CEDAR HILL, Texas—ARK Multicasting has completed a successful proof of concept of a commercial content delivery network demonstrating end-to-end delivery from source to the far edge in the consumer home—a significant development in the ATSC 3.0-based datacasting business model, the low-power television broadcaster said today.

The broadcaster joined the Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) earlier this year and has been involved with its Open Caching committee to refine and work towards the deployment of an Over-the-Air CDN (OTA-CDN). Other active members in this process include Lumen Technologies as the Upstream CDN (uCDN), Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) providing orchestration services, Broadpeak providing the Downstream CDN (dCDN) infrastructure and SiliconDust, which created a Home CDN customer premise device (CPE) for ARK, the company said.

The OTA-CDN architecture is developed so any CDN can easily delegate delivery requests to ARK’s ATSC-3.0 system based on business rules and capacity telemetry. Popular content can be pre-positioned to the ATSC-3.0 system, delivered over the air to the in-home caching node in the SiliconDust CPE device and made available to in-home devices over the user's home network. All this can occur using SVTA standard open caching request routing principles in a manner that is transparent to the end-user device, it said.

“This is a significant accomplishment for broadcasters everywhere and for network architecture across the United States,” said ARK co-founder and CEO Joshua Weiss. “Gone are the days of the same popular data files clogging the pipes of the last mile ISPs. This will be an important architectural enhancement to CDNs, ISPs and content owners everywhere who have many users streaming video content live or on-demand and those looking to create a better user experience for gaming, firmware updates, cloud services, and so much more.”

The proof of concept had three phases. The first related to downloads of files; the second involved live video streaming; and the third dealt with on-demand streaming. All were successful, ARK Multicasting said.

The file-based download phase involved the ATSC 3.0 system pulling files from the uCDN and positioning them on the home-caching CPE device. End users could then request a file using their existing Internet Service Provider (ISP), and the request was automatically rerouted to pull the data from the home CDN, it said.

Both live video streaming and video-on-demand streaming were accomplished using the Broadpeak Transcaster to demonstrate the ATSC 3.0 system providing a live HLS and MPEG-DASH stream from the uCDN with multicast adaptive bitrate (mABR), it said.

“This collaboration validates the open caching model as being relevant and suitable for a variety of use cases, including those involving a broadcast network system like the ARK’s ATSC 3.0” said Broadpeak director of exploration Guillaume Bichot. 

The head of the Streaming Video Technology Alliance sees the proof of concept as emblematic of what the group seeks to accomplish. 

The effort was a successful "collaboration between member companies which put our specifications into practice and, even more importantly in this case, establish something new and unique as part of the streaming video technology stack: an OTA CDN,” said SVTA executive director Jason Thibeault.

“What ARK Multicasting has done in conjunction with our home caching project and Lumen is bridge the gap between a powerful broadcast technology, ATSC 3.0, and streaming platform operations. There's no longer a question of how ATSC 3.0 fits into the streaming stack. This work has given it a meaningful place as part of how streams can be delivered, especially to bandwidth-challenged rural areas, and even extended its value through connection to a Home Caching Node in a CPE device," he said.

More information is available on the ARK Multicasting website.

GREENVILLE, S.C.—Five stations serving the Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville-Anderson market have launched NextGen TV (a.k.a. ATSC 3.0) broadcasts, boosting the total launches in the U.S. to nearly 50 markets, with 29 of the top 40 now offering the new digital broadcast technology. 

The June 2 launch includes WLOS (ABC), WSPA-TV (CBS), WHNS (FOX), WYFF (NBC) and WMYA-TV (MyNet). Affiliates of all the “Big 4” networks and stations owned by Sinclair, Nexstar, Hearst, Gray and Cunningham participated in the launch. 

As part of the launch WMYA-TV, which is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting Corporation and covers the South Carolina portions of the television market, has converted to ATSC 3.0 transmissions. 

WMYA-TV will broadcast its own programming, as well as the programming of the other participating stations, in NextGen TV format. All programming of all participating stations will continue to be available in the existing DTV format, which can be received on all modern television sets. BitPath, which is developing new data broadcasting services, led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the five television stations. 

TV Tech has been tracking all the launches of NextGen TV broadcasts in the U.S. Our complete updated list of markets with ATSC 3.0 broadcasts is available here.  

CHANTILLY, Va.—NextGen TV offers clear upsides for local TV stations, which have the potential to grow revenue 50% over the next 10 years as they deploy ATSC 3.0, says a new BIA forecast.

The outlook for 3.0, presented Jan. 16 at SMPTE Washington, D.C., Chapter’s NextGen TV Summit, finds that with advanced TV the compounded annual growth rate for local broadcasters has the potential to reach 8%, compared to a 3.8% CAGR baseline.

“While a number of questions remain, there are clear upside scenarios for local TV groups investing in NextGen TV,” said BIA Managing Director Rick Ducey. “Consumer side revenue business models will take longer to scale, but business and government business models can scale much faster.”

BIA pointed out that the transition to NextGen TV for broadcasters is voluntary and the rollout of ATSC 3.0 will be done on a market-by-market basis. Thus, consumer-based business models will have a longer adoption curve.

However, NextGen TV corrects shortcomings local TV has as an advertising platform relative to competitors, the forecast pointed out. Interactivity, addressability, dynamic ad insertion, mobile, attribution and first-party data support are all benefits NextGen TV offers that strengthen local TV.

While NextGen TV offers new revenue sources, commercials and retrans will continue to be important revenue sources, said BIA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist Mark Fratrik.

“Even with the new capabilities NextGen TV provides, traditional linear TV advertising and retransmission will continue to account for the lion’s share of revenues throughout the 2020s,” he said.

Still, NextGen TV will prove to be an important initiative. “NextGen TV represents an historically significant thrust by local TV broadcasters to establish themselves as an internet-native, mobile first, advanced TV capable distribution platform,” said Ducey.

To download the forecast visit the BIA Advisory Services website.

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