COLUMBUS, Ohio—Four local television broadcasters, WSYX, WCMH-TV, WWHO and WTTE have launched ATSC 3.0 transmission, bringing NextGen TV service to viewers in Columbus, Ohio. 

WSYX is the Sinclair Broadcast Group-owned ABC/Fox affiliate in Columbus; WCMH-TV is the NexStar Media Group-owned NBC affiliate; WWHO, the Manhan Media-owned CW affiliate operated under a shared services agreement by Sinclair; and WTTE, the Cunningham Broadcasting-owned TBD affiliate operated by Sinclair under a local marketing agreement.

The four broadcasters are working together to air Fox, NBC, CW and TBD Network programming as NextGen TV services, according to an announcement from BitPath, formerly Spectrum Co.

PLUS: Broadcasters Eye ATSC Rollout of 16 Additional Cities by End-of-Summer

BitPath was responsible for the planning process of the Jan. 7 launch. It coordinated the efforts of the four stations, which will be charter members of BitPath’s broadcast data network, the company said.

Existing digital television service (ATSC 1.0) of each station remains available over the air, via cable and satellite. OTA viewers are required to rescan to continue receiving legacy digital television.

More information is available on the BitPath website.

Stay up to date on all of the ATSC 3.0 deployments with TV Tech.

Calling Buckeye broadcasters! The Ohio Broadcast & Multimedia Conference is approaching fast. Scheduled for Nov. 8 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, the show features sessions for TV and radio engineers.

On the TV side Jim Seccia of GatesAir offers “TV Breakout #1: Recent Experiences With ATSC 3.0 from Seoul to Phoenix.” Following that is “TV Breakout #2: Repack, Reimbursement and the Rush for Our Spectrum,” led by Robert Weller of the NAB. 

Later, Jeff Cohen of IMT Vislink has “TV Breakout #3: Next Generation IP News Gathering: The Advent of High-Speed Multi-User IP ENG Solutions.”In addition there will be IT and multimedia sessions such as WorldCast’s Tony Peterle leading “IT Breakout #1: Basic Exploration of SNMP:” Chris Crump of Comrex with “Multimedia Breakout #2: 5G Technology and the Future of Remote Broadcasts;” and a panel, “Closing Session: Practical Cybersecurity for Broadcasters 5 Things to Know.”

Radio broadcasters can catch the NAB’s David Layer leading “Radio Breakout #1: Radio Broadcasters and the Digital Dashboard.” Kirk Harnack of The Telos Alliance helms “Radio Breakout #2: Private or Public Cloud, Your Rack Room Is Going There.” The last dedicated radio session is “Radio Breakout #3: Monitoring and Compliance in an Evolving Regulatory Landscape,” with Paul Stewart of the Summit Technology Group.

In addition there will be IT and multimedia sessions such as WorldCast’s Tony Peterle leading “IT Breakout #1: Basic Exploration of SNMP:” Chris Crump of Comrex with “Multimedia Breakout #2: 5G Technology and the Future of Remote Broadcasts;” and a panel, “Closing Session: Practical Cybersecurity for Broadcasters, 5 Things to Know.”

COLUMBUS, OHIO—When ATSC president Mark Richer launched the organization’s “Road To ATSC 3.0” campaign earlier this year, he observed that the television industry would be “embarking on the road trip of a lifetime.”

One of the stops on that “road” took place in a big way here June 27-28 with the arrival of the “Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit,” an event designed to bring information about the new DTV transmission standard to broadcasters who might not have had an opportunity to participate in the numerous ATSC 3.0 launch events at the NAB Show and elsewhere.

With the assistance of broadcasting associations from six states—Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin—the ATSC brought together some of the top names in a program tailored for both station management and engineering contingents, with an agenda split between the nuts and bolts aspects of ATSC 3.0 and new business models that it could fuel.

