I’ve competed against him. I’ve worked for him. I’ve crossed paths with him at numerous industry events, and I’ve even interviewed him a time or two. Now it is time to say goodbye to him as he retires from ATSC as its Vice President of Standards Development after 25 years with the organization.

Of course, I’m referring to Jerry Whitaker, one of the true gentlemen of the industry. With an affable temperament and love for radio and television engineering, he has conquered many career mountains over the years.

Going to work full-time for KCRA radio in Sacramento, Calif., at the age of 19, Whitaker worked as a morning news editor and later as a producer. “But my real interest was in engineering,” he said, so Whitaker got his FCC First Class License and found a job as an engineer at an AM station in Eureka, Calif., market 183, in the late 1970s.

“I loved radio engineering. It was fun. I would have done it for free. Well, come to think of it, it was almost free,” he mused. Shortly after joining the station, he recalled driving home from dinner and the station intermittently going off and on air.

“We had a Gates BC5H transmitter,” he said. “I had seen meter readings on the IPA, intermediate power amplifier, for the 5H, which had been varying over time. But I didn’t have enough history with the machine to know if it was significant or not.

“So, I pull out the exciter and looked at it. Maybe it’s the output transistor. I thought 'that’s not a very good diagnosis.' But I looked around to see what I could find, and there’s this 25uF, 50V electrolytic capacitor with goo on the one side. And I thought, I know what that is, and replaced the capacitor, put it back together, pushed on and was a hero. And the rest is history as they say.”

By 1983, Whitaker joined Broadcast Engineering as the magazine’s radio editor. Eventually, he became editorial director of BE and was then promoted to associate publisher.

One of his favorite magazine memories occurred at the Fall SMPTE Conference in Los Angeles when, as the newly minted radio editor, he visited Solid State Logic’s booth with the magazine publisher.

“We sat down at his SSL board with [the late] Doug Dickey,” he recalled. “It was eight-feet long—just enormous. And I’m used to a radio board, which if it had 10 channels was a lot. He’s telling me about this, and here’s the send, and here’s the return. And I’m thinking, 'what the heck is this?' But I managed to bluff my way through and say: ‘Mm-hmm, I see.’”

But if you do something long enough, you learn along the way, especially if you write articles read by broadcast engineers. That’s doubly so if you’re writing and editing technical tomes, which Whitaker has done in spades.

Over his career, he has written or edited some 50 books and counts the 2,500-page “The Electronics Handbook,” published by CRC Press in 1996, as his most important work.

In the year 2000, he joined ATSC as Technical Director, a title which the organization changed a few years later to Vice President of Standards Development. In that role he has helped shepherd standards development, including the industry’s most significant effort since A/53 (ATSC 1.0) was published in 1995, namely the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards.

“When I joined the staff in 2000, I knew a lot about broadcasting, at least I thought I did, but I didn’t know about standards development. It’s a specialized thing,” he said. “I found that the people I worked with were very willing to explain the process, explain the details that I didn’t understand and were forgiving if I asked dumb questions.”

During his early days at ATSC, Whitaker found standards meetings to be a bit intimidating. “I’d walk into a room and look around the table, and there was [the late] Joe Flaherty [CBS] and there was Renville McMann [CBS], and there was Tom Hankinson [ABC]. It was like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

But with time, Whitaker grew comfortable at those meetings. “At a certain point, you’d be sitting in meetings and think, 'I’m going to ask this question, and then no, that’s probably a dumb question.' Then somebody else asks it, and the speaker says, ‘That’s a good question.’ People were willing to sit down and explain why we wanted to do things in certain ways.”

As he prepares to depart at the end of August, the industry awaits what the FCC will decide to do about sunsetting ATSC 1.0 to make way for 3.0. Whitaker was quick to point out that he does not get involved with the regulatory side of broadcast standards.

Still, sitting in the seat he has occupied for a quarter century, Whitaker seemed to be the perfect person to ask about how the industry and standards body made the decision to develop a non-backward compatible TV transmission standard—one of the biggest hurdles the industry faces in a 1.0 sunset.

ATSC put out a public call seeking input what the new broadcast standard should be, he said. “People presented their ideas on what was possible today [at the that time] and what was possible tomorrow. That detailed report led to ATSC 3.0.

