PALM DESERT, CALIF.—Broadcasters at this week’s HPA Tech Retreat discussed two timely television technical topics: the introduction of the ATSC 3.0 DTV transmission standard and the on-going TV spectrum repack initiative.

The “Broadcasters Panel” included Dave Siegler, vice president of technical operations for the Cox Media Group; Del Parks, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the Sinclair Broadcast Group; Skip Pizzi, vice president of technology education and outreach at the NAB; and Fox Network’s Rich Friedel, who also chairs the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s board of directors.

Matthew Goldman, Ericsson senior vice president of technology at Ericsson and SMPTE president, moderated the Wednesday afternoon session and kicked off the discussion by asking the group to talk about the current status of ATSC 3.0.

“The good news is that the standard has been released and the government has allowed us, on a voluntary basis, to broadcast [ATSC 3.0],” said Friedel. “Things are very exciting in ‘ATSC land.’ It’s really real and you’re going to see it on the air.”

THE ADVANTAGES OF MOVING TO ATSC 3.0

Goldman also quizzed the group about what they considered to be the single best feature of the new standard and if its implementation was related to the on-going TV spectrum repacking operation.

“There are so many features associated with ATSC 3.0, so it’s hard to pick out just one,” said Pizzi. “But in the early term I would say greater transmission efficiency combined with more robustness. It’s going to allow broadcasters to do more in the same amount of spectrum and at the same time provide higher quality.”

“I would say it’s the marriage of broadband and over-the-air broadcasting,” said Friedel. “Consumers will be able to get an internet type of experience combined with television.”

[HPA Tech Retreat Plays to Sold-Out Crowd]

As for the tie-in between ATSC 3.0 and the repack, the panel agreed that while there was no direct connection, the timing of events was such that they could be coordinated in such a way as to provide introduction of 3.0 signals in a market as the channel changing is taking place.

“They’re not really related,” said Siegler. “But the coincidence of the timing is a good opportunity for broadcasters to make changes, including addition of 3.0,” noting that coordination and cooperation between broadcasters would be important elements in making both transitions happen. “It’s really an aggressive plan, but you have to start somewhere.”

MAKING THE TRANSITION HAPPEN

Parks acknowledged the challenges in store for broadcasters in achieving the joint goal of shifting channels and rolling out ATSC 3.0, but observed that there has been a long-standing spirit of technical cooperation among broadcasters, even those who are business competitors.

“The engineering departments in broadcasting have had a traditional role in cooperation,” he said. “Many of us are on the same towers and sometimes there are opportunities to use common antennas.”

He added that as the repack and its relatively short deadline for completion was occupying a lot of engineering time and vendor resources at stations and within station groups, it may be challenging to make the move to ATSC 3.0 at the same time.

“There are a lot of engineering ramifications to the repack,” said Parks. “Sinclair has some 95 stations to repack and this is a really significant effort on-going with the introduction of ATSC 3.0 at the same time. A lot of resources within our group are being expended to run both projects at the same time.

“It is very tricky. The government is taking spectrum away and has sold it, so we’re being repacked in a smaller amount of spectrum and at the same time we’re talking about how to deploy 3.0. The most popular approach put forward is to use channel sharing on one or two ATSC 1.0 sticks. So broadcasters have to cooperate or there will be no service.”

Goldman then asked the panel to comment on new services that ATSC 3.0 would enable for the consumer.

“I’m most excited about interactivity that comes with the broadband connection,” said Siegler. “This allows so much to be done.”

[Redefining Television]

“ATSC 3.0 is based on OFDM, rather than VSB and the associated fragility which 1.0 is based on,” said Parks. “With 3.0 and OFDM, you now have this ability for reception in a car while it’s while traveling at 70, 80, 90 miles-per-hour,” said Parks. The vehicle now is really a big computer and you need to have some way to get broadband to it,” noting ATSC 3.0 would be a big enabler in this regard due to its IP nature.”

“ATSC 3.0 is the first and, so far, the only IP-based TV transmission standard,” said Pizzi. “This could become a real advantage at the end of the day once the transition takes place.”

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

For more information on the repack, visit TV Technology's repack silo.   

PALM DESERT, CALIF.—The annual Hollywood Production Association Tech Retreat convened on Feb. 19, bringing together television and cinema engineering and production professionals to participate in five days of presentations and discussions covering the latest developments in technologies and practices in content production and distribution.

Artificial Intelligence, HDR preparation, live event streaming, cutting-edge display technologies, intellectual property law, IMF technology and applications for content storage and exchange, VR, blockchain applications in content production and distribution processes and much more made up the agenda this year. The conference attracted some 680 attendees, making it once again a fully sold-out event.

The Retreat got underway on Monday, Feb. 19, with a half-day “Focus on Artificial Intelligence” session that explored the many sides and implications of this rapidly growing technology that promises to bring many benefits to content production and other areas, but at the same time by its very nature appears threatening to some. The session examined the current uses of AI, such as speech recognition and automatic captioning, as well as new implementations in taskings previously assigned to human operators. The session not only drilled down into AI’s technological side, but also considered ethical implications as well. A working AI implementation in the form of a virtual version of conference “maestro,” Mark Schubin, was demonstrated with a Q&A session, in which the flesh-and-blood Schubin quizzed his synthetic entity about such things as where Shubin had spent his youth (“I grew up in Hoboken, N.J., a city in which New York is merely a suburb”) and favorite movie (“A Night At the Opera”).

