Sinclair-Samsung Team Provides Off-Air UHDTV Demo in Las Vegas

Samsung featured a display at this year’s CES with a poster proclaiming: “World's First UHD Broadcasting via Terrestrial Network Directly to TV with Integrated Tuner.”

The Samsung demo was performed in cooperation with Sinclair Broadcast Group, which transmitted the UHD video from atop Black Mountain, which is south of Las Vegas, to a rooftop antenna at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The UHD video was encoded using HEVC and transmitted at approximately 26 Mbps.

Sinclair did not use one of its Las Vegas full-power stations for the broadcast, as these were carrying ATSC-MH programs in addition to their normal ATSC programming.

I used my RF tool kit (more about which in my TV Technology February RF Technology column) to determine that the COFDM signal was being transmitted on KLSV-LD's Channel 50.

Mark Aitken and Bill Soreth from Sinclair provided more information about the signal, revealing that the transmitter was operating at 5 kW—23 dB less than the 1,000 kW full power ATSC stations on Black Mountain.

I didn't see any picture artifacts on the receiver in the Samsung booth. The transmission used 256-QAM with a code rate of 2/3, a guard interval of 1/32 and Pilot Pattern 4. The FFT size was 32K extended. With this configuration, the total available raw bit rate is around 28.5 Mbps with a calculated AWGN threshold of 17.8 dB.

Both Samsung and Sinclair are participants in the Advanced Television Systems Committee work towards the next U.S. terrestrial DTV standard, ATSC 3.0.

Doug Lung

Doug Lung is one of America's foremost authorities on broadcast RF technology. As vice president of Broadcast Technology for NBCUniversal Local, H. Douglas Lung leads NBC and Telemundo-owned stations’ RF and transmission affairs, including microwave, radars, satellite uplinks, and FCC technical filings. Beginning his career in 1976 at KSCI in Los Angeles, Lung has nearly 50 years of experience in broadcast television engineering. Beginning in 1985, he led the engineering department for what was to become the Telemundo network and station group, assisting in the design, construction and installation of the company’s broadcast and cable facilities. Other projects include work on the launch of Hawaii’s first UHF TV station, the rollout and testing of the ATSC mobile-handheld standard, and software development related to the incentive auction TV spectrum repack.
A longtime columnist for TV Technology, Doug is also a regular contributor to IEEE Broadcast Technology. He is the recipient of the 2023 NAB Television Engineering Award. He also received a Tech Leadership Award from TV Tech publisher Future plc in 2021 and is a member of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.