“We realized clearly that if we’re going to develop a new television system, it needs to offer benefits that the current system simply cannot and so it needs to be a pull. Consumers need to want to have it. That’s what we set out to develop.”

What are his plans post ATSC? “Well, I have hobbies as you can see,” Whitaker said during our Zoom interview as he sat amidst the vintage radio gear he has restored.

“When I was in Eureka, I rebuilt the AM station and put the FM, KPDJ-FM, on the air, Class C, from a construction permit. Thanks to eBay and a lot of repair work, I’ve collected pretty much everything we had there down to the automation system and the carousel cart machines and all of that fun stuff.

“So, I’ll keep up with that and keep trying to come up with answers to the question I get from my family members, which is: ‘Why dad? Why would you do this?’”

As part of its mandate, the Advanced Television Systems Committee—the U.S. organization tasked with developing advanced broadcast TV standards—promotes ATSC 3.0 as a global standard. Promoted in the U.S. as “NextGen TV,” 3.0 has been adopted by S. Korea, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and is also being tested in India and Canada. In the U.S., approximately 76% of U.S. households are within reach of a 3.0 signal.

One year ago this month, Brazil announced that it was adopting the “physical layer” portion of the standard for its “TV 3.0” advanced TV standard (the physical layer defines how data is transmitted over a 3.0 signal).

The decision to adopt a key part of the 3.0 standard is expected to have a significant impact on global adoption of the standard, as Brazil is not only one of the world’s most populous countries with the largest economy in Latin America, it also has a comparably larger portion of consumers who view TV over the air than in other countries that have adopted 3.0.

The ATSC’s close ties with Brazil was brought into sharper focus recently with the announcement that Luiz Fausto, a former tech executive with Globo TV, Brazil’s largest TV network, will be the new vice president of standards development for the ATSC. Fausto, who was most recently Globo’s technology regulatory specialist, was also technical module chairman of the Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital (SBTVD) Forum, which made the final recommendation to the Brazilian Ministry of Communications that resulted in the adoption of 3.0. Fausto is succeeding Jerry Whitaker, who served in the position for 25 years and is stepping down in August.

Fausto will oversee standards development processes, guide industry adoption and foster relationships with global stakeholders, the ATSC said in its announcement earlier this month.

TV Tech recently spoke with Fausto and ATSC President Madeleine Noland about his new duties. Here is an edited transcript:

TV Tech: Congratulations on your new position, why did you apply?
Luiz Fausto: That's a good question. Well, maybe the best point to consider is that ATSC has a great potential for reaching many countries. I was previously working with the SBTVD Forum, which standardized digital TV for Brazil and for Brazil only. But that doesn't prevent other countries from adopting the same standards, and the SBTVD Forum promotes that.

But the Forum does not have its own representative of other regions or other countries—it's basically focused on Brazil. As we got to know the ATSC 3.0 candidate standard as the most flexible and powerful set of technologies, I personally believe it has the potential to reach many other countries and territories—as it did with Brazil—because the way the system was conceived and designed is an extensible way; it's designed to evolve over time and to accommodate future evolutions. It’s such a flexible toolbox that we can make it fit with the different requirements that different countries may have for the future of digital terrestrial television. So that's what's most exciting about joining ATSC, the opportunity of bringing this evolution to countries other than Brazil.

TVT: You have some big shoes to fill. How will you be able to continue the excellent work done by your predecessor?
LF: I think ATSC has done a very good job in designing a very powerful and very flexible system, and also very efficient in terms of spectrum usage and energy usage, and these things are really important these days.

But the current issue I see with ATSC 3.0 is that many countries consider this to be a standard for the United States and not, for example, a ‘global standard.’ It’s a pity that digital television didn't evolve in such a way that it converged worldwide to a single framework of systems.

So we have different families of systems around the world, but I do believe ATSC has a lot of potential because of the way it was designed. Of course, the system will continue to evolve over time, but I’d like to make this system and its characteristics and features known to different countries, and also to listen to them and understand what are their requirements, so that we can use the flexibility of 3.0 to provide, for example, a tailored solution for them.