The technical side was first, and after welcoming remarks by the executive director of the Indiana Broadcasters Association, Dave Arland, the day-and-a-half conference got down to business with a tag team presentation by the former chair of the ATSC technology group that developed the standard, Richard Chernock, and Skip Pizzi, NAB’s vice president of technology education and outreach. The duo described the genesis of the ATSC 3.0 standard, its inner workings, how it will allow broadcasters to offer a much wider range of services, what it will take to put 3.0 on the air, and even how adoption of the standard can fit in with the ongoing U.S. television spectrum repack.

TIME TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT ATSC 3.0

As well as describing technical aspects of ATSC 3.0, Chernock urged broadcasters to embrace the new standard and commit themselves to adopting it as soon as possible.

“Technology is continuing to accelerate and grow,” he said. “It’s almost an exponential curve and it’s going to keep on going [and] we’re used to television technologies that sit still for a long time.

“How many decades was NTSC pretty much unchanged? And then along came ATSC 1.0, and now, in much less time, 3.0 has come along, and parts of 3.0 are not going to sit still but will keep evolving,” Chernock added. “So, I think we’re entering a phase where we all have to learn that things are not going to be completely stable. They’ll keep on changing. They’ll get better. And if you take advantage of it, there are a lot more opportunities. The key thing is to recognize that it’s going to happen and how to work with it, rather than stick your head in the sand and complain.”

Pizzi observed that while ATSC 3.0 was a “faith-based initiative” and not mandated, broadcasters and consumers alike would benefit from its implementation.

“The main thing is better audio and video,” said Pizzi. “There’s also the ability to do a quantitative increase as well as a qualitative one—to put more in the same channel.”

“There are plenty of more tweaks and adjustments that broadcasters and consumers can add if they want to,” said Pizzi, observing that with the hybrid nature of 3.0, broadcasters would be in a class by themselves.

“They [will be] the only ones who can do both over-the-air and Internet broadcasting,” he said.

Pizzi admitted that implementation of ATSC 3.0 would not exactly be child’s play for a number of reasons, including lack of backwardly compatibility with 1.0, and especially, the absence of a “loaner” channel for phasing in the new service as had been done in the analog-to digital TV transition.

“It will require extensive broadcaster collaboration,” he said. “It’s going to be different in each market.”

Pizzi also noted that the current lack of 3.0-capable television receivers will have to be addressed.

[Read: ATSC 3.0: The Time To Deploy Is Now]

“We assume that new TVs starting to come out [around] 2020 and beyond will be dual system—1.0 and 3.0” he said. “This is just voluntary. There’s no mandate that they will be that way. It’s to the television manufacturers’ advantage to do this. The folks who make the TVs—most of them—have all been involved in developing the standard and they each have, we think, a good bit of intellectual property in the system. So it behooves them [to equip the sets with 3.0 capability].

“We don’t think that lack of a mandate is going to be a problem in terms of having receivers on the market soon,” he said.

A VISIT FROM THE COMMISSION

The summit’s program included a special appearance by FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly who noted that the commission was “very positive” about the DTV standard and that it has been trying to speed the deployment as much as possible; however, the successful adoption of ATSC 3.0 also depended on other factors.

“The commission set the stage for deployment of the new standard through a Report and Order and Further Notice in November,” said O’Rielly. “At the time I made clear that the success or failure of a new technology is dependent on two things. First, it requires significant interest by broadcasters willing to make a bet on the future of television and the capabilities this standard may allow. Second, it will require great interest by consumers to adapt and adopt new features and functions that may soon be available.

“Both of these are achievable, but not without tremendous effort,” he said.

O’Rielly acknowledged that while broadcasters had their plates full with the repack and other issues, their rollout of ATSC 3.0 couldn’t be relegated to the “I’ll get around to it someday” category.

“Unfortunately, television broadcasters are under enormous pressures right now,” he said. “The hi-tech companies, who broadcasters compete with daily for advertising and consumer attention are not going to stop and wait for ATSC 3.0 to be fully deployed. They are going to continue to eat market and advertising share.

