The end of the decade is upon us and time to take a look at how the last 10 years impacted broadcasters. As usual, it’s a mixed bag of successes and a few failures, illustrating the rocky path for our industry as we transition from television as we knew it to a whole new paradigm.

In 2010, I acquired my first streaming box and talked about it in these pages. At the time, I referred to my second-generation Apple TV box as an “IPTV” box—a quaint reference a decade later. Back then, I would classify my opinion as “cautious optimism,” calling Apple TV’s biggest attraction its price, easy setup and user interface. I don’t think there’s any question about how the Apple TV box ushered in a revolution of OTT and streaming services that not only influenced how we watched but what we watched. The mobility of television—prompted by the influx of more powerful devices, faster connections and more efficient compression—was perhaps the biggest jump in television technology during the decade.

The desire for the “next big thing” however, led us down several precarious paths. After HDTV had taken hold in the last half of the previous decade, programmers and manufacturers needed a hook to increase interest and the bottom line. At that point, we hooked our star to 3D, which came and went in a flash. Even though the concept had been around for decades, we seemed to think that high-resolution displays and better production technology would spur new interest among consumers. But in the end, it was unrealistic expectations hampered by what has been 3D’s Achilles heel since its inception: the need to wear glasses, lack of content and the limited viewing angles.

3D managed to hang on at the movie theater for several more years but now is hardly anywhere to be seen (at least domestically). File 3DTV in the “what were we thinking” files and perhaps, next time, we won’t be so eager to glom onto “the next big thing” just because we were looking for it.

Another technology that never really got off the ground (literally) was mobile DTV (aka “ATSC 2.0). What started as an opportunity in the latter part of the last decade to take advantage of excess digital spectrum to broadcast signals to screens (even in a car going 75 MPH) flamed out quickly. The reasons for its demise, however provided a teachable moment for our industry: the lack of cooperation from a cellular industry that was itself just beginning to see profits from streaming video. Samsung, which has been involved in the development of ATSC standards, did offer up a few handsets with a mobile DTV chip and a few dongles were made available at retail, but the refusal of Apple and cellular providers to incorporate mobile DTV chipsets was the final nail in the coffin.

Although the development of the next version of ATSC 3.0 had already been planned during that time, the failure of mobile DTV was an important lesson to our industry as we reached outside of our business and beyond the traditional TV set to insert our presence into the increasingly mobile world. Although a lot of naysayers are skeptical because of its lack of backward compatibility, ATSC 3.0 (aka NEXTGEN TV) offers our industry the best hope of relevance in an IP-based world. Next year has been hailed as the “breakout year” for the fledgling standard and by next December, we may be able to better judge its success.

The threat of cellular to the broadcast industry made its biggest impact during the latter half of the decade when the FCC finally moved ahead with its promise of auctioning off broadcast spectrum—a battle broadcasters had been fighting since before the decade began, (“Broadcasters Ready to Fight,” was the headline on the Jan. 6, 2010 issue of TV Technology). This has forced our industry to adjust to fewer channels and spectrum availability, with the threat of additional auctions on the horizon. In adapting to this new world, however, we are using new standards and concepts such as single frequency networks to ensure signal reliability.

IP is what prompted the mobile screen revolution during the decade and it’s IP that may have the biggest impact on our production capacity in the coming decade. To say we as an industry are moving too slowly, though is to ignore the standards that are expected of us. Streamers use the term “broadcast quality” to characterize the Holy Grail of programming—low latency, high resolution and enhanced audio. Our industry established that standard many decades ago and although IP brings with it enormous flexibility, viewers look to us to provide the five 9s of reliability and quality. That won’t go away anytime soon, as evidenced by last month’s rocky rollout for Disney+.

To all our friends and colleagues, have a fantastic holiday season and we’ll see you in the next decade!

“Best of Show Up Close” is a series about nominees and winners in the annual Future Best of Show at NAB award program.

We spoke with Charles Chu, chief product officer with Brightcove, a Best of Show winner for the Brightcove Live platform.

TV Technology:How is the integration of Ooyala into Brightcove going after the acquisition earlier this year?

Charles Chu: The Brightcove team is hard at work integrating Ooyala’s OVP technology into the Brightcove platform to create one unified platform for all customers. At our recent event, PLAY, we were thrilled to meet and hear stories from customers that were previously of Ooyala. We have a migration plan in place and are working diligently with each customer to move them when the time fits their schedule. Brightcove was the leading OVP before, but adding in aspects of Ooyala’s OVP technology, we have solidified our position.

TVT:What is it about Brightcove Live that sets it apart from similar offerings?