TVT: Madeleine, how impressed were you with Luiz? And what does bringing him onboard say about the ATSC’s efforts to promote 3.0 as a global standard?
Madeleine Noland: Luiz was the most qualified candidate, and he has a terrific enthusiasm for what ATSC is. He has a great understanding of how standards development is done and how the international standards development community operates. He's already well known on the international stage, so we found in Luiz the strongest candidate among, quite frankly, a lot of really, really, really good candidates, it was not an easy choice.

The fact that Luiz is coming out of Brazil certainly does make a strategic statement. And it's a testament to the entire hiring team that we would look at candidates who are not from the United States. It wasn’t a strategic move to specifically look for someone outside of the United States, but I think that it's an indication of the way ATSC sees itself, that we would entertain candidates from outside of the United States. I think there might have been a time in the organization when they would not have, but Luiz is our guy.

TVT: Luiz, what would you say is your top priority over the next 12-18 months?
LF: I still have a lot to learn but I'll be lucky enough to work in parallel with Jerry for a month while he's still full time at the ATSC. I have to learn about the inner processes and I hope that I can add to that with some international experience and how to approach the international standardization community and potential adopting countries over time.

TVT: You were heavily involved in evaluating ATSC, 3.0 for Brazil’s TV 3.0. What was it about the evaluation process that made you interested in seeking out this new position?
LF: Yes, it was a long process that is still ongoing in a sense; not the technology selection, but now the process of publishing the standards and the regulations. But it was a process that we started formally in 2020 and Brazil decided to open an international call for proposals. And this call for proposals was designed in such a way that we would receive proposals for our candidate technologies for each of the system components.

So we designed an architecture of the system and the set of requirements for each component; then we would evaluate candidate technology, more or less separately for each component. We were aware that this strategy would potentially result in a system that would be a mix and match of different systems

But we also needed to make sure that these components worked together as a system and at that stage we didn’t expect that one particular system would be dominant over the majority of components but somehow it ended up happening with ATSC.

Of course, we had the opportunity to because the original 3.0 standard is about eight years old but has kept evolving over time. For example, when it was designed for the United States and South Korea, the best video codec available at the time was HEVC and nowadays the best codec available is VVC.

But as I said, we could have ended up having a system so blended with a mixture of different systems that it could not be easily identifiable as a variety of one system, it could be a different thing with a different set with an independent set of technologies. But it was a good surprise that most components were selected from the original ATSC proposal, and it made our lives easier in the sense of making sure the components work together as a system, because we had only to replace a few things.

It was not only the technical standards that we were evaluating; we were doing real laboratory and field tests with the candidate technologies and ATSC proved to have excellent performance and it ended being selected for the majority of the components in such a way that the SBTVD Forum is looking to establish a stronger partnership with ATSC to keep the evolution of this system harmonized from now on with ATSC.

We see TV 3.0 as a variant of ATSC 3.0 that we want to harmonize with the global ATSC 3.0 standard. And that's how I see ATSC 3.0 going forward: not as a closed box where you would need to choose everything or nothing, but flexible enough to accommodate small variations within the same framework and still be seen as a single family of standards.

If you look for example, at DVB T and DVB T2, there are many variants of DVB-T and DVB T2 used in different countries, in Europe and so on.

TVT: Madeleine, how has the role of VP of Standards Development for ATSC evolved over time?
MN: The role has always required a certain range of talents. And by that, I mean it's not so easy to find people like Jerry and Luiz who, on the one hand, can prepare documents and check the formatting and dot the i's and cross the t's, and on the other hand, can think strategically and get in front of audiences and promote the standard and think “big picture.”

It's really hard to find a person who's interested and capable of fulfilling that range of tasks. And we've been very lucky with Jerry, and we're very lucky again with Luiz, to find someone who can do those things. So that aspect of the role has not changed, but the technology that lives underneath it has. The processes by which standards are being developed is changing. What is the role of AI in standards development going forward? That's something that's on ATSC's strategic roadmap right now.

Are we going to think about this as a very flexible standard where you've got a toolbox of things; the DVB project has been doing that for many, many years, but ATSC, not so much. I think that the job has definitely changed, but I think the underlying need for a person who can know the intricate details of a Microsoft Word document all the way to understanding the big picture remains the same. And we were lucky to have Jerry for some 25 plus years, and I can just see Luiz picking up where Jerry left off.

