ATSC today announced that a “Virtual Plugfest” is being organized to exercise the Security Layer of the Studio-to-Transmitter Link. All entities providing ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Gateway and/or Exciter functionality are encouraged to participate in this one-of-a-kind opportunity.

One of the features of the ATSC 3.0 Studio-to-Transmitter Link Transport Protocol (STLTP) is a Security Layer intended to protect from “Man-In-The-Middle” (MITM) attacks that could potentially substitute data on the path from studios to transmitters.  The Security Layer has been included in A/324, “Scheduler / Studio to Transmitter Link” for several years, but it has not yet undergone formal testing in a “Plugfest.”  As a result, ATSC Specialist Group TG3/S32 Physical Layer  devised a method for testing the Security Layer remotely.  After significant preparation, the ATSC 3.0 STLTP Security Layer Virtual Plugfest is ready to proceed.

ATSC currently is seeking participation in the Plugfest from manufacturers and designers of Broadcast Gateway / Scheduler and Transmitter Exciter implementations. 

Participants need not be ATSC members so long as they have a direct and material interest in the work.  Plans for the Plugfest and details of the activity will be introduced to those having the required interest in the work at a meeting of the ATSC TG3/S32-5 Ad Hoc Group on STL/SFN to be held in San Francisco on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 3:00-4:30 p.m. PT. Provisions will be available for remote access by those unable to join the meeting in person.

“ATSC Plugfests have proved, in the past, to be unique opportunities for developers of equipment and software for ATSC 3.0 applications to confirm interchange of their data with the connected functions of other suppliers, thereby speeding up and making more efficient their development activities,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland.  Since the STLTP Security Layer requires encrypted addressing and data transfer between sending and receiving nodes in a network, such an exercise with most of the sources of the necessary functionality participating in the testing is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.” With this unique opportunity, Noland “earnestly encourages all entities providing ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Gateway and/or Exciter functionality are to join the upcoming Plugfest.”

ATSC members can learn the details of the upcoming TG3/S32-5 AHG meeting via the ATSC Workspace system. Non-members should contact Madeleine Noland, ATSC President, mnoland@atsc.org.  Alternatively, information about the Plugfest and the upcoming TG3/S32-5 AHG meeting can be obtained from group Chair, S. Merrill Weiss, merrill@mwgrp.com

MUNICH, GERMANY—The Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers has partnered with a research institute of public broadcasters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to conduct an Interoperable Master Format plugfest to test whether or not vendors can create and play interoperable IMF packages.

SMPTE and the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) have scheduled the plugfest for May 29 in Munich. It will be conducted as a meeting of the SMPTE Media Packaging and Interchange Technology Committee (TC-35PM) Plugfest Drafting Group.

SMPTE will conduct another IMF plugfest Oct. 18-19 in the Los Angeles area. That event will occur in the days leading up to SMPTE 2018 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition, Oct. 22-25, at the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles.

The SMPTE-IRT plugfest, the first such collaborative IMF test, will bring together various international content providers, distributors, broadcasters and vendors.

For the plugfest, devices from multiple vendors will be used to create IMF packages using agreed-upon test vectors and supplied source material for various IMF applications. Packages created on the device of one vendor will be tested on all other participating devices to verify whether they can be processed correctly to produce the same results.

As issues are identified, solutions will be proposed that can be used to inform IMF users and to clarify or update the existing SMPTE IMF standard.

Prior to the SMPTE-IRT plugfest, a virtual plugfest will be held to give participants the chance to work with the source material in their labs.

To date, more than 16 organizations have registered to participate.

Those who wish to register to participate should visit the plugfest website.

COLUMBIA, MD.—The latest in a continuing series of ATSC 3.0 compatibility testing sessions, or “Plugfests,” took place in Columbia the week of March 5-9, with a focus on making sure all the pieces fit together in the portion of the transmission standard covering studio-to-transmitter links (STL) and single frequency networks (SFN).

As explained by testing leader, S. Merrill Weiss, chair of the ATSC’s STL and SFN Small Group and president of the Merrill Weiss Group LLC engineering consultancy, this round of testing is necessary to ensure everything fits together and functions properly as U.S. 3.0 deployment begins.

“The part of the system we’re testing is pretty much from the Physical Layer all the way up to the top,” said Weiss, noting that a complete end-to-end ATSC 3.0 system had been set up for the testing work.

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

“We’re using the latest versions of some of the standards, so all of the standards from the Transport Layer, at least, and probably parts of the Application Layer down through the Physical Layer, are included.”

Weiss explained that evaluation of the STL standard (A/324) was essential to ensure successful ATSC 3.0 performance at TV stations with remotely located transmission facilities.

“What makes the STL standard different from some of the others is that we’re trying to pass signals to transmitters over real-world, long-distance circuits—many of which may be less than perfectly reliable—and the [ATSC 3.0] transmission system more or less expects the delivery to be perfectly reliable; otherwise, the transmitters may have to mute for a brief period of time until [uncorrupted] data starts up again.

WHAT GOES ON AT A ‘PLUGFEST’?

“A Plugfest has several purposes,” said Weiss. “One is to prove that the standard works. Another is to find either errors in the standard or to identify places that could be written better because people may interpret them differently. It’s also to prove that the various equipment that is being built to operate with the standard works correctly.

