The Federal Communications Commission is hoping MPEG-4 can do the heavy lifting in bringing an end to ATSC 1.0.

On Oct. 7, the commission published on its website a draft notice of proposed rulemaking that will enable TV broadcasters to make more permissive use of ATSC 3.0. The draft is an agenda item for its Oct. 28 open meeting. (Whether or not the federal government is open for business then is unclear at this writing.)

Earlier in the year, the National Association of Broadcasters petitioned the agency to set up two dates certain—February 2028 and February 2030—for the shutoff of ATSC 1.0, depending on market size. The agency’s draft NPRM sets that request aside. Rather, the FCC has tentatively concluded broadcasters “should be allowed to choose when to stop broadcasting in 1.0 and start broadcasting exclusively in 3.0.”

Since non-backward-compatible 3.0 was authorized in 2017, FCC rules have required broadcasters electing to deploy NextGen TV service to simulcast 1.0 and 3.0 as a way to preserve over-the-air TV service to viewers with 1.0 sets.

Broadcasters and the FCC itself have repeatedly asserted that it’s not in the commercial interests of stations to disenfranchise large numbers of viewers by making a flash cut to 3.0.

In the draft NPRM, the agency put it this way: “Simulcasting remains important for protecting viewers during the transition period. At this stage broadcasters have strong market incentives to continue to effectively serve their viewers. We believe we can and should rely on these incentives and allow stations themselves to decide how and when to move forward with full 3.0 service.”

Enter MPEG-4. Today, in most 3.0 markets, multiple broadcasters share one stick and RF infrastructure to transmit NextGen TV. In a few, it’s two. They also have jumped through hoops and shared facilities to remain on-air with their 1.0 signals. (All of this is necessary because they were not awarded a temporary second channel assignment for their 3.0 signals as was the case in the analog-to-digital transition.)

The draft NPRM would stand this lighthouse structure on its head. Rather than one or two 3.0 lighthouses and the remaining sticks in a market transmitting legacy DTV, broadcasters would preserve ATSC 1.0 from one or more shared lighthouses, freeing them to devote far more available broadcast bandwidth in their markets to NextGen TV and making it possible for them to begin offering more advanced 3.0 services.

The draft NPRM proposes allowing stations that elect to continue simulcasting to use MPEG-4 encoding for 1.0 multicast streams. The more efficient MPEG-4 encoding is central to a 1.0 lighthouse. A year ago, my TV Tech colleague Doug Lung wrote an editorial on this, which the commission noted in the draft NPRM.

Can MPEG-4 pull this off? The jury is out. Broadcasters have told the commission that only viewers with older sets—16 years or older—would be unable to receive the video portion of an MPEG-4 ATSC 1.0 transmission.

Anecdotally, some broadcasters that have employed MPEG-4 for digital subchannels have been flooded with calls from viewers with older sets that could not receive a picture. As Kyle Walker, vice president of technology at Weigel Broadcasting, recently told me: “Our findings indicate that approximately 20% of televisions cannot display MPEG-4. In the rare instance when one of our broadcast affiliates mistakenly changes one of our networks from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4, we hear from viewers almost immediately.”

At least for those viewers, authorizing MPEG-4 for ATSC 1.0 would essentially be the same as authorizing a 1.0 shutoff in favor of 3.0: It would require consumers with older TVs to buy a converter box or a new set.

That brings us back to the notion of broadcasters not wishing to disenfranchise existing OTA viewers. It’s not in their financial interest to reduce audience size and associated ad revenue, nor is it in the public’s interest to lose free OTA service.

WASHINGTON—After announcing on Oct. 6 that it would vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking on ATSC 3.0 at its October meeting, the Federal Communications Commission released a draft of the measure that provides more details on how it plans to consider the matter and which questions it might explore.

The draft, which could change before the FCC is scheduled to vote on Oct.28, raises more questions than answers about how the agency might act on key issues related to NextGen TV, but does provide some hints on how FCC Chair Brendan Carr is thinking about the subject.

The draft notes that the FCC has "tentatively" concluded that television stations should be allowed to choose when to stop broadcasting via the ATSC 1.0 standard and begin broadcasting exclusively in 3.0.

It also has "tentatively" concluded television stations should be allowed to broadcast in both 1.0 and 3.0, as many are doing today, but with fewer restrictions and requirements on the 1.0 version of their signal. This would free up more spectrum for advanced ATSC 3.0 services.

The NAB, the Pearl TV tech consortiums, state broadcasting associations and larger broadcasters like Sinclair want the FCC to set a firm date for the shutoff of ATSC 1.0. Smaller broadcasters and many LPTV stations have opposed the sunsetting of 1.0 broadcasts starting in February of 2028.

The draft takes a more neutral approach to many other key issues, raising a series of questions about key topics like the creation of new rules mandating ATSC 3.0 tuners in all new TVs.

More specifically, the draft NPR seeks comment on many issues and proposals closely related to these tentative conclusions about the transition. Those include: the use of encryption or digital rights management (DRM) on broadcast signals; a requirement that new televisions be able to receive and display 3.0 signals; and a requirement that traditional pay TV providers carry 3.0 signals to their subscribers.

The NAB, Pearl TV and larger broadcasters argued that 3.0 tuner mandates were necessary for a successful transition to NextGen TV broadcasts so that a large number of consumers would be able to access the broadcasts. Consumer electronics firms and the CTA have consistently opposed a tuner mandate, arguing it would increase the cost of TV sets and is generally unnecessary because most consumers access video content over streaming and pay TV services rather than over-the-air antennas.

Initial reaction from broadcasters to the draft NPR was positive, with Pearl TV and ATSC, applauding the FCC for working to find ways to accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts, and generally vague given the fact that the draft does not take a strong position on some key issues like a mandatory sunset or 3.0 tuner mandates.

“Pearl TV and the local broadcasters commend FCC Chairman Carr for launching a new proceeding on NextGen TV that signals to the consumer technology industry, broadcasters, and consumers that the final transition to next-generation broadcasting is underway and that the technology provides an unparalleled opportunity to enhance and improve television service to millions of viewers each day,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV in a statement sent to TV Tech. “Pearl helped to write the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard. Since it was adopted by the FCC in 2017, Pearl has worked with broadcasters to launch service across the country and with the consumer technology industry to develop new features that explore the standard’s capabilities and to get ready for the final transition.”

“NextGen TV is coming, and it will transform local broadcasting into a vibrant, interactive service that not only competes with Big Tech streaming platforms but also delivers enhanced emergency alerting, hyper-local warnings, and life-saving public safety information to every community,” she added.

Advanced Television Systems Committee President Madeleine Noland also applauded the release of the draft NPR in a statement to TV Tech.

“As the Broadcast Standards Association, ATSC is encouraged by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which says it plans to review ways that the voluntary transition to ATSC 3.0 could be accelerated,” she said. “America’s local broadcasters provide an invaluable and vital public service, keeping us informed on news, weather and sports. ATSC 3.0 will allow broadcasters to enhance their ties to local viewers, with the capability to enhance emergency messages, improve accessibility for viewers, and even provide BPS—a much-needed redundancy for GPS.

“While we’re going through the many questions raised by the FCC in its draft document, ATSC believes it's good that conversations are underway and that the next phase of the transition is about to begin,” she added. “While ATSC doesn’t advocate for specific positions, we remain focused on developing and promoting the best possible next-generation broadcast system for the United States and around the world. We are keenly interested in the U.S. transition and stand ready to explain features of the myriad standards that were developed by our membership.”

The full draft is available here.

NAB’s February petition to the FCC to shut off ATSC 1.0 in the top 55 markets less than three years from now focused increased attention on ATSC 3.0 at the 2025 NAB Show. I found no lack of products for broadcasters looking to switch to ATSC 3.0 and, as others and I have shown in articles on previous NAB Shows, there are now several low-cost options for encoding and transmitting ATSC 3.0 signals.