TVT: Madeleine, what will be in the stack of papers you hand to Luiz on his first day on the job? What big projects do you expect him to be working on first?
MN: We have quite a number of active groups, and I would say that there are a few projects that stand out over the others. There's a couple of aspects to this—what is actually being worked on in the groups and then the other question is, how do the groups get work done?

So in terms of what the groups are actually doing, I think that there are some really interesting projects, including the “Broadcast to Everything Project" (B2X) which is just now taking on the core network effort, is a really interesting project. It's working to align the ATSC 3.0 physical layer more closely with the 5G physical layer, as well as taking in what we've done with the broadcast core network so far, and looking at alignment with the 5G core and a potential future 6G core. It's right on the cutting edge of technology, of what's being developed for broadcast.

We also have development going on where people want to put all kinds of stuff over ATSC 3.0, so now, yeah, you can carry linear video services, and you can carry radio services, and you can carry emergency services for public or private audiences, and datacasting services. Now we have a project where they want to carry Digital Radio Mondiale (a set of digital audio broadcasting technologies designed to work over the bands currently used for analog radio broadcasting) services over 3.0 and they're working on that.

So what the groups are working on is very exciting and interesting, but I also think that where Luiz is going to be focusing his time is how the groups get work done. Can we use AI to find inconsistencies in a standard or areas where clarification is needed? Can we use AI to make sure that all the acronyms are defined the same across all the standards? We use AI to help implementers understand the standards more quickly and more accurately. Can we use AI to help our group chairs manage the work of the group? These are other areas where I think we need to develop.

In addition, a lot of the implementation of these kinds of digital terrestrial standards is software based, whereas in previous times, it was very much hardware based, and that also impacts how we might develop standards.

LF: Yeah, I think Madeleine made some excellent points and just to bring one practical example that is already to some extent being used in ATSC and also now in our Brazilian TV tutorial, is that instead of defining everything you want in the standard in—let's say natural language—we say that the one piece of the system should be in compliance with the format which is in the front, which is defined in a file, and the file itself. So it's kind of a normative part of the standard.

So with natural language, sometimes you can have ambiguities and differences in interpretation and so on, but when you go to the file, the file is clear in the sense that there is no possibility of understanding it differently, the syntax, the semantics and so on. And as Madeleine said, as we're moving more towards software instead of hardware, our standards will be more and more filled with files as references instead of text, and that would make the implementer's life easier, because they have to check if their implementation is in compliance with the standard, which means at the end of the day, less problems with interoperability.

That is an issue that happens when you introduce new technologies and you have different implementations and they are not perfectly interoperable, and then some things don't work as they should. But as we can make the standards more precise and clear, these ambiguities will be reduced. That's a good thing, because, of course, the complexity of the standards is getting higher and so the chances for human errors are getting higher. And if we can get the standards more precisely defined, we can get these human errors low again.

In some parts of the world, there is this sense that maybe digital terrestrial television will not continue to evolve, and maybe it will be replaced by the internet or something else. But so far we haven’t seen anything capable of having an efficient delivery for hundreds of millions of people or billions of people to watch the same content live at the same time.

So there are lots of opportunities where the broadcast system is, let's say, a tool to transport bits in a broadcast or fill gaps in the current infrastructure for the internet, which is limited by its unicast nature. So broadcast can fill those gaps with this capability of delivering simultaneously the same bits to lots of devices. And there are lots of use cases for that now, and there will be lots more in the future. So for me, there's nothing better for this particular use case—to deliver the same data to a huge audience at the same time—and for many other use cases, it's proven to be very attractive as well.

WASHINGTON—The Advanced Television Systems Committee named Luiz Fausto vice president of standards development, succeeding ATSC vice president Jerry Whitaker, who will retire at the end of August.

Fausto has held various engineering positions at Globo TV Network in Brazil since 2006. Most recently, he was Globo’s technology regulatory specialist and recently concluded his tenure as technical module chairman of the Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital (SBTVD) Forum by delivering the TV 3.0 (DTV+) project technology selection recommendation to the Brazilian Ministry of Communications. Fausto will oversee standards development processes, guide industry adoption and foster relationships with global stakeholders, ATSC said.