“So, time is not necessarily a luxury you all have,” O’Rielly continued. “If you are a broadcaster sitting on the fence on whether to implement ATSC 3.0, you should be worried that the fence may no longer exist if you take too long to decide.”

COUNTERING WIRELESS BROADBAND

ATSC 3.0—with its greatly enhanced capabilities over those of present-day ATSC 1.0—is viewed by some as a means for shifting consumers away from streaming of content via wireless broadband to a one-to-many over-the-air delivery paradigm. This surfaced in several presentations, including Jerald Fritz’s “Building New Revenue with Next-Gen TV and SFN Deployment.”

“[With ATSC 3.0], you are no longer in the entertainment video business; you are now in the data business,” said Fritz, explaining that with the feature set provided by the new transmission standard, consumers will have a way to bypass congested and poorly performing cellphone networks when viewing live events, such as a football game, while at the sports venue.

Fritz, executive vice president for strategic and legal affairs for ONE Media, also praised the selection of the OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplex) modulation used in 3.0 as an enabler in this respect.

“[Another] major advantage that ATSC 3.0 brings, among many, is the movement to a different modulation scheme—from 8-VSB to OFDM. This means that there’s no multipath distortion, there’s no ghosting, there’s no fading. That means that we finally have the ability after 20 years to have mobile television. All those millennials are watching television on their mobile devices, streaming and paying AT&T and Verizon.

“We abandoned mobile television to the phone company because we didn’t adopt OFDM 20 years ago,” Fritz said.

[Read: ATSC Meeting Explores 3.0 Deployments]

Regarding the availability of a return channel with ATSC 3.0, Fritz remarked “If…there’s a return channel for broadcasters, you have to ask yourself ‘what is it that broadcasters can’t do that the telephone companies can do now that we have a return channel?’”

Other summit presentations included a report by the NAB’s Lynn Claudy on field testing of ATSC 3.0 performed at the Cleveland transmission testing facility, a presentation by AWARN’s Fiona James on the potential of ATSC 3.0 to enhance emergency warning information, a look at the Phoenix test market and the need for cooperation among broadcasters in rolling out 3.0 from Scripps Media’s Ray Thurber, and a panel discussion on considerations and planning in connection with ATSC 3.0 adoption, and another on the monetization opportunities possible with ATSC 3.0’s personalized advertising and viewership data attributes.

Summit activities included a Wednesday evening reception at the Early Television Museum, located in nearby Hilliard, Ohio. There attendees viewed and received demonstrations of numerous television-related artifacts that traced the technical history of the television from its “mechanical” 30-line resolution roots into the electronic and color eras.

Museum founder Steve McVoy was on hand to greet the delegation, and observed that at more than 90 persons, the group was largest ever to tour museum since its inception in 2001.

“It went better than I had expected for a group this large,” said McVoy. “And I’m glad to have hosted a crowd like this with such an appreciation of television’s long history.”

SUMMING IT ALL UP

Asked about how the Midwest Summit came into being, Dave Arland responded that while midwestern television broadcasters were aware of the introduction of the ATSC 3.0 standard, it was felt that it was necessary to provide some in-depth information about 3.0 and the advantages that it offers television station operators.

“While many of our midwestern stations have heard from their corporate engineering teams about the emerging next-gen TV standard, we wanted to offer a detailed overview of what’s in the actual standard and how the first implementations are being put together,” said Arland. “And we knew that our general managers would be interested in the new revenue potential made possible by IP capability. It will be interesting to revisit the landscape in a year or two to see how the new ATSC 3.0 standard is being harnessed to strengthen the business of broadcasting and delivery of digital information.”

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

THAMES DITTON, ENGLAND—Gearhouse is rolling out its new Columbus 4K/UHD-ready production truck with Imagine Communications contributing to the truck’s buildout courtesy of the IP3 router. Part of Columbus’ core infrastructure, the IP3 provides multi-format signal distribution capabilities, including support for HD, 3G and 4K/UHD, as well as makes the truck IP ready for a possible future transition.