However, until enough viewers have ATSC 3.0-compatible TVs and the commission relaxes rules requiring stations to continue broadcasting on ATSC 1.0 shared channels, any ATSC 1.0 shutdown will be difficult. What broadcasters have been looking for since starting ATSC 3.0 broadcasts is a “killer app” that will drive the transition to NextGen TV.

At NAB Show, I got the impression that “killer app” is the Broadcast Positioning System. It provides precise timing—and with a sufficient number of stations—accurate positioning. The FCC’s notice of inquiry on “Promoting the Development of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing [PNT] Technologies and Solutions” (WT-Docket 25-110) outlines the need for an alternative PNT system.

Secure System
BPS is an alternative PNT system using ATSC 3.0 stations. One advantage of BPS is that it is very resistant to jamming or spoofing (substituting valid data with inaccurate data) due to the high power, large number and wide frequency range of TV transmitters (VHF and UHF). A nationwide BPS depends on nationwide ATSC 3.0 coverage. If the government wants BPS, broadcasters hope it will encourage the government to provide regulatory and perhaps financial support for the ATSC 3.0 transition needed for BPS.

Is BPS a good enough alternative? In Denver, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), TV station KWGN and the NAB worked together to test BPS reliability and accuracy. The results were presented in “Field Test of ATSC 3.0/BPS Precise Time Distribution” at the Broadcast Engineering and IT Conference at the NAB Show by Jeff Sherman, supervisory physicist at NIST.

The test found that BPS time was within plus or minus 10 nanoseconds of the UTC (NIST) standard time, except for a sudden time shift of approximately -25 nanoseconds, which the presentation said “is likely related to known operator maintenance activity that involved lower transmitter power and/or a possible change to undetermined interference in the NLOS [non-line-of-sight] propagation of KWGN to NIST Boulder.”

The paper, available in the NAB 2025 BEIT Conference Proceedings, includes details on testing and comparisons to GPS accuracy, with the results of the tests showing BPS comparable to GPS L1 band. Additional information is available in the paper “Time Transfer Performance of the Broadcast Positioning System.”

How difficult is it to deploy BPS? For a BPS station to provide accurate time, it requires its own traceable time standard. These are expensive, but two alternatives were covered at the show.

Follow the ‘Leader’
One option uses a station with a traceable time standard as a “leader” other stations, or “followers,” can use as a reference. A test setup, using stations WHUT in Washington, D.C., (the “leader”) and WNUV Baltimore (the “follower”), showed how this works. Details on the system and its configuration were provided in “BPS Mesh Network Initial Deployment Report,” a BEIT presentation by Mark Corl, senior vice president, emergent technology, Triveni Digital.

The other time reference, demonstrated in an NAB PILOT exhibit with Sinclair’s ATSC 3.0 station KVCW, used an eLORAN station as the reference. The NAB’s comments in FCC WT Docket No. 25-110 pointed out that BPS could be part of a “system of systems.” The eLORAN demonstration is an example of one system providing a reference for BPS; BPS could also provide a reference for other timing systems, such as the networking Precision Time Protocol (PTP).

For BPS to be a reliable backup for GPS, many more stations will have to transmit it. Monitoring will be required to ensure BPS stations are transmitting accurate time. A station transmitting BPS data will need to add a robust PLP (QPSK with 2/15 coding) to carry the broadcast time information. Less than 10 kbps is required, so the impact on total channel capacity is minimal.

Additional equipment is required to add the time data and adjust the timing of the transmitted signal. Avateq outlined a basic BPS configuration at Rohde & Schwarz’s tech talk at NAB Show. “BPS Network Application Diagram” from this presentation shows the components in a leader­follower BPS configuration. At this time, Avateq and Triveni are the only suppliers of BPS-compatible equipment, and only two transmitter companies—GatesAir and Rohde & Schwarz—have exciters that work with BPS. I talked with other gateway and transmitter vendors at NAB Show and got the impression that if a market develops for BPS products, they will support it.

During the session Q&A, the cost to add BPS to a station was quoted as “about $200,000.” That wasn’t broken down, but I expect the traceable time reference or stable holdover reference is a large part of this.

Keeping Track of Time Is Crucial
Will BPS work with a single frequency network of transmitters (SFN) or with translators? BPS depends not only on precise time transmission, but transmission of the precise location of the BPS station. That’s necessary to account for how long it takes the time transmitted from the station to reach the BPS receiver. A 6-meter error in distance will result in an error of approximately 20 nanoseconds.

Obviously, timing could be a problem if the original BPS station’s time is transmitted on multiple stations in an SFN or via translators. The good news is the ATSC 3.0 standard allows for each transmitter in an SFN to have its own identifier that specifies its location. Each translator or transmitter with BPS in an SFN will require a traceable reference time source. SFNs today rely on GPS for synchronizing transmission frequency and time, but if BPS is to be a backup for GPS, another reference will be needed. Since the BPS data will be transmitted in a very robust PLP, signals from other BPS stations should be available as a reference.

The added complexity for SFNs and translators needs to be considered when calculating the cost to broadcasters for implementing BPS. While having BPS on translators would provide coverage in remote areas, in the end it may be simpler to strip BPS data from the translator’s signal, especially if robust streams from distant full-power stations are receivable in those areas.

Receivers will have to identify individual transmitters on the same channel, whether transmitters in an SFN or other co-channel stations. With a BPS PLP signal-to-noise ratio of -5 dB, there will be locations where two or more stations’ coverage overlaps, so this will be important. When multiple transmitters are received on the same channel, Avateq’s receiver uses the signal that arrives first for the time reference.

Please share your comments at dlung@transmitter.com.

I’m sure any remaining technical issues will be resolved and, if there is government and broadcaster support for BPS, equipment will be available from multiple vendors.

We’re seeing increasing interest in data transmission as a potential revenue source (a “broadcast CDN”). Where does BPS fit in? Can broadcasters charge BPS users for the service? During one of the NAB sessions on BPS, it was estimated that loss of GPS for a period of 90 days would result in costs of over $1 billion per day. Will power companies, financial institutions and other critical users that depend on a precision time reference, including the government, be willing to pay broadcasters to transmit BPS as insurance against GPS loss?

Can we count on individual broadcasters to successfully deploy BPS? Larger station groups have the resources to do this, but some sort of a prepackaged solution that can be installed, maintained and remotely monitored at smaller stations will be necessary. Engineers have done a great job developing the technology that enables BPS. Let’s hope the government and business lets us take advantage of it.

In my next column, I’ll cover other topics from the 2025 NAB Show as well as some testing I did with a $59 (as this was written) USB ATSC 3.0 receiver that can plug into an Android phone while in Las Vegas. As always, your comments are welcome!

As U.S. broadcasters mark nearly a decade of development and deployment of the
ATSC 3.0 advanced broadcast standard (aka NextGen TV), the industry is seeking ways to expand interest and generate revenues beyond traditional television consumer applications.

Coinciding with this direction are recent moves to allow for the shutdown of ATSC 1.0 by February 2028 in the top 55 markets and February 2030 for the remaining markets.

“As competitive pressures mount, completing the transition to ATSC 3.0 expeditiously is essential for the future of the industry,” the National Association of Broadcasters said in a petition filed with the Federal Communications Commission at the end of February. “Without decisive and immediate action, the transition risks stalling and the realistic window for implementation could pass. Reaching the finish line requires industry-wide coordination and engagement—something individual broadcasters cannot do alone. The FCC must now establish a clear timeline to complete the transition, just as it did when the industry and consumers migrated from analog to digital.”

‘Unlock the Full Potential’
“Sunsetting” ATSC 1.0 was top of mind at the 2025 NAB Show, with the FCC issuing
a Notice of Inquiry asking for public comment to NAB’s petition on the second day of the convention.

“[FCC] Commissioner [Anna] Gomez was in our booth at that moment and got the ping on her watch that the public notice had hit,” says Madeleine Noland, president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). “Nobody knew that was going to happen during the show, and so I think it was the petition itself that got people really interested to understand what was going to happen next.”

With broadcasters required to simulcast 1.0 and 3.0—most of them sharing transmission facilities in the 80 markets that have deployed NextGen TV (covering approximately 76% of the country)—they’re eager to take full advantage of the full 6-MHz band.