THE CLOUD, AND THE WAY IT’S CHANGING WORKFLOWS

The emergence of the cloud as a valuable tool in video production was explored in a Tuesday panel discussion—“Cloud Production and Tools”—moderated by Sundog Media Toolkit’s Rich Welsh, and featuring panelists Dave Benson, Chris Clarke, Chuck Parker, Matt Thomas and Roy Trosh.

“The cloud is real, viable, and we’re using it,” said Trosh, an engineer with The Mill post-production firm, remarking that handling their part of the Super Bowl-generated workload would not have been possible without tapping cloud technology.

“Our job is to create content; not preserve workflows,” said Benson, chief technology officer and co-founder of the BeBop Technology, a firm specializing in cloud-based workflow solutions. “There’s a place for individual designers to do certain things in a certain way. This is also a challenge. We try to develop our technology in the least intrusive way.”

The group discussed such cloud utilization issues as content security, latency, dropped frames, bandwidth limitations and cost control, as well as workarounds for post-production functions that don’t really work well in the cloud.

ECLIPSING VR TECHNOLOGY

Virtual Reality was in the limelight, with a Wednesday session devoted to what is billed as “the biggest live VR event to date,” the coverage of the Aug. 21, 2017 solar eclipse. Alx Klive, CEO and founder of 360 Designs, a production company that specializes in virtual reality, described the technology used to capture the eclipse, as well as some of the difficulties experienced in producing this VR first from multiple locations along the totality path of the eclipse.

The coverage involved seven observation locations, 21 cameras linked via an equal number of satellite circuits, motion-tracking jibs, moving-car and helicopter shooting platforms. Technical challenges included developing a system for remotely controlling camera iris settings and other parameters from thousands of miles away and overcoming synchronization issues with the multiplicity of cameras.

“Back in July last year, CNN approached us about covering the eclipse in live VR,” Klive said. “The challenges of doing this were immense. 360-cameras by their nature really work best with [close] proximity to their subject and there isn’t really anything further away than the sun, and you can’t really rehearse an eclipse either.”

Klive noted that the whole project had to be accomplished in just four weeks, and that as satellite trucks weren’t available until the day before the event, testing of the complete system couldn’t be performed any earlier. Backup methodologies and workarounds were prepared, but fortunately weren’t needed.

“The CNN eclipse broadcast was done right,” said Klive. “It was incredibly challenging and obviously ambitious, but it was also incredibly rewarding for everybody involved, so a true win-win.”

This year’s Retreat featured more than 40 mainstream presentations, as well as special “breakfast roundtable” discussion groups which provided attendees with the opportunity to delve into other areas of television and cinema technology. They could join any of the 20 or so specialized discussion groups offered on three consecutive days at the conference. “Roundtable” topics included light field cinematography, selection of the best media for long-term content storage, how to properly interface HDR displays, and thwarting cybercrime.

The Tech Retreat’s “Innovation Zone” hosted more than 60 exhibitors this year, with demonstrations of equipment and technologies ranging from video test and measurement gear to light field image capture.

The 2019 HPA Tech Retreat returns to the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa here in Palm Desert, Calif., Feb. 11-15.

BRUSSELS—Actus Digital will take up a spot in the Innovation Zone at the 2018 HPA Tech Retreat to showcase its latest improvements of its Clip Factory system, which handles broadcast to OTT clip creation and publishing.

Clip Factory ingests live broadcast content and enables immediate clipping, editing, transcoding and publishing to OTT and social platform of choice. It also expedites and automates the process and reduces time-to-OTT availability. Clip Factory automatically identifies and marks beginnings and ends of ad breaks and programming boundaries and enables simple and frame-accurate inclusion/exclusion of each segment.

The 2018 HPA Tech Retreat will take place from Feb. 20-22 in Palm Springs, Calif.

LOS ANGELES—The 2018 HPA Tech Retreat is starting to fill out its schedule for the annual show, and in doing so has issued a call for presentation proposals to be included as part of the main program and for breakfast roundtables.

Topics for presentations may include anything related to moving images and associated sounds, including bit-rate reduction; higher frame rates; immersive sound; virtual reality; wide color gamut; and more. Presentation proposals require no formal submissions, but must come from the proposed presenter.

Presentations in the main program are typically 30 minutes, including setup and Q&A; longer or shorter presentations can sometimes be accommodated. Panels are typically longer and panel proposals are responsible to provide both the moderator and the panelists. Presentation proposals should be sent to Mark Schubin at TVMark@Earthlink.net or Media.Mark.Schubin@gmail.com by Friday, Oct. 27. Decisions are expected by early December.

For the breakfast roundtables, there are no limitations to what moderators can choose to speak on, including marketing goals. Tables are assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis. Topics and moderators can be changed up to the last minute. Attendees choose where they want to sit based on a list posted on the door. Breakfast roundtables take place from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. There is no deadline for submitting a breakfast roundtable proposal, but once the limit (32) is met, no more can be added for that day. Requests should list the desired day and the desired topic

The 2018 HPA Tech Retreat will take place from Feb. 19-23 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa in Palm Desert, Calif. For more information, visit the HPA website.