CC: The award-winning Brightcove Live solution enables broadcasters, publishers, brands and enterprises to deliver and monetize live video at a low cost with the flexibility to scale with business needs. Brightcove Live is a broadcast-grade, cloud-based live-streaming solution with broad device reach and integrated monetization capabilities using server-side ad insertion (SSAI). Broadcasters, publishers and brands alike can originate live events using Brightcove’s globally-distributed architecture, and deliver a high-quality experience to viewers with minimal delay across multiple platforms and devices. What sets Brightcove apart from the rest is the launch of new features to meet the needs of our customers. This most recently includes:

• Secure Reliable Transport (SRT): Support for live stream ingest via the SRT protocol, enabling forward error correction and the robust low-latency delivery of live broadcasts over unpredictable and challenging network conditions.

• Transport Stream (TS) Input Interface: Allows broadcasters that are delivering live streams over the internet the flexibility to send a broadcast native MPEG2-TS stream to Brightcove Live without having to convert to digital RTMP format while eliminating the need for costly onsite encoders. By accepting MPEG2-TS, Brightcove Live can detect SCTE-35 ad markers, replacing the linear ads with digital ads across devices using SSAI.

• Real Time Media Protocol (RTMP) Output Interface: Allows users to expand audience reach by pushing streams to other RTMP entry points with the flexibility to turn them on and off during the event. This enables a simplified workflow with maximum stability and minimal risk to deliver live video to multiple locations.

• Live to Social: Brightcove Live events can now be streamed to Facebook simultaneously via the Brightcove Studio and will soon be available for YouTube. Live to Social enables users to grow and retain viewers by live streaming content to existing audiences in social communities.

TVT:What does it cost? Is it available?

CC: Brightcove works with a wide range of customers, our pricing is dependent on the scale of the event and support needed. Brightcove Live is always always evolving to incorporate the latest features and functionality our customers need. The recent enhancements are live and being deployed to customers of all sizes and segments around the world, with the latest features going live in Q1 of 2019.

TVT:What else should we know about Brightcove Live or Brightcove in general?

CC: Brightcove works with customers in more than 70 countries representing many different market segments including global media companies, regional broadcasters, publishers, brands and enterprises. Anticipating our customer's needs is key, and that is why Brightcove has a robust product roadmap related to our live offering and features, and functionality will continue to become available over the coming months. We continue to improve upon our award-winning solution to provide our customers with features that meet and exceed their needs. 

It has been a few months since my last RF Technology column and a lot has happened since then, including the NAB Show in Las Vegas and the FCC Phase 2 repack deadline. This month I’ll attempt to cover the highlights from these and some more interesting items I discovered along the way.

NAB SHOW

The hot topics for discussion among those interested in RF transmission at the NAB Show were the FCC’s incentive auction repack and ATSC 3.0. The main question about the FCC repack was when it would “go off the rails” after stations failed to meet deadlines and blocked other stations from changing channels.

The predominant opinion was that problems would arise later this year as the gap between the phases shortened. However, while I heard a number of horror stories from installers and manufacturers about stations not being ready, most of the station engineers I talked to felt they would make the upcoming deadlines, even if not with their final facilities.

At the Broadcasting Engineering and Information Technology Conference, I was on the “No More Broadcaster Silos: Lessons from the Repack Phases 1 and 2” panel with John Lyons (Durst), Nick Wymant (RFS) and Stephen Kolvek (Myat), moderated by Josh Gordon. We talked about manufacturers’ challenges in the repack along with tips for stations and I discussed issues with dependencies in the repack with a focus on the Phase 4 repack in the Northeast. FCC shows dependencies for some New York City stations from as far away as Ottawa! More on that later.

ATSC 3.0 was everywhere at the show. All manufacturers I saw selling transmitters in the United States were offering ATSC 3.0 options, more test equipment was available, and while assembling a working ATSC 3.0 facility isn’t simple, there were several demos of working systems including components from various vendors.

DS Broadcast was showing a complete “end-to-end” system that had everything needed to provide an ATSC A/324 STLTP stream to a transmitter and monitor the over-the-air result. ATSC A/324 enables connecting a source to multiple transmitters in a single frequency network. The standard has been widely adopted by transmitter manufacturers and an excellent example of its use was the SFN NAB set up with multiple transmitters from different vendors in the North Hall and LVCC lobby outside Central Hall.