“A complete transition is essential to unlock the full potential of ATSC 3.0, which cannot happen until the entire industry moves off ATSC 1.0 and reclaims that spectrum,” the NAB told the FCC. “Without this shift, broadcasters are forced to split their finite spectrum between the two standards, limiting the bandwidth available for ATSC 3.0’s most advanced capabilities and harming consumers in the process.”

While not specifically tying the sunset of ATSC 1.0 with what it says are “outdated” ownership regulations, the NAB is also seeking an update to the rules that would allow the industry to better compete with “Big Tech.” And naturally, given the advanced features offered by NextGen TV—4K, immersive audio and personalization (among others)—allowing broadcasters to deploy these enhancements will be less burdensome without 1.0.

Booth traffic to the ATSC’s stand in the West Hall this year was up 30%, Noland says, and much of that was driven by Brazil’s landmark decision to adopt the ATSC 3.0 standard in 2024.

“The Brazilians were there in force,” she says. “We had a number of Brazilian demonstrations in the ATSC booth itself, as well. I see U.S.-based companies and/or multinational companies who are working with ATSC 3.0 solutions and services already interested in the Brazilian market. And I see people who have businesses in Brazil seeing the opportunity to potentially expand in the U.S. market.”

A ‘Complement’ to GPS
Several years ago, U.S. broadcasters began work on the concept of the “Broadcast Positioning System,” which uses high-powered signals from broadcast towers to accurately transmit timing to determine position, much like how GPS works with satellites.

Over time, the NAB has tested the system and in March, the FCC— in line with federal government’s desire to develop a backup/complement to address the vulnerability of the existing satellite-based GPS—asked for public comment about the potential use of the technology as a “complement” to GPS and, in the event of actual failure, replacing GPS as a temporary solution.

“Invented and patented by NAB, BPS is a first-of-its-kind technology that leverages the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard to transmit precise timing signals,” the NAB told the FCC. “Unlike GPS, which relies on satellites that can be vulnerable to jamming, spoofing and cyberattacks, BPS provides a high-power terrestrial-based solution that ensures critical systems remain operational even during GPS disruptions.”

At the 2025 NAB Show, the Futures Park hosted a BPS demo, using the facilities of Sinclair’s KVCW ATSC 3.0 transmission facility about 25 miles from the Las Vegas Convention Center, to demonstrate the accuracy and capabilities of BPS to attendees, including representatives from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Also Read: BPS Could Be NextGen TV’s First Major Breakthrough

The test provided approximately 15-20 nanosecond accuracy, an impressive result, according to Harvey Arnold, senior vice president for Sinclair Broadcast Group.

“It’s incredibly good,” he said. “The standard is for less than 100 nanoseconds.”

The federal government representatives viewing the demo took note, Arnold adds. “Steve Sherman, an official with Space Force, which manages the GPS system, said, ‘This is very impressive.’ ”

Sam Metheny, chief technology officer for NAB, says the timely emergence of BPS as a viable complement to GPS could help accelerate the transition to ATSC 3.0.

“The time frame that we think is the most relevant is the time frame for ATSC 3.0’s deployment, because if you don’t have ATSC 3.0, you don’t have BPS,” he says. “And so we are suggesting that this can be very tightly aligned with deployment of ATSC 3.0, so as the investment is being made in the full transition to ATSC 3.0; you can also include BPS as part of that.”

Could BPS also be a way forward to get 3.0 tuners into mobile devices? With the Consumer Technology Association predictably opposing a tuner mandate—which it characterized as “heavy-handed and risky government intervention” in comments filed with the FCC last month—that possibility is remote for now, according to Metheny, who cited the more than 7 billion GPS receivers deployed worldwide today.

“We’d love to see that type of innovation happen on BPS, but that’s like decades-long innovation,” he said.

Metheny wouldn’t say how much it would cost to upgrade facilities for BPS, but said, “the fact that we can deploy [BPS] on existing infrastructure is going to make it the most economical approach and one that should be quite affordable. But we believe that just as the government is supplying GPS, they can supply BPS as well as a complementary solution.”

Datacasting for Real Revenues
Although BPS provides an impressive and compelling technology for strengthening the nation’s GPS infrastructure, broadcasters can’t expect any revenues or compensation from it anytime soon. And since broadcasters haven’t seen any revenues from ATSC 3.0 yet, they have looked to datacasting— specifically in the enterprise space—as one of the most viable options to make money off of ATSC 3.0.

That’s why the announcement of EdgeBeam at NAB Show garnered so much attention. With four of the nation’s most- prominent station groups—Sinclair, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and E.W. Scripps—partnering up to launch the datacasting service, possibly by the end of this year, the industry is finally giving the technology the technical and financial backing that could make an impact. Backers of the new service see it initially deployed for software updates and data offload, with the automotive industry as among its biggest potential customers. Car makers would take advantage of broadcast’s “one-to-many” approach, which broadcasters say is more efficient than data over IP.

Sinclair President Chris Ripley believes the promise of BPS and EdgeBeam are intertwined and the success of one can help lead to the success of the other.

“I think EdgeBeam will be incredibly helpful to getting BPS done,” he says. “We’re very involved in it, as is Nexstar and other broadcasters with NAB. And we’ve lit up BPS in Baltimore and Nexstar has done it in Denver. So I think EdgeBeam can be very helpful if we get the order from the government to roll [BPS] out, which I think we will.”

Ripley also believes that like BPS, a service such as EdgeBeam, which could see real revenues from 3.0 in the near future, can help accelerate the deployment of NextGen TV to smaller markets. With 3.0 deployed in most of the nation’s large and midsized markets, deployment to smaller markets has stalled in recent years.

Ripley says Sinclair has already received interest from other station groups and deploying EdgeBeam, the service will become more cost-effective as it matures. The key to EdgeBeam’s success is having a nationwide footprint, he says, so the more broadcasters who join the better.

“I do think as more capacity becomes available, and more stations are converted, costs can come down and EdgeBeam will potentially be the only game in town,” he says.

Ripley adds that he sees such services as “a very significant expansion of the revenue opportunities for the industry.”

“For streaming, offload, enhanced GPS and automotive, the total addressable market in those areas is like $50 billion; the total addressable market for broadcast is $40 billion,” he says. “So we’re going to be able to play in much bigger areas and diversify our revenue streams and have much more opportunity.”

In the more than 25 years since ATSC 1.0 was introduced, Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards have completely transformed the U.S. broadcast industry, defining exactly how television signals are broadcast and interpreted. Without ATSC 1.0, the over-the-air broadcast industry would not have been viable, but this year marks the long-awaited introduction of the latest standard: ATSC 3.0. 

The first new standard to be introduced to U.S. broadcasters in more than two decades, ATSC 3.0, which has recently been branded “NextGen TV,” will bring new interactive services and higher-quality video to millions of consumers across the country. As the world’s first IP-based television standard, ATSC 3.0 is breaking new ground, offering broadcasters a greater range of capabilities to help them modernize and futureproof over-the-air transmission. However, to fully appreciate the impact ATSC 3.0 is likely to have, it’s important to look back at the role ATSC 1.0 has played in shaping the broadcast industry as we know it today. 

SWITCHING FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL

Before ATSC, U.S. broadcasters adhered to the National Television System Committee (NTSC) standards. In use from 1954, the analog television color system was compatible with black-and-white receivers and remained dominant for almost 50 years, until the broadcast industry began the transition to digital. This intended switch was the catalyst for ATSC 1.0, which from 1996 dramatically improved the quality of television and introduced viewers to high-definition resolution for broadcast television with Dolby Digital audio. The widespread adoption of this new standard across the U.S. broadcast industry marked the first step in the HDTV revolution, replacing traditional analog TV signals with digital broadcasting—a move finalized in the U.S. in 2009.

With the switch to digital, viewers were able to experience better picture and sound quality, while the digital signals were no longer susceptible to the same degradation as analog signals. By facilitating digital broadcasting, ATSC 1.0 also allowed broadcasters to broadcast movies in their original widescreen format, rather than having to “pan & scan” films to be viewed on smaller 4:3 TV screens. 