One of the key responsibilities for the IP3 28RU router that is installed in the Gearhouse truck is to support the 24 4K monitors that make up the truck’s monitor wall. The monitors can be configured as quad splits or single-input 4K monitors.

The Platinum IP3 has the ability to store and retrieve a variety of configurations, allowing for customers to change between a range of settings. The router also supports audio multiplexing and de-multiplexing, as well as discrete AES or MADI signals. Scalability and integrated multiviewers are also available. Designed to work in a hybrid SDI-IP environment, IP3 offers transparent operations across the two signal formats and seamless and synchronous switching between SDI and IP domains.

The IP3 can be upgraded with IP input and output modules that support industry standards for the transport of video and audio over IP networks. The IP3 control layer also supports IP networks based on commercial off-the-shelf Ethernet switches and unified control and management experience.

The Gearhouse Columbus production truck is now available for productions.

LOS ANGELES—As the broadcast industry continues its march toward 4K, Gearhouse Broadcast has introduced a new mobile production truck it believes will benefit 4K broadcasts for the sports and live entertainment broadcasts. The Columbus mobile production truck is reported to be the first U.S.-based unit to feature a full 4K monitor wall, addressing what Gearhouse’s Managing Director Marc Genin called a “market demand.”

Columbus main control room

The Columbus is equipped with 24 Boland 4K monitors in the main control room monitor wall, which can be used as either quad splits or single input 4K monitors from the main router. While Gearhouse previously had hybrid trucks that had 4K capability, the process would often lead to a brief delay. “Particularly for entertainment, where there is a lot of focus on camera and less so on replay, we now have a system that has no delay whatsoever in the monitor wall,” said Genin.

It isn’t just the 4K monitors that Gearhouse is touting as a revolutionary aspect of the Columbus truck, the company has also created the truck with “one button” hydraulic deployment and integrated RF, including a 50-foot mast. The new hydraulic deployment feature allows the Columbus to go from a 53-foot semi-truck to a 60x14-foot mobile unit in what Genin estimates to be 30 minutes faster than traditional trucks. The telescopic mast that goes up on the back of the truck can be used for receiving wireless communication and microwave signals. Genin also said that the truck comes with a B control room to house secondary units, like a unilateral broadcaster, inside the truck rather than some place separate.

This is all part of what Genin described as the mobile truck’s technological evolution that was reached with a collaborative effort from professionals across the broadcast industry.

“This has been built with the full participation of the production community and the freelancers out there,” Genin stated. “There’s nothing worse than saying we thought you wanted this and here it is and you’ve got to use it because guess what, people won’t do that. You need to embrace them and it’s been built with those people in mind and with their full cooperation.”

However, the Columbus truck was also built in a way not to overload them. Genin points out that the truck features technology that allows customers to recall production workflows that they are used to. This includes the inclusion of popular equipment like Sony HDC-4300 4K/HD cameras, a Grass Valley Karrera K-Frame S-series switcher, 12-channel EVS ChannelMAX live production servers, an Imagine Communications Platinum IP3 router supported by Lawo VSM control and monitoring platform, a Lawo mc2 56MK11 HD (64 fader) audio mixer, an RTS Adam matrix intercom, and a Clear-Com Eclipse Delta frame running FreeSpeak II.

“We’ve designed it in a certain way so that on the surface everyone is very happy with what it does, underneath it’s extremely powerful” said Genin.

A test run of the Columbus was previously done in Los Angeles back in February, and there are already some preliminary agreements for future deployments Gearhouse is expected to announce in the coming months. But before that, Gearhouse will showcase the Columbus mobile unit at the 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas. Gearhouse will be located at booth OE836 between the Central and South halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

For more information, visit Gearhouse’s Columbus website.