Two other items caught my eye at the show. I described use of the Sixarms drone-based RF measurement system for doing antenna pattern measurements in my column “Verifying TV Facility Coverage” (February 2018). At the NAB Show, Sixarms showed another drone-based system, this one designed for field measurements. It simply goes up and comes down, providing an aerial equivalent of a 30-foot mast. It can take measurements from multiple stations, and is small enough to be easily deployed from a small SUV or even a rental car. This could be an ideal alternative—at significantly lower cost—to a large van with a pneumatic mast or to the simple field measurement system I described previously, although at many times the under-$300 cost of that setup.

There were several options for ATSC 3.0 monitoring at the show, including a notebook-based system from Triveni and the Airwavz Redzone ATSC receiver now available with Windows software that includes the ability to display video.

I had my Redzone receiver with me at the show, but the only software I found for download was an updated version of the API and some simple tools similar to what I previously reviewed. It looks like the Windows software is available if purchased as a complete kit with the Redzone receiver.

Various Triveni packages provide everything needed for a wide range of ATSC 3.0 measurements, but display of RF characteristics will depend on the capability of the dongle or receiver used with it. I was particularly interested in Triveni’s new StreamScope XM Verifier.

I’ve been a fan of Avateq’s monitoring receivers since they introduced their 8VSB receiver several years ago, which provided RF modulation measurements and monitoring/logging capability at a price low enough to install at every transmitter site. Now that transmitters are being deployed with ATSC 3.0 there are very few options for extensive ATSC 3.0 RF modulation measurements. Avateq was showing a range of RF measurement receivers, including the compact AVQ-200 off-air “Signal Inspector,” which seems ideal for fieldwork. The off-air instruments have the capability to display echoes in an ATSC 3 SFN and identify echoes by transmitter ID.

REPACK REVISITED

As I write this, the FCC April 12 Phase 2 deadline has come and gone and the Phase 3 deadline will have passed by the time you read this. The Phase 4 repack, which has an Aug. 2, 2019 deadline, will be one of the most complicated ones in the incentive auction repack as it involves densely packed stations from North Carolina to Maine and west into Ohio and Canada.

One of the challenges will be finding time to test antennas at full power before the deadline. Because this phase involves many stations swapping channels, sometimes in the same market, just firing up on the antenna for testing won’t work.

Stations will have to coordinate times to test with each other, most likely overnight. If the interference isn’t excessive, in between markets for example, both stations may want to agree to accept interference to avoid losing the audience in their core coverage area. If a station’s new channel is on the channel currently occupied by another station in the same market, and if that station can provide the testing station an ASI stream (everything matching what it would be transmitting from its own transmitter), its viewers will only see a momentary interruption as the transmitters are swapped.

Conversations I’ve had with FCC staff indicate that as long as new interference to any existing station is under 2%, no FCC approval or even coordination with impacted stations is required for testing or early transition within the test period, (although it is recommended).

However, if interference to any station exceeds 2% for testing or an early transition, then an engineering STA is required and the other station(s) must agree to accept the interference. If the station that would receive interference goes off the air during the testing, instead of staying on and accepting interference, no engineering STA is required. 

TOOLS FOR REPACK AND FIELD MEASUREMENTS

Keeping track of dependencies for testing post-repack facilities can get complicated, especially when dependencies of dependencies have to be considered. To make them easier to track, I’ve created a simple tool, TVDepTester, available at www.transmitter.com/tools.

For Windows 10 systems, download TVDepTester8.exe and all the .csv data files from the site and put them in the same folder. For any operating system that has Python installed, download TVDepTester8.py and the .csv files (again in the same directory) and run with Python. The “8” is the current version number and will be incremented as I fix bugs and enhance it so by the time you read this, that number may have changed. Run the program and type in the call letters in UPPER CASE and it will search for dependencies through multiple levels. Note that if the program closes without showing results it may be the station is sharing a channel. The FCC lists I’m using only include the host stations.

I’ve been working on making the field measurement program I wrote for the Hauppauge WinTV dualHD USB tuner easier to install and use. Linux is still required, but only the ready-to-use programs, “dvb-tools,” “dvbsnoop” and “w-scan” (for channel scanning) in the Ubuntu repositories are required.

In the www.transmitter.com/tools folder look for “Sample-Test-Script-(Los Angeles).sh” and “channels(Los Angeles sample).conf” for the program and channel listings I used for L.A. measurements. The channels.conf file only needs entries for the stations used in the test script. Edit the list manually to add test channels not found in the scan. Lists from w_scan will need VSB-8 changed to 8VSB. I have written a very simple Python program to tabulate the results from measurements into a single csv file with measurements by time in rows and stations in columns. It’s not quite user-hostile, but email me if you want a copy so I can explain how to use it.

Please contact me or the vendors I’ve mentioned for more information. You can email me atdlung@transmitter.com.