ENTER NEXTGEN TV

Since ATSC 1.0 was introduced, the way we consume media and the technology we use has changed dramatically. Back in 1996, the world-wide-web was still in its infancy and only 0.04% of the world’s population had internet access, but fast forward to today and viewers now expect to be able to watch content on mobile devices just as they do at home. Consequently, ATSC 3.0 has been developed to respond to these changes in technology, making use of both over-the-air signals and broadband connections to deliver an experience closer to cable or satellite and that is in line with modern-day viewing habits and desires. 

Given that it has also been dubbed ‘NextGen TV’, it is clear that there are high hopes for ATSC 3.0 and what it can potentially offer both broadcasters and viewers. ATSC 3.0 is anticipated to provide improved picture quality thanks to HEVC encoding as well as high dynamic range (HDR), wide color gamut (WCG) and high frame rates (HFR). It will also be futureproof, meaning it could support additional benefits further down the line. 

Additionally, Scalable HEVC (SHVC) can deliver an Enhancement Layer that enables HD signals to scale up to 4K. These developments to SHVC mean that over-the-air broadcasters will be able to carry UHD, which could possibly allow them to offer subscription packages for those willing to pay to enjoy 4K, immersive sound and secondary audio commentary, for example, and therefore realize new revenue streams. The potential to create new revenue streams also extends to advertising as ATSC 3.0 allows broadcasters to collect data on viewers themselves, rather than relying on third-party agencies. This will enable broadcasters to gather information, such as the location and age of viewers, and use this to tailor ads to the individuals whose televisions or smart devices are connected to the internet. 

ATSC 3.0 will also allow broadcasters to create new subchannels to appeal to a wider range of tastes and needs. For instance, national news broadcasters could create subchannels to cater for local or regional news, while others could create special interest channels to tap into niche sporting events. This could help over-the-air broadcasters create a broader offering to appeal to a larger audience, which will be beneficial for both them and viewers. 

The ability to create new revenue streams, in the form of subscription packages and targeted ads, gives broadcasters the opportunity to replace lost retransmission revenues, therefore, helping their businesses remain viable in an increasingly competitive landscape. Further to this, as broadcasters will be able to offer more channels and new services, ATSC 3.0 will enable TV stations to offer a more valuable proposition to cable organizations. Consequently, this is likely to lead to a stronger partnership between cable services and over-the-air broadcasters that make use of ATSC 3.0.

A STANDARD FIT FOR THE FUTURE 

Ultimately, ATSC 3.0 offers broadcasters a chance to modernize so they can offer viewing experiences not only fit for the present, but also for the future with the standard’s IP backbone crucial to this. While the current global situation has potentially slowed the transition to ATSC 3.0, plans remain in place to roll it out in more than 60 U.S. markets this year with nine  markets already currently “on the air” and three readying broadcasts. ATSC 3.0 represents the cutting edge of what broadcast technology can achieve so although adoption isn’t mandatory it is likely to be widespread over the next year—revolutionizing the broadcast industry afresh. 

Fred Ramsey is sales director, North America, for ATEME. 

WASHINGTON—As the three-year channel repack comes to an end next month, viewers of over-the-air television in certain markets will (once again) have to rescan their TVs to locate the new positions of local ATSC 1.0 channels. This is how it has been through Phases 1-9 and will be so in the final Phase 10.

Does it have to be that way in the new era of ATSC 3.0? ATSC doesn’t think so. In a blog on nabpilot.org, ATSC Chair and NAB Senior Vice President of Technology Lynn Claudy says that, with the deployment of ATSC 3.0 coinciding with the end of the channel repack, updating the 3.0 standard to allow for automated rescan updates could bring an end to this manual and tedious process. 

PLUS: Repack Heads Into the Home Stretch

Currently, when broadcasters are moving to a new channel due to the repack, they are required to provide public notifications via broadcasts (channel crawls) and PSAs of such changes—and there are similar rules for stations providing such notifications to over-the-air viewers when they begin deploying ATSC 3.0. Such notices need to alert viewers of channel changes that—unlike the repack—don’t have deadlines set in stone.  

“We are now about to enter an era where there are no set dates for initially moving to NextGen TV and markets may add additional NextGen TV channels and further move ATSC 1.0 stations around on an unknown and continuing basis until some indeterminate time in the relatively far future when all broadcasting has finally transitioned entirely to NextGen TV,” Claudy said. “Every time there is a change in their market, consumers will need to remember to manually rescan their TV set, a process that can take up to several minutes, in a culture where we impatiently tap our foot in front of the microwave oven.”

There is a recommended practice for manufacturers of consumer electronics to provide software in today’s smart TV’s that periodically scans for new channels, however this process has not been widely adopted, according to Claudy.

An alternative would be to use a new part to the ATSC 3.0 standard, “ATSC Candidate Standard on Regional Service Availability," which was originally adopted as a Candidate Standard in 2018, and is currently being voted on by the ATSC membership to be elevated to a full Standard (A/200).

The candidate standard: “specifies information describing the availability of broadcast services over time within a broadcast region. Broadcast receivers may use this information to help construct a list of services that may be available to them. Additionally, the information provides a schedule that allows receivers to maintain an up-to-date service list. This document describes how the information may be distributed using either an ATSC 1.0 broadcast (or any MPEG-2 transport stream), ATSC 3.0 broadcast or over broadband.”

Most importantly, the standard would use an XML specification of a “Regional Service Availability Table” (RSAT) that would provide information specific to localities, including schedules and channel information for new ATSC 3.0 services being launched. 

PLUS: NextGen TV Marks Vegas Debut

“Once this information is available to a receiver that has been designed to receive RSATs and reconfigure its channel information appropriately, the need for manual rescanning by consumers would be largely or completely obviated,” Claudy said.

Using channel crawls or PSA’s to notify viewers of channel changes is so 20th century. This new candidate standard would help remove one more chore that viewers would need to remember, Claudy said. 

“Smarter infrastructure that extends the intelligence of TVs to keeping track of basic program information on their own would go a long way in again making television technology ‘fit in so that you don’t really even notice it,’” he said. 

COVID-19 has slowed, but not stopped, the transition to ATSC 3.0. Work continues in the ATSC to refine the standard and stations and corporations like Public Media Group and broadcaster groups like Pearl TV are readying plans to deploy. “Safe-at-home” regulations have led to huge increases in ratings for local TV stations, particularly news. People are (re)discovering broadcast TV. 

I’d like to make the argument that while we’re building out ATSC 3.0, viewers shouldn’t ignore ATSC 1.0. One thing I’m finding when I talk to people about ATSC 3.0 (Pearl and ATSC have done a good job marketing it as “NextGen TV”), is that there is much hope (or, for some, fear) that ATSC 3.0 will make broadcast TV programming available for free to everyone who buys a small antenna. They might even get free 4K UHD. Ads like the one in Fig. 1 show how crazy some of the claims are. Search Google for “4K UHD Antenna” (without quotes) and see what comes up.  

OVER-THE-AIR TV STREAMING GATEWAY

What’s wrong with this picture? While over-the-air 4K UHD isn’t available now except for a few test broadcasts, and that magic antenna won’t bring in signals from 980 miles away, for most people it isn’t that hard to get the major networks in full HD and a variety of specialty channels in SD right now with ATSC 1.0. There are even ways to stream it from an antenna to an app on your TV or portable device or record it for later viewing. 

If you don’t want to bother with antennas for every device, putting the broadcast signals on your home network will allow viewing on any connected device. The antenna and box can also be placed in a location where the signals are best, even if the TV isn’t there. 

The HD Homerun units from Silicon Dust have been around a while and can be equipped with up to four tuners for simultaneous reception of different channels on different devices. Prices start at $99 for two tuners and go up from there for more tuners, transcoding and DVR capability. Channel Master’s Stream+ has two tuners and includes Google Play for streaming services for $99. Also for $99 is Hauppauge’s CordCutter TV, which includes two tuners and transcodes broadcast MPEG-2 video to H.264 at lower bitrate for less strain on the home network; however it doesn’t have a built-in DVR option. All of these devices should work with Android, FireTV, Windows, Apple TV or iOS apps. 