“My strategic vision for ATSC standards development is to build on its strength as a comprehensive, flexible toolbox,” Fausto said. “I believe ATSC standards should evolve within a unified framework that empowers broadcasters worldwide, making it easy to mix, match and extend standardized technologies,” said Fausto.

“By fostering strong international relationships, staying ahead of broadcast technology trends and ensuring that the standards remain responsive and relevant, I aim to help ATSC further increase the adoption our standards in the Americas and worldwide,” he said.

In his new role, Fausto will lead the ATSC’s technical and strategic efforts in evolving and deploying its standards internationally. He will develop and oversee processes for harmonizing standards among countries adopting ATSC and participate in ATSC’s overall strategic development with a focus on the technical roadmap.

He will work with ATSC technology, specialists and ad hoc groups as well as manage ATSC’s participation in international organization, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), India’s Telecommunications Standards Development Society (TSDSI) and the Organization of American States’ InterAmerican Telecommunication Commission (CITEL).

“Luiz Fausto brings to ATSC deep technical expertise, strategic vision, and leadership in the international broadcasting and standards communities,” ATSC President Madeleine Noland said.

Whitaker, who joined ATSC in 1990, is a fellow in both the Society of Broadcast Engineers and a the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He has also been an SBE board member and vice president. He is the author and/or editor of more than 30 books on technical topics.

“Jerry Whitaker’s incredible career over the past 25 years has spanned the ATSC 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 standards, the launch of HDTV, the U.S. digital transition, the pioneering development of next-generation standards and ATSC’s international expansion,” said Noland. “ATSC stakeholders around the world join me in thanking Jerry for his significant contributions, and we wish him all the best for this next chapter.”

More information is available on the ATSC website.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—I am pleased to report that we are making excellent progress toward completion of ATSC 3.0—the next generation digital television system. This has been a complicated effort because ATSC 3.0 is not just one standard; rather, it is a suite of about 20 separate standards. Each standard moves through the process at its own pace.

The key focus at this time is to finish work on the critical elements of ATSC 3.0 so that implementations of the complete system can begin. The first widespread implementation of ATSC 3.0 will be in Korea, where the stated goal is to have their new system up and running in time for coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

FUTURE PROOFING

There are many steps from an idea (User Requirements) to a finished document (Standard). In any technical project, it takes time to get all of the details right. It is particularly important to get a standard right, since it may be used for years or even decades. At the risk of going into too much “inside baseball” detail, there are four major document classifications within ATSC, namely: Working Draft, Candidate Standard, Proposed Standard, and Standard. Each step forward requires agreement of the appropriate group of experts, and with each step the document moves closer to its final state.

Our long-established goal has been to finalize most of the ATSC 3.0 documents by the end of 2016, with completion of all in the first or second quarter of 2017. Despite the challenges, I am pleased to report that we remain largely on schedule.

For a variety of reasons, ATSC is working to complete the ATSC 3.0 suite of documents before the annual NAB Show in April, which is a good “demarcation point” in that it tends to focus efforts and activities within the broadcast and related industries. We expect to be able to head off to Las Vegas in April with ATSC 3.0 essentially completed. Work will probably continue on certain elements, but the fundamental technologies will be documented and published so that implementations can begin.

In any complex project, it is difficult to make generalizations. Having said that, if I were to divide up the last six years of intense work on ATSC 3.0, it would be broadly split into three distinct periods:

·2010 – 2012—Planning: Initial work focused on developing User Requirements and Use Cases for what the next-generation DTV system should be able to provide for consumers.

·2012 – 2014—Technology: Dozens of new technologies were proposed for inclusion in ATSC 3.0. Following established procedures, those technologies were discussed, evaluated, and selected.

·2014 – 2016—Document Development: With the fundamental architectures of ATSC 3.0 agreed upon, work began in earnest to document the technologies and to make sure all of the elements would work together to yield a flexible, efficient, and reliable service.

Looking forward, 2017 and beyond will be the period of implementation. For the U.S., there are many moving parts—some of which have uncertain timelines (e.g., regulatory issues). Still, the question is “when” not “if.”

