AT&T and Dish Network said in a meeting with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and MB and Office of Engineering and Technology staff Thursday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 16-142. The new standard would require new equipment for MVPDs and consumers and could consume more bandwidth than the current standard, Dish and AT&T said. AT&T and DISH worry about "the significant capacity concerns associated with transitioning to the ATSC 3.0 standard," they said. The bandwidth required "to carry one ATSC 3.0 4K channel, for example, will consume substantially more bandwidth than a current HD channel, let alone the bandwidth that would be required to carry both an ATSC 3.0 4K signal and an ATSC 3.0 signal." they said. "Such increased carriage obligations would put at risk our ability to comply with the FCC’s must carry rules." The FCC should ensure broadcasters can't use the retransmission consent process to force MVPDs to carry the new standard, the pay-TV carriers said. Those same pay-TV companies also recently lobbied about such concerns as members of the American Television Alliance (see 1612050048).
The proposed transition to ATSC 3.0 isn't as voluntary as broadcasters claim, said the American Television Alliance in a meeting Wednesday with FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake and his staff. The FCC's next step on ATSC 3.0 should be a notice of inquiry rather than NPRM, said ATVA, represented at the meeting by officials from AT&T, Charter Communications, Dish Network and the American Cable Association. Requiring MVPDs and customers to buy new equipment to receive ATSC 3.0 signals isn't voluntary, the ATVA said. The proposal would include negotiations over carrying ATSC 3.0 signals in retransmission consent negotiations, which MVPDs don't necessarily enter into on a voluntary basis, ATVA said. “Any station group with sufficient leverage to compel carriage of unwanted programming or to raise consumer prices by 40 percent per year possesses sufficient leverage to compel carriage of ATSC 3.0 signals as well.” An NOI would give the FCC time to study the proposal more in depth, the pay-TV group said in docket 16-142. “The Commission should want to understand whether the proposed transition would allow broadcasters to collect the benefits of the transition (e.g., new, monetizable services) while externalizing much of the associated costs to others.”
As framers strive to complete work on the suite of standards that will comprise ATSC 3.0, ATSC’s December newsletter, The Standard, ran a sidebar Thursday headlined “How Time Flies,” to mark the 20th anniversary Dec. 24 of FCC adoption in 1996 of the current ATSC 1.0 DTV system. Among the “fun facts from then and now” contained in the sidebar and assembled with the help of CTA: (1) The 2016 TV market was worth $20 billion in factory dollars and encompassed nearly 40 million in unit shipments, compared with 26 million units in 1996 worth $8.7 billion; (2) The average TV screen size of 39 inches in 2016 was 77 percent larger than the 22-inch average in 1996; (3) It took $1,999 to buy a 60-inch analog rear-projection TV in 1996, compared with $999 for a 60-inch digital flat-panel 4K TV in 2016.
ATSC President Mark Richer remains “cautiously optimistic” the A/341 ATSC 3.0 video document “will go out to ballot” in December for elevation to the status of a proposed standard, “but it’s possible it could be delayed until January,” he emailed us Monday through a spokesman. Technology Group 3, the body within ATSC that’s supervising the framing of ATSC 3.0, made “a great deal of progress” on high dynamic range for the next-generation broadcast standard, Richer told us the week before Thanksgiving (see 1611170058). But the impasse inside TG3 over HDR for ATSC 3.0 has three times delayed the ballot on A/341, most recently when TG3 again extended the candidate standard period on the document for two months to Jan. 30. Under ATSC rules, extending A/341's candidate standard period again was a procedural move “necessary to ensure the document does not revert back to a Working Draft if for some reason the Proposed Standard ballot is not issued” before the Jan. 30 deadline, Richer said. He wouldn't comment whether TG3 has decided on an HDR solution for ATSC 3.0 among the six technology proposals vying for selection (see 1605200031).
CTA is in “the planning phase” for field-testing ATSC 3.0 reception at the experimental facilities owned by WJW Cleveland, Brian Markwalter, CTA's senior vice president-research and standards, emailed us Sunday. “That’s all we can say at this point,” Markwalter said. “CTA is not involved in any other field testing.” An LG, Zenith and GatesAir ex parte filing last week in FCC docket 16-142 (see 1611250030) said CTA and NAB were planning ATSC 3.0 field-testing in “Cleveland, and perhaps elsewhere as well.”
Cleveland field tests done in June found that ATSC 3.0 delivers “significantly improved mobile reception capability” over the existing ATSC 1.0 DTV standard, LG, Zenith and GatesAir told the FCC in a Wednesday ex parte notice in docket 16-142. The test results are “pertinent” to the petition for rulemaking asking the FCC to authorize voluntary use of ATSC 3.0's physical layer (see 1604130065), and were submitted at the request of Martin Doczkat, chief of the Technical Analysis Branch in the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, the filing said. That “highly reliable in-vehicle mobile reception was achieved” in the tests using tens of thousands of ATSC 3.0 “data points” bodes well for the “current and future” automotive industry, including autonomous cars, LG, Zenith and GatesAir told the commission. The tests originating from “experimental facilities” owned by WJW Cleveland generated “clean” reception to a mobile van more than 80 percent of the time in ATSC 3.0's “most rugged mode,” the companies said. Reception, as "anticipated," was “poor” when testing ATSC 3.0 in a moving vehicle in the less robust “stationary” mode, they said. They also said “because challenging routes were chosen, results should not be considered as statistical over the entire service area.” Their goal in the field tests was to “challenge the system,” they said.
Technology Group 3, the body within ATSC that’s supervising the framing of ATSC 3.0, made “a great deal of progress” in meetings in New York this week on high dynamic range for the next-generation broadcast standard, ATSC President Mark Richer emailed us Thursday through a spokesman. “We now expect A/341 to go out to ballot for Proposed Standard sometime in December,” Richer said of the ATSC 3.0 video document, which has been stuck in candidate standard mode for months as various ATSC committees tried to hash out consensus on HDR. TG3 twice has delayed picking a winning HDR technology for ATSC 3.0. After the latest two-month delay in September (see 1609290074), the candidate standard period on A/341 is now due to expire Nov. 30.
NAB CEO Gordon Smith's contributions to the presidential campaign of former Republican primary candidate Jeb Bush won't be an issue in his lobbying efforts on behalf of NAB during the Trump administration, Smith told us during the Q&A portion of his address to the Media Institute Tuesday. "I hope not, no," Smith said, adding that he has friends on both sides of the aisle, a long-standing relationship with the Bush family and pointing out that Bush's campaign ended long ago. "Jeb didn't last long," Smith said. "I think we're in a new phase now." Along with the election results, Smith discussed the post-incentive auction repacking, ATSC 3.0 and FM chips in smart phones.
Sinclair CEO David Smith, perhaps the broadcast industry’s strongest individual booster of seeing ATSC 3.0 commercialized sooner rather than later, wouldn't support an ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate to drive the transition to the next-generation DTV standard, he said on a CEO panel at the NAB Show New York about ATSC 3.0's potential return on investment.
An FCC NPRM on ATSC 3.0 is expected to contain few surprises, but it's not clear when it will be issued, broadcast industry officials said in interviews this week. The April petition submitted by NAB, CTA, America's Public TV Stations and the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance didn't include a mandatory transition (see 1604130065). So the NPRM isn't expected to be overly complicated, the officials told us.