These devices and TV sets will need an antenna. For many people a simple antenna like the Onn ONA19CH002 I found at Walmart for under $20 will bring in most local channels with a little effort. People who’ve always had their TV set hooked to a cable connection in the wall often don’t realize this. While a proper antenna is best, for a quick check in strong signal areas take an unfolded paper clip (one without plastic coating); push one end into the antenna connector on the back of a TV set; select “antenna” and rescan. You may be surprised how many stations you get. 

3.0 VS. 1.0 RECEPTION REQUIREMENTS

What does a TV station’s coverage look like if we assume an indoor antenna? Fig. 2 shows a plot of predicted signal strength for WRC-TV in Washington, D.C. The green area is where the field strength is predicted to be 88 dBµV/m or stronger, at least 40 dB stronger than the FCC required “community grade” signal for a UHF DTV station. This extra margin will, in many cases, offset signal loss from walls and signals received as a reflection off other buildings. This coverage prediction doesn’t take into account that buildings and foliage can add loss, but on average a simple indoor antenna should work for most people in the green area. Reception outside the green area may require a bit more fiddling with the antenna or moving it to a higher location in the house or even outside.  

Now lets see what indoor coverage would look like if WRC-TV converts to ATSC 3.0 using the same power and antenna. The most likely coverage scenario while stations are broadcasting in both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 will still be the green area in Fig. 2. Why no difference? The required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the ATSC 3.0 signal is likely to be the same (15 dB) as that for ATSC 1.0, or even a bit worse. The SNR won’t be any better because bits (data rate) would have to be sacrificed to make the signal more robust. 

This could be done if the ATSC 3.0 station were carrying the same content as one 1.0 station, but initially there will be far fewer 3.0 stations than 1.0 stations and those 3.0 stations will likely be carrying programming from multiple 1.0 stations. I covered that scenario years ago in my July 2015 column “Getting Ready for ATSC 3.0.” Even with the greater efficiency of HEVC video coding, bits are going to be precious. ATSC 3.0 will have some advantage in areas with multipath making antenna placement less critical and reception somewhat easier.

There will be trade offs between the number of stations available on ATSC 3.0, the resolution of their video (4K, 1080p, 720p, HDR?) and the robustness of the signal. Some broadcasters may decide to up the data rate even if it results in less coverage than ATSC 1.0. 

What’s the lesson for viewers? If you want to receive high-resolution ATSC 3.0 in the future, check 1.0 reception now.  

One advantage ATSC 3.0 offers broadcasters is the ability to protect content, just as cable companies and streaming services do now. Premium services can be offered for a price (a subscription fee or registration) and recording blocked. This will ensure quality content is still available over the air, but it also means that with ATSC 3.0’s security features we’ll likely lose the ability to record some (most?) shows over the air, store them forever on a hard drive or DVD and watch them later on any device. With ATSC 1.0, there are no technical limits on what a person can do with the content recorded from over the air broadcasts, even in full HD. 

The lack of a robust ATSC 3.0 signal for early adopters may be disappointing, but the standard does offer techniques for more robust coverage as more stations convert to 3.0. One is to add transmitters in a distributed transmission system (DTS)—also referred to as “single frequency networks”—which increases signal strength to viewers making reception easier without the need to reduce data rates (expanding the green area in Fig. 2 to the entire market). However, building out a DTS is expensive. Other methods steal some data capacity (TDM or FDM) or power (LDM) from the less robust stream to provide a low bit rate robust stream. See sidebar for details on how these techniques work. 

When viewers ask me for help receiving ATSC 1.0, they usually have some signal, but it has artifacts and dropouts. Adding robustness by either increasing signal strength or reducing the required SNR, as described in the sidebar, would provide a great improvement in reception. The blue area in Fig. 2 shows the increase in indoor service area achieved by reducing the required SNR to 5 dB (at lower bit rate and resolution), compared to the 15 dB SNR scenario. Will broadcasters be able to spare the capacity to transmit a robust stream? How long will it take to find the resources to build out the DTS required to increase the signal level delivered to viewers over a wide area? 

While I expect long time readers are already using antennas to pick up ATSC 1.0 broadcasts, if you haven’t tried receiving ATSC 1.0 give it a try; you’ll be prepared when 3.0 makes it to your market and into your TV.  Let me know how it works out! My email is dlung@transmitter.com.  

YARDLEY, Pa.—After 17 years at NBCU in key senior technology positions, Glenn Reitmeier recently left the network to form GlennReitmeierTV, a consulting service with a focus on helping industry thought leaders at the intersection of technology, business and legal issues.

Reitmeier, who rightly could be considered one of the founding fathers of digital high definition television, played a key role in the development, testing and ultimately standardization of the digital HDTV system that eventually became ATSC A/53 (subsequently called ATSC 1).

(Those interested in a retrospective on The Grand Alliance may wish to read “Richard Wiley Recalls The Grand Alliance on Its 25th Anniversary.”)

After spending more than 20 years with Sarnoff Labs and a Sarnoff incubator company, Reitmeier joined NBC Universal as vice president, Advanced Technology, and subsequently was promoted to senior vice president, Technology Standard and Policy, at the network.

During that time, Reitmeier planted the seed among those serving on the board of the Advanced Television Systems Committee that a next-generation digital television system was not only doable but necessary. That “What? You’re crazy” proposal, as Reitmeier describes it, ultimately grew into the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards.

In this first part of a two part interview, Reitmeier opens up about his new consultancy, compares ATSC 1 and 3.0 standardization, sheds light on the transmission system chosen for ATSC 1 and why it was the best solution at the time, discusses 3.0 vs. 5G rollout, talks about where broadcast management stands with NEXTGEN TV and puts future industry advancement into context.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:Glenn, you recently retired from NBCU and started the GlennReitmeierTV consultancy. Tell me about your plans for your new company.

Glenn Reitmeier: I believe I can provide unique expertise and value at the strategic intersection of business, legal and technology issues. It’s amazing how intertwined they have been throughout the course of my career. Any media business or any business in the supply chain is inherently dependent on technology to create and deliver content, and that content itself is intellectual property that needs to be protected.

So technology and intellectual property become key considerations in the strategic plan of any business in the media supply chain. Likewise, technology is often an explicit part of agreements for affiliation, distribution and other content uses—as well as government regulation. I am looking forward to operating at that intersection and being a resource for the industry thought leaders who will find advantage from combining those elements in the right way.

TVT:You were a part of the engineering team that helped usher in the first era in digital TV, specifically digital HDTV, and you played an important role, including being an ATSC board member, in helping to make ATSC 3.0 a reality. How would you compare the two, and what lessons, if any, from the ATSC 1.0 experience helped in 3.0 standardization?

GR: Boy were they different. In ATSC 1, we had broadcasters petitioning the FCC and the formation of an advisory committee in 1987. The FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS) provided intense oversight and rigorous testing of proposals for a new television system.

ACATS developed 10 selection criteria, and the premise was that a single winning system would be selected based upon the test results. A fierce competition raged among proposed systems. By 1989, there were, I think, 23 proposed systems, all of which were analog.

The digital proposals emerged after FCC Chairman [Alfred] Sikes really raised the bar. He said, “No, we don’t have enough spectrum for a multiple channel HDTV approach. We want full HDTV, not anything less, and there’s only one 6 MHz channel.”

Lo and behold, within six months we had the four digital proposals emerge, and they slugged it out for a few years. And after testing and sort of a stalemate, we formed the Grand Alliance in 1993 and began the collaborative phase of the process, confirmed and validated by ACATS testing that we had met the best performance attributes from all of the four previously tested digital systems.

And in those days, the role of the ATSC was to document everything and make sure there was an open standard that could be implemented by all of the manufacturers in the ecosystem. It was government regulation that kind of paced the launch of 1.0 on both the broadcasting side and the receiver side.