KEEPING SCORE

With 20 or so documents comprising ATSC 3.0, it is difficult to remember where things stand without a scorecard. For that, check out Table 1; the rows highlighted in the table are finished standards currently published on the ATSC web site.

Table 1: ATSC 3.0 Document Status as of Oct. 18, 2016.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

In addition to the documents shown in Table 1, there are several others in development (Working Drafts) that are expected to move forward soon, including:

·A/300, “ATSC 3.0 System”

·A/323, “Physical Layer Uplink/Downlink”

·A/337, “Application Signaling”

·A/344, “Application Runtime Environment”

Right now, one Recommended Practice has advanced to Proposed RP (A/325 as shown in Table 1). Additional RPs are expected to be written to help the TV industry implement ATSC 3.0.

Looking beyond next year when ATSC 3.0 has been “completed,” it is certain that work will continue to expand, improve, and clarify certain elements of certain standards within the ATSC 3.0 suite. This is nothing new for ATSC (or any other standards development organization). As an obvious case in point, routine work on certain elements of ATSC 1.0 (the current DTV system) continued at a steady pace for more than 10 years after the initial standard was approved. This is the natural evolution of a complex system.

Work in ATSC is open to all with a direct and material interest in the work. All ATSC Standards, Candidate Standards, and Recommended Practices can be downloaded at no charge from the ATSC Web site at http://www.atsc.org.

Jerry Whitaker is Vice President for Standards Development at the Advanced Television Systems Committee. He can be reached viaTV Technology.

For more on this subject, visit our ATSC 3.0silo.

WASHINGTON—I am pleased to report considerable progress on moving key elements of ATSC 3.0 forward toward standardization. In the previous installment of this blog, I reported that documents describing the core of the ATSC 3.0 physical layer had advanced to the first approval level, which we call Candidate Standard (CS). As of this week, four more documents have been elevated to CS and published on the ATSC web site.

ATSC 3.0 will be documented in a suite of standards. The top level “parent” standard (A/300) will describe the overall system and state what must be included to create an ATSC 3.0 system. A/300 will point to a group of about 20 standards for all of the core building blocks that make up ATSC 3.0.

All ATSC standards have A/xx document numbers. For ATSC 3.0, we are beginning with A/300 and moving up from there.

Progress on Multiple Layers

The physical layer is the foundation of any wireless communications system. The two ATSC 3.0 physical layer CS documents are:

• A/321, “System Discovery and Signaling”
• A/322, “Physical Layer Standard”

Additional physical layer documents are under development.

The ATSC 3.0 physical layer allows television broadcasters to choose from a wide variety of transmission parameters so that each station can tailor its signal to best serve its local market by providing the combination of services and coverage area best suited for the market and its terrain. The system will allow high-capacity, low-robustness modes and also lower-capacity, high-robustness modes in the same transmission. This flexibility means that broadcasters can choose to offer both 4K Ultra HD broadcasts running side-by-side with robust mobile broadcasts to handheld devices. Transmission technologies can be selected for various “use cases” such as Single Frequency Networks, Multiple Input/Multiple Output channel operation, channel bonding and more; well beyond a single transmitting tower.

The physical layer for ATSC 3.0 starts every physical layer frame with a bootstrap signal that provides synchronization and signals basic information about the technology used in the physical layer itself—major and minor version, which enables graceful evolution of the physical layer itself in the future—as well as an Emergency Alert Service wake up flags, system bandwidth, time to the next frame of a similar service, and the sampling rate of the current frame. This bootstrap is extremely robust, able to be received in very challenging radio frequency conditions. The bootstrap is followed by a preamble, which carries the information needed to define the payload framing, including the information required for the receiver to acquire the data frame. The remainder of the physical layer structure is the data payload itself.