ATSC 3.0 couldn’t be a more different story. I think I was probably the first person to begin to talk about the need for a successor standard. Seeing the Grand Alliance system being a decade old and seeing the development of new video compression and advancements in communications, I started with a white paper that I submitted to the ATSC board in 2006.

Sometimes it feels like the history of my career is people saying, “What? You’re crazy.” I heard that a lot in the early days of the digital proposals. After a couple of years of hearing that about a next-generation digital system, the idea started to get some traction in 2009 when we had the digital transition complete and the NTSC analog service was shut down.

In 2010, the ATSC board created a planning team to investigate the viability of new technologies and whether they would substantially advance the prospect of a next-generation standard. In 2011, after the team reported that there were significant new developments here that were substantially advanced from the technologies of ATSC 1.0, the board agreed and realized that it would take time to do the work of setting a new standard.

So, the board formed the new TG3 group, called for input and began the standard setting process. The standards were completed and approved by the FCC in 2017, and the commercial launch of 3.0 is being paced by voluntary industry efforts.

As far as lessons learned, first, on a technical level, we learned that hardware testing was unnecessary for a modern digital system design. You do that these days with rigorous simulation and evaluation, which allows you to avoid the long and costly process of hardware development.

TVT:Right, because when you were doing 1.0, there was nothing. You were starting from scratch.

GR: Oh, yeah. We were completely starting from scratch, and to be fair there was a degree of skepticism about whether a digital system would be viable at all. “What? You’re crazy. Those many racks of research lab hardware are going to become affordable broadcast equipment and consumer receivers?” Well, with a little help from Moore’s law and thanks to the work of many terrific engineers who designed generation after generation of ATSC 1 products, that’s exactly what happened.

Be that as it may, obviously the process of building a system and debugging and fine-tuning the performance of real-time hardware can be done much more quickly and efficiently in the software simulation environments we have today.

At another level, I think we made a step forward because people realized that the industry is capable of cooperating to create its own voluntary next-gen standards and that we didn’t necessarily need the oversight of an FCC advisory committee. This wasn’t a once-in-50-years event anymore.

I don’t mean to say that the advisory committee was burdensome, nor that there was government interference in the industry. I consider Chairman Wiley one of my role models and mentors for his tremendous leadership during the advisory committee process. But I think we learned that we could do the work in ATSC. That was certainly one of my messages, which I have championed, that we are capable of coming together and doing the work and setting the standard.

But at the highest level, I think that we tried to repeat the ACATS formula of establishing goals and requirements, soliciting competing approaches, rigorously evaluating them, recognizing the best virtues of various approaches and then fostering the collaboration needed to combine the various elements into a complete system.

In retrospect, the ACATS process and the Grand Alliance achieved a truly revolutionary result with ATSC 1.0—it was the world’s first digital television standard. Time will tell how we have done with ATSC 3.0.

TVT:How did 1.0 end up with 8VSB?

GR: It turns out that how the analog signal played with the digital signal was absolutely the lynchpin. [Editor’s note: OTA DTV had to exist in an environment that maintained NTSC transmission for more than 10 years, until analog’s eventual turn off.]

It was finding that knife’s edge balance between the coverage area performance of digital systems and its interference impact on existing analog service. It was absolutely critical to enabling the simulcast transition that we had.

The example I like to use is to achieve that [avoiding interference into a neighboring station’s NTSC service], the digital signals were actually one-sixteenth of the power of the analog signal. So, I have to drop the digital power a factor of 16 in order to not make noise, ghosts and artifacts in the analog service, and at the same time at one-sixteenth the power I have to replicate the coverage of the analog signal in the presence of interference from a high-power, high-tower analog signals all around [i.e., the RF environment].

So, digital signal carrier-to-noise ratio for random noise was a primary attribute in determining coverage, and that’s actually what drove us toward QAM or VSB alternatives. We had to meet that challenge.

I don’t think many people know this, but before the Grand Alliance, we at the Sarnoff-Thomson-Philips-NBC team had actually built both OFDM and QAM transmission systems. We had them both running in the lab, and there was a substantial noise level disadvantage to OFDM at the time that just made it unsuitable for a simulcast environment. At the time of the Grand Alliance, VSB had about a 9db power advantage compared to OFDM, which made a huge difference in our ability to get the largest possible coverage with a digital signal.

Now there are many benefits [to OFDM] like single frequency networks, and the OFDM implementations have gotten substantially better over time, and it obviously was the right choice for ATSC 3.0, but those system choices are highly dependent on the simulcast environment and the transition environment that we are trying to operate within. There are a big set of constraints on the system parameters that you have to choose and balance.

It’s not just the new system and its parameters; it’s the old system and its constraints. You can’t destroy the old business while you are launching the new one.

TVT:What do you think will be fully rolled out first, 3.0 or 5G?

GR: I believe that ATSC 3.0 will be fully deployed before 5G. When you talk about 5G, there are often a lot of assumptions being made. But are you talking about 5G at 900 MHz or mid-band spectrum deployments of 5G? Obviously, as you go up to higher frequencies, you gain higher capacity, but your propagation and coverage area shrink.

To your point, if you are going to be using mid-band and higher frequencies, the cell sizes are going to have to shrink pretty radically, and of course that’s going to require time and investment to build out those higher density cellular networks. You have to compare at least an order of magnitude more cell sites than there are broadcast towers.

When you look at the infrastructure and the investment, I think it becomes a pretty easy conclusion that ATSC 3.0 can be fully deployed before 5G when you look at it on a nationwide basis.

TVT:I ask because it seems as if, like it or not, broadcasters have a relatively narrow window in time to make the most of their spectrum before they face unprecedented competition when it comes to wireless delivery of entertainment and likely regulators and lawmakers who may push for more TV spectrum in a future auction. Is 3.0 the tool to that can help broadcasters remain competitive and stave off further spectrum auctions?

GR: Leaving the spectrum policy questions aside, I will just observe that spectrum is already a scarce resource. ATSC 3.0’s improvements in efficiency, the flexibility to configure signals to achieve coverage and reduce interference, as well as the single frequency network capabilities will all be important in any scarcity of frequency environment, whether today’s allocation stays intact and unchanged or there are further spectrum auctions. I think broadcasters and the country are going to need those improvements in the RF characteristics that 3.0 brings in order to provide reliable service and exist in a crowded spectrum environment.

TVT:From my point of view, the television engineering and academic brain trust of the industry have given the television industry 3.0 with many possibilities and a new level of performance. How would you assess where TV broadcast management is in terms of its interest, understanding and plans for 3.0?

GR: I’m very encouraged and excited about the level of industry support and commitment that is already evident in the 3.0 rollout. Obviously, it is thought leaders who are most intensely interested and moving forward and making ATSC 3.0 deployments and tests.

But there are always leaders and followers when it comes to any new technology or industry change. I look at it like this, here we are just about two years after the standard was approved by the FCC, and we already are seeing voluntary industry lighthouse efforts and transition plans and an industry looking at how to move forward.

Compare that to ATSC 1 two years after the standard was set at the end of 1996, we were just seeing the launch of commercial receivers and there were a handful of stations on the air. But really, in a sense, the industry all looked to the FCC to set rules and requirements and we had the [Michael] Powell plan thanks to Chairman Powell’s leadership.

In ATSC 1, we were all waiting for the government to tell us what to do, and here we are with ATSC 3.0 and the industry leaders who get it are trying to move us forward. I applaud the initiative that is being taken on the commercial front. So, I am encouraged.

TVT:How do you think 3.0 will play out at Comcast/NBCU?

GR: No comment.

Part two of TV Technology's conversation with Glenn Reitmeier will be published next week.

More information about GlennReitmeierTV is available online. 

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

NEW YORK—Video software provider Synamedia and program guide and metadata management specialist Triveni Digital have announced a partnership to make seamless ATSC 3.0 transitions a reality for television broadcasters.

The collaboration aims to assist broadcasters that must maintain their existing ATSC 1.0 service while putting 3.0 on-air.