By taking advantage of recent advances in modulation, coding, error correction, constellations, and multiplexing, the ATSC 3.0 physical layer offers a wide range of operating performance points in the BICM (bit interleaver, coding, and modulation) chain that is very close to the Shannon Limit, the theoretical limit for the amount of information that can be carried in a noisy channel. The ATSC 3.0 physical layer offers broadcasters the capability to operate in a robust/lower bit-rate fashion for mobile and deep indoor services and/or a less robust/higher bit-rate fashion for services to large fixed screens in the home. If desired, the broadcaster can also operate with a simultaneous mixture of types of services using either Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) or Layer Division Multiplexing (LDM), or both. This allows broadcasters to construct their broadcast emission to support a variety of different business models and to experiment with new ones.

Work continues on the other parts of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards as well. Four additional CS documents have just been approved and published; they are:

• A/332, “Service Announcement,” which describes announcement of services in an ATSC 3.0 broadcast.
• A/334, “Audio Watermark Emission,” which specifies the audio watermark system for ATSC 3.0.
• A/335, “Video Watermark Emission,” which specifies the emission format for video watermarks for use within ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.
• A/338, “Companion Device,” which specifies the communication protocol between an ATSC primary device—the primary receiver used to present the primary content—and an ATSC companion device that communicates with the primary device to present related, supplementary content.

These four documents represent core elements of the Management and Protocols Layer in the ATSC 3.0 system.

It is expected that six more documents will be elevated to CS status or be at ballot before the end of the year.

It is important to understand the role of the CS stage in standards development because most, perhaps all, of the documents in the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards are expected to pass through the Candidate Standard phase on their way to completion.

A Candidate Standard is a document that has received significant review within a specialist group and is ready for review by a larger group of potential implementers. Advancement of a document to CS is an explicit call to those outside of the related specialist group for implementation and technical feedback. This is the phase at which the specialist group is responsible for formally acquiring that experience, or at least defining the expectations of implementation. It is expected that following the CS period, the document will continue along toward the standardization path, which involves, typically, two additional ballot stages.

Get Involved

ATSC 3.0 represents a significant step forward in capabilities for a broadcast television system. It provides a set of flexible capabilities for broadcasters that enable new services and new business cases. The concepts of flexibility, extensibility, and scalability are in the core of the system and will allow graceful evolution over a long period of time.

Work in ATSC is open to all with a direct and material interest in the work. If you are interested in participating in any of the ongoing work of the organization, please contact the author. All ATSC Standards, Candidate Standards, and Recommended Practices can be downloaded at no charge from the ATSC Web site at http://www.atsc.org.

Also see...

December 7, 2015
"10 More Technologies Move Toward ATSC 3.0 'Candidate Standard' Status" 
Ten more standards in the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards—including video encoding, Internet Protocol transport, electronic service guides and closed captioning—are moving toward “Candidate Standard” status this month, the Advanced Television Systems Committee announced today.

October 2, 2015
"All About ATSC 3.0 (Part 2 of Many)"

The Technology Group working to develop ATSC 3.0 (TG3) has just approved the core physical layer specification as a Candidate Standard.

August 17, 2015
“All About ATSC 3.0 (Part 1 of Many)”
Please believe me when I say that work on ATSC 3.0 is not some abstract science project. This is the real deal. 

WASHINGTON—The Technology Group working to develop ATSC 3.0 (TG3) has just approved the core physical layer specification as a Candidate Standard. This document is the result of thousands of hours of work by a number of the world’s leading RF experts. The 200-plus page document describes a flexible transmission system that will serve as the foundation of next-generation television broadcasting. The ATSC document number is A/322; document numbers are a favorite shorthand for standards development organizations. Work on the physical layer has been conducted in the Specialist Group on the Physical Layer, which is chaired by Luke Fay of Sony. Back in May, the System Discovery and Signaling Candidate Standard (A/321) was approved by TG3. A/321 is a core element of ATSC 3.0.

A/321 is available on the ATSC Website now. A/322 will be posted soon.

WHY ATSC IS IMPORTANT
In order to better understand the work that led up to this important milestone, I want to provide some background on the discussions that led to the current work on ATSC 3.0 and the approval of the latest specification. Last month I talked about the importance of standards work in general and the intense work now underway on ATSC 3.0. Timing of the work was also identified as an important consideration.

This time, I want to focus on what’s in it for broadcasters and viewers.