Triveni Digital’s Digital Broadcast Chain, which included GuideBuilder XM and Broadcast Gateway, supports a unified platform for a coherent workflow across both services, the companies said.

Synamedia’s compression technology and advanced solutions make it possible for broadcasters to repack existing ATSC 1.0 services and free up needed bandwidth to launch 3.0 services, they added.

Working together, the companies can equip broadcasters, content providers and service providers with tools to deliver best-in-class viewing experiences and at the same time meet their service requirements for image quality, bandwidth efficiency and transcoding and encoding for multiscreen distribution, they said.

“We were impressed with Synamedia’s track record of speed of deployment and uptime, both of which are key for ATSC 3.0 integration. These attributes, combined with their strong value proposition, made it an easy decision to work together on integrated comprehensive solutions” said Mark Simpson, president and CEO for Triveni Digital.

The collaboration is a particular boon to joint customers, especially those in the United States who can look to the companies to meet their 3.0 transition needs, he added.

“As the industry gears up for this major shift to increased broadcast capabilities with ATSC 3.0, combining the breadth of our portfolio and scale with a leading specialized vendor like Triveni will bring the best-of-breed solution to market more quickly,” said Julien Signes, SVP and GM of Video Network, Synamedia.

The companies also announced they have collaborated on deployment of solutions with a major U.S. TV production company.

See Synamedia at NAB Show New York booths N1143 and 1145.

See Triveni Digital at booth N1064.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

DALLAS—ARK Multicasting Inc. announced that it has achieved an industry first—broadcasting both ATSC 1.0 and NEXTGEN TV ATSC 3.0 from the same equipment stack. The demo took place as part of the ARK trial market in Crockett, Texas, Oct. 2 with cooperation from Hitachi-Comark and their Comark Digital Services (CDS) division. The ATSC 1.0 signal was tested with a new Hitachi-Comark E-Compact series transmitter and an Ateme TITAN Live encoder.

Using the same transmission equipment with the addition of an ATSC 3.0 stack by Enensys, the signal was converted to NEXTGEN TV. Using a 64 QAM modulation scheme, the test ran at full power for two hours and confirmed connectivity on the fringe of the 41 dBu broadcast signal 35 miles away from the tower.

Testing was conducted using an Airwavz.tv Redzone Receiver in conjunction with their TvXplorer field test receiver running on a laptop. This successful dual mode testing between the legacy standard and NEXTGEN TV was the first of its kind.

In comparison to the cellular unicast model, ARK demonstrated its ability to serve the small town of Crockett with 150 petabytes (PB) of data transmission per day. This would translate to ~10,500 PB per day in a large market like ARK’s Dallas station.

ARK CEO, Vern Fotheringham, said, “We remain excited about the many opportunities NEXTGEN TV represents, and will continue to play our part as leaders in the new technology given the vast network of broadcast assets we control and our ability to be nimble as Low Power TV (LPTV) operators. ARK’s business applications for the standard will very shortly be tested in the rural city of Crockett, Texas, where we will deploy in concert with local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to improve rural broadband services. This recent test is just the beginning of many firsts that we intend to be able to announce.”

ARK says it was the first broadcaster to conduct end-to-end ATSC 3.0 broadcasting in September 2018. That demonstration originated with International Broadcasting Network (IBN) content being sent from Cedar Hill, Texas, over an Intelsat provided satellite IP transmission via their gateway and uplink services using a Newtec satellite IP hub. The signal was pulled down into the ARK lab environment at the Hitachi-Comark headquarters in Southwick, Mass. It was then transmitted using an ATSC 3.0 broadcast television signal into a 3.0 Samsung television. The test last week in Crocket also used the IBN network feed for the content stream.

“We are proud to be involved in yet another successful follow-on set of extremely important ATSC 3.0 tests with ARK Multicasting,” said Hitachi Comark President & CEO Dick Fiore. “Our DTV equipment, integration and field service capabilities for NEXTGEN TV, formerly known as ATSC 3.0, are unparalleled in the marketplace. We have made a significant investment in the NEXTGEN TV market over the last few years, lining up several key technology partnerships, and the result is a single source for fully integrated and tested end-to-end solutions.”

Enensys Technologies President and CEO Régis Le Roux said, “We are very proud and excited to be an important ATSC 3.0 technology provider and technical partner to ARK for yet another one of their NEXTGEN TV trials. Our role is to enable data delivery with confidence. We recognize this responsibility and are grateful to both ARK and Hitachi Comark for selecting Enensys for this trial.”

Airwavz CEO Bonnie Beeman said, “It’s a privilege to partner with ARK Multicasting as they deploy exciting NEXTGEN TV service across the U.S. and create a brand-new all-IP wireless pipe for video-hungry consumers.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

SOUTHWICK, Mass.—Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark and Triveni Digital have signed on the dotted line for a reseller agreement that covers transmission, test and monitoring systems used in ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 integrated systems.

The details of the agreement appoints Comark as an authorized reseller of Triveni Digital hardware and software, including program generators, metadata management, data broadcasting and test and monitoring systems. Through Comark Digital Services, Comark will focus on the North American broadcast DTV market for ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 technology.

As ATSC 3.0 deployments are beginning to occur, Triveni Digital’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Ralph Bachofen, points to Comark’s history in the U.S. broadcast market as a way to better address the needs of broadcasters during this new era.

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

SOUTHWICK, MA–Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark LLC, a manufacturer and supplier of DTV transmitters, encoding systems, and associated field services, has signed a partnership agreement with ENENSYS for ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 technology and products.

The agreement appoints COMARK as an authorized reseller and service provider of the ENENSYS hardware and software product line. COMARK will focus on the North American broadcast DTV market for ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 solutions.

Comark Digital Services (CDS) was originally formed back in 1997 during the transition from analog to DTV, delivering a multitude of solutions to DTV customers. Earlier this year CDS was relaunched to assist customers with navigating the FCC repack and migrating to ATSC 3.0. CDS currently operates a full laboratory for equipment testing, integration, and customer demonstrations.

CDS has delivered systems to key ATSC 3.0 trials in the U.S., all of which included ENENSYS products, including:

• ATSCheduler, an ATSC3.0 Broadcast Gateway that encapsulates MMT, ROUTE, ALP or any IP streams into an ATSC multiplex, inserts synchronization data from Single Frequency Network (SFN) Broadcasting, allocates data into the different Sub-Frame and Physical Layer Pipes (PLP) and generates STL output packets;

• IPGuardV2, which enables 1+1 Automatic IP switching with bypass mechanism. Designed for IP architectures, it allows to switch between main & backup IP sources based on a set of configurable criteria in order to provide reliable IP transport and error-free streams, and

• ATSCaster: As ATSC3.0 compression is based on DASH or MPU segment generation, ATSCaster is designed to create the ROUTE or MMT packaging and generation over IP multicast streams for live services, including the signaling of these services.

“This agreement formalizes a long-standing relationship between ENENSYS and COMARK. ENENSYS complements our current product portfolio with key technologies for both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 systems,” says Dick Fiore, President and CEO of Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark LLC. “The ENENSYS IPGuard, ATSCscheduler, and ATSCaster products provide our customers with a future-proof upgrade path for Next Gen Broadcast Television deployments.”

“As an already accepted industry leader in the emerging ATSC 3.0 deployments as well as ATSC 1.0 solutions, ENENSYS Technologies is proud to be partnered with CDS. Their reputation as a customer focused, technologically sound, and innovative company is exactly what we and the broadcast industry need for both today and into the future.” states Phil Whitebloom, Director of Sales – North America.

SOUTHWICK, MASS.—Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark today announced a partnership with ATEME Corp. to become an authorized reseller and service provider of Ateme ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 hardware and software encoding solutions.

“After careful evaluation of the encoding market and extensive product testing in our encoding systems lab at the Southwick, Mass., facility, we decided to work with Ateme.” said Dick Fiore, Comark president and CEO. “The Ateme Titan encoding solution offers best-of-breed encoding, flexibility of implementation and a future-proof upgrade path for next-gen broadcast television deployments.”