The goals of ATSC 3.0 are to improve the television viewing experience with higher audio and video quality, reception on both fixed and mobile devices, and more accessibility, personalization and interactivity. ATSC is also addressing changing consumer behavior and preferences, providing TV content on a wide variety of devices. ATSC is working to add value to the broadcasting service platform, extending its reach and adding new business models, all without the restriction of backward compatibility with the legacy system.

It is reasonable to ask why this is worth doing. The obvious answer is that technology marches on. The DTV Standard now known as ATSC 1.0 is 20 years old, and audience expectations are changing rapidly. There are many new competitors. Disruptive forces exist. Wise use of the spectrum is essential. Business opportunities exist for leveraging the power of over-the-air broadcasting and broadband online over-the-top services.

So, what’s in it for broadcasters?
· Maintaining and building their audience
· Putting content where the viewers are
· Benefiting from new technologies
· Quantitative and qualitative growth
· Developing new revenue streams

During planning for ATSC 3.0, members spent a considerable amount of time identifying “usage scenarios,” which include the following:
· Flexible use of the spectrum
· Robustness
· Mobile services
· Ultra HD capabilities
· Hybrid services
· Multi-view/multi-screen
· 3D video content
· Enhanced and immersive audio
· Advanced accessibility
· Advanced emergency alerting
· Personalization and interactivity
· Advanced advertising and monetization
· Common world standard

Serious planning for ATSC 3.0 began back in 2010, in a planning team tasked with looking at what a next-generation system might look like. Requirements were subsequently developed based on the usage scenarios. Formal standards development work began in 2012.

TECHNICAL FEEDBACK
From the early days of work on ATSC 3.0 to now, an amazing amount of work has been accomplished. Two specifications have already advanced to the first approval level, which we call “Candidate Standard.” As defined by ATSC, a Candidate Standard (CS) is a document that has received significant review within a specialist group and is ready for review by a larger group of potential implementers. Advancement of a document to CS is an explicit call to those outside of the related specialist group for implementation and technical feedback. This is the phase at which the specialist group is responsible for formally acquiring that experience, or at least defining the expectations of implementation.

When a document is elevated to CS, the expected duration for the implementation period is also determined. A CS may be revised during this period; in fact, it is typically revised to reflect broad review and implementation experienced. It is expected that following the CS period, the document will continue along toward the standardization path, which involves—typically—two additional ballot stages.

It is important to understand the role of the CS stage in standards development because most—perhaps all—of the documents in the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards are expected to pass through the Candidate Standard phase on their way to completion. At present, two documents have been elevated to CS status, A/321, “System Discovery and Signaling;” and A/322, “Physical Layer Standard.” These two documents define the core of the ATSC 3.0 physical layer. Many more documents are under development that define other parts of the ATSC 3.0 system. At the time of this writing, four more documents are ready for consideration as Candidate Standards.

To state the obvious, the work continues at a rapid pace.

Work in ATSC is open to all with a direct and material interest in the work. If you are interested in participating in any of the ongoing work of the organization, please contact the author. All ATSC standards and recommended practices can be downloaded at no charge from the ATSC Website.

Jerry Whitaker is Vice President for Standards Development at the Advanced Television Systems Committee. He supports the work of the various ATSC technology and specialist groups and assists in the development of ATSC Standards and related documents. He currently serves as Secretary of the Technology and Standards Group and Secretary of the Technology Group on Next Generation Broadcast Television, and is closely involved in work relating to educational programs. Mr. Whitaker is a Fellow the Society of Broadcast Engineers and a Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

See...
September 29, 2015
“Samsung, LG, Contributed Technology to ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard”
Samsung and LG are among the companies that contributed technologies to the broadcast transmission scheme elevated this morning to Candidate Standard status by the Advanced Television Systems Committee for ATSC 3.0.

September 29, 2015
“ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Elevated to Candidate Standard”
Work continues on the other parts of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards. They include Video and Audio Compression, Closed Captioning, Advanced Emergency Alerting, Security, Com panion Devices, Personalization, Applications & Interactivity, Watermarking and Fingerprinting, and Internet Protocol Delivery.

August 17, 2015
“All About ATSC 3.0 (Part 1 of Many)”
Please believe me when I say that work on ATSC 3.0 is not some abstract science project. This is the real deal.