Under the agreement, Comark will focus on the North American broadcast DTV market. The company will also offer integration and system design services for stations.

[Putting Next Gen TV to the [Full] Test]

Comark has an extensive history in DTV encoding dating back to the formation of Comark Digital Services to offer MPEG-2 solutions to broadcasters during the early days of the analog-to-digital transition.

“We’re thrilled to extend our partnership with Comark to our Titan software encoding,” said Walid Hamri, Ateme vice president of business development. “It’s enabling Comark to provide an end-to-end, flexible solution for the DTV market, ready for next-gen TV broadcast.”

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

WASHINGTON—In a sit down last week with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and Nirali Patel, acting legal advisor to the commissioner, Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, made the case for ATSC 1.0 simulcasting to be a requirement as part of any planned rollout of the ATSC 3.0 next gen TV standard.

Powell made the case for what was described as “robust simulcasting requirements” from the FCC during any transition period in a voluntary ATSC 3.0 roll-out. Particularly, Powell brought up a requirement that the broadcaster’s ATSC 1.0 signal continue to be transmitted in the same format prior to the transmission of a companion ATSC 3.0 signal. This would allow consumers to receive HD signals without requiring the purchase of a new TV set that could handle ATSC 3.0.

NCTA also called for simulcasting requirements to be maintained until the FCC determines that they should be lifted. There was also a discussion that the FCC should make clear that it will scrutinize efforts by broadcasters to obtain premature carriage of ATSC 3.0 by “unreasonably withholding access to ATSC 1.0 signals.”

A vote on the voluntary roll-out of ATSC 3.0 is scheduled to take place on Nov. 16. The draft text of the order that will be voted on was released by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and does not require broadcasters to continue to deliver HD. That draft is eligible to be changed prior to the vote.

NCTA Senior Vice President, Law & Regulatory Policy, Rick Chessen also took part in the meeting and filed an ex parte on it.

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

COLUMBUS, OHIO—Ohio Education Television Stations (OETS) is using the datacasting capacity of its ATSC 1.0 HDTV broadcasts to deliver emergency communications in Ohio during manmade and natural disasters. Meant to provide a redundant alternative to vulnerable internet-based communications during emergencies, the “OEAS (Ohio Digital Emergency Alerting System) Public AlertNet” uses a 128 kbps data allocation within the 12 OETS’ PBS stations’ HDTV broadcasts to transmit critical alerts and messages to other broadcasters for delivery to the public, with the future option of also serving police, fire and ambulance services with encrypted messaging.

Dave Carwile (L), OEAS Project Manager for OETS and WOSU Public Media and Tim Kelly, WOSU-TV Chief Engineer check out the receiver operation.

The OEAS Public AlertNet system was used on-air for the first time on Dec. 14, 2016, to deliver common alerting protocol (CAP) messages in English and Spanish during the state’s monthly EAS communications test exercise. The over-the-air transmission replaced the legacy EAS links that connect Ohio broadcasters to the state’s emergency management agency.

“The test went perfectly,” said OEAS Project Manager Dave Carwile of OETS and WOSU Public Media. “We proved that datacasting can be used to pass on local CAP, FEMA IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert & Warning System), and, in the future, NWS (National Weather Service) messages to other broadcasters and government agencies; all without needing the ‘last mile internet’ to carry the traffic. Given the issues with ‘last mile’ delivery during Hurricane Sandy and other major disasters, being able to deliver redundant communications via our secure television system is an extremely important alternative.”

THE NITTY GRITTY

OETS developed the OEAS Public AlertNet in partnership with the Ohio Emergency Management Agency (OhioEMA) and Ohio’s Broadcast Educational Media Committee (BEMC) with funding from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting.

The system is built on Monroe Electronics’ Digital Alert Systems platform and includes Monroe’s Emergency Operations Center (DASEOC) to originate, translate or relay CAP alerts, with a DASDEC-II unit serving as message aggregator. The content moves on to a Triveni Digital Skyscraper hub, then over secure fiber to the 12 digital transmitters operated by the eight OEAS member operations.

At the user end, an ATSC receiver delivers the signal to DASDEC LC (DASLC) emergency content servers, outfitted with IPAWS emulation software that makes the content available to legacy EAS machines.

Here’s how the OEAS Public AlertNet system works.

The process starts at the OhioEMA’s emergency operations center in Columbus, Ohio. This is where Ohio-related CAP and IPAWS messages are created or received for relay.

“All of these public warning messages are fed into the DASEOC, which authenticates and transfers them to the Aggregator for assembly into a single data stream,” said Ed Czarnecki, senior director of strategy and government affairs for Monroe Electronics. “The DASEOC unit can also process federal, statewide and county messages that need to be received by state first responders. All of these messages are assembled in a sequential manner, to simplify transmission and reception.”

Once this data stream has been encapsulated into a unique DTV transport stream by Triveni Digital’s SkyScraper data broadcasting equipment at the OhioEMA, the stream is delivered to the OETS master control rooms by BEMC over the state’s secure fiber optic network.

SkyScraper is a digital content distribution system that lets broadcasters decide how much bandwidth to allocate for data streams within their transmissions; insert those data streams into those signals; and include targeting information that ensures the data is only decoded by specific “addressable” receivers if desired. (This targeting is done back at the OhioEMA headquarters, using SkyScraper’s DataFab feature.)

When the data stream is received at each public broadcast location, it is multiplexed into the station’s digital broadcast signal. Ohio’s public stations provide virtually 100-percent coverage to all broadcast and cable facilities in Ohio, plus county public safety agencies.

A diagram of the ATSC 3.0 unified architecture. Since the current ATSC 1.0-based system can deliver any IP-based signal, it will be available for upgrade when ATSC 3.0 systems come online.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

At this point, the OEAS Public AlertNet messages go out over the air as a data stream in OETS’ HDTV transmissions. In this initial phase of the program, messages are going to receivers provided to all of Ohio’s legacy EAS LP radio stations and selected county EMA offices. However, they can be received by other TV and radio stations, first responder agencies and any other involved departments using digital TV data receivers that are integrated with Monroe Electronic’s DASLC emergency content management servers with IPAWS Emulation modules. Notably, beyond the IPAWS emulators provided by Monroe, all other DASDEC devices running v3.0 software can simply have a feature enabled to allow them to integrate with the OEAS system as well.

The DASLC translates the data stream, so that it can be polled by the reception site’s existing EAS equipment in the message’s native format. All 12 PTV stations transmit the same signal and the legacy EAS equipment continues to parse the content appropriate to their locations.

The result: “The emergency messages get through to everyone who need them; all without relying on the last mile internet,” said Czarnecki. “As new information comes into OhioEMA, the message assembly, encoding and distribution process repeats itself. This means that there is a constantly updated stream of emergency messages travelling from OhioEMA to the OEAS stations via HDTV broadcasts to everyone who needs this vital information in real time.”

APPLICABLE TO OTHER STATES

Ohio’s success in harnessing ATSC HDTV broadcasts to emergency messaging is a model that can be applied by broadcasters in other jurisdictions.

“There is no reason why broadcasters in other states, no matter how big or small, cannot do what we did and provide a redundant EAS communications system or encrypted messaging to first responders,” said Carwile. “ATSC’s datacasting capability is ideally suited for getting CAP, IPAWS, and other digital messaging to everyone who needs them without having to unilaterally rely on the last mile internet.”

Not surprisingly, OEAS is seeing a lot of interest in the OEAS Public AlertNet system from other states.

“In addition to talking to the emergency messaging people, we’ve had representatives of some of the commercial television groups in the state asking if they could purchase receiver packages so they could monitor the system directly and we will be making those available this year,” Dave Carwile said. He expects that “as we add more of the features we’re working toward—specifically weather, video and rich media for Amber Alerts—there will be more of a demand from the TV folks. The architecture is now in place, and since it can deliver any IP-based signal, it will be available for upgrade when ATSC 3.0 systems come online.”

For more information about the OEAS Public AlertNet system, contact Dave Carwile at carwile.1@osu.edu or call 614-292-9567.