"In the early development of the equipment there can be either mistakes made or there can be things that are obvious to the people who wrote the standard, but not obvious to the people who come at it independently and perhaps were not part of writing of the standard,” he added. “You end up with equipment that should connect together through a protocol, but something gets missed and the protocol doesn’t quite work as intended. Plugfests help find such things long before equipment gets anywhere near a broadcast operation.”

[Test We Must!]

‘IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL IT’S ALL OVER’

In light of the FCC’s decision last November to allow broadcasters to begin broadcasting in ATSC 3.0, coupled with the champagne toast at the January Consumer Electronics Show by ATSC, NAB and CTA heads celebrating the completion of the

standard, will this latest Plugfest ring down the final curtain on such events?

“No; not at all,” Weiss said. “All that [the FCC’s decision and CES ceremony] said was that the standard was ready to be released; it didn’t say it’s finished. We hope it never will be finished, so it can continue to be developed over time and keep broadcasting current with the ongoing development of technology.”

He observed that the overall standard encompasses some 20 documents, with each of those laying down a great deal of technical information and, as nothing is perfect, especially early in its existence, mistakes or problems of one sort or another are bound to be encountered.

“There have already been a number of updates to some of the standards,” said Weiss. For instance, when A/324 was published earlier this year it had some changes in it from the candidate standard and some of the systems were built to the candidate standard and didn’t include those updates.”

He noted that the week’s Plugfest testing had identified some equipment falling into this category and much of it already had been updated for further testing during the event.

“You have to understand, too, that there was a need to get systems on the air in time for the Olympics in South Korea before certain parts of the standard were completed,” added Weiss. “The updates that have happened since then are now getting folded back into that equipment. One of the things we’re trying to accomplish is to help find where changes need to be made.”

THE TESTING FACILITY

Physical space at Plugfests such as this one is typically divided into two areas or “sides,” with one portion allocated to exciters, schedulers and other transmission gear, and the other area containing demodulators and monitoring gear. Computers, prototyping setups, programmable logic arrays and a wide variety of test and measurement equipment are spread across both sides. The facility is reminiscent of a well-equipped university computer lab. A hushed stillness prevails within the room, interrupted only by an occasional instruction from the event coordinator when it’s time to enter another testing mode.

In addition to the participants from ATSC 3.0 equipment development and manufacturing entities, the guest list at this latest Plugfest also included representatives from two major supporters of the new DTV transmission standard, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, with headquarters in nearby Hunt Valley, Md., and Capitol Broadcasting Company, owner and operator of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C., which has been airing ATSC 3.0 signals on an experimental basis since June 2016.

As explained by Matt Brandes, WRAL-TV’s transmitter chief engineer, neither his company nor Sinclair were actively involved in the week-long testing, but had sent representatives to assist with the Plugfest equipment setup and teardown.

“WRAL and Sinclair provided the networking infrastructure for the Plugfest, as well as some test equipment,” he said.

[CES Marks ATSC 3.0's Prelude]

Weiss noted that Sinclair’s contribution of a network emulator was especially welcomed, as it allowed Plugfest participants to simulate real-world STL conditions in which data packets can be dropped, bit-errors added and other such transmission path signal “stressing” can take place.

“The network emulator provides us with a variety of ‘stresses’ we can put on the data,” said Weiss. “This is another important aspect of what we’re doing.”

INTERPRETATION OF THE STANDARD

Brandes added that Plugfest events also provide an opportunity to get a close-up look at 3.0 tweaks and changes that could impact his operation.

“We like to keep an eye on the standard and get information in advance so you can do the upgrades and still stay on the air,” he said. “It could be that you do an upgrade and then all of a sudden nothing works. Receivers become blind to what you’re transmitting.”

He agreed with Weiss that additional work was necessary in refining parts of the standard that could be misconstrued due to ambiguous wording.

“A lot of the stuff we’re finding is more due to interpretation of the standard than a defect in the standard itself—it’s how it’s read by different people. So that’s when they need to go back and clarify the wording to make it more obvious as to what they’re trying to do. There are a couple of places where it seems like assumptions may have been made. It leaves enough room for different interpretations.”

“The issue is that the technology can be right,” added Weiss. “but the explanation of it may not be precise enough to make sure that everybody gets it right.”

[FCC Approves Next-Gen TV for OTA Broadcasting]

The March 2018 event marks the fifth ATSC 3.0 Plugfest. Previous testing sessions were conducted in China, Korea and Hunt Valley, Md. The current testing involved 28 individuals representing some 16 broadcast equipment manufacturers or other entities involved in the production or deployment of the 3.0 standard. Participants journeyed from as far away as South Korea, Germany, France, Denmark and Canada. It was hosted by Rohde & Schwarz USA at its Columbia, Md., facility.

Companies participating in this latest Plugfest include AFT, Aircode, ATbis, Avateq, Clever Logic, DekTec, DigiCAP, Enensys Technologies, ETRI (South Korea’s Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute), GatesAir, KaiMedia, Lowasis, ProTelevision Technology, Rohde & Schwarz, TeamCast and Triveni Digital.

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

HUNT VALLEY, MD.—The latest in a series of equipment compatibility testing sessions known as “Plugfests” got underway in here on Jan. 23, bringing together more than a dozen manufacturers of equipment for the ATSC 3.0 television standard.

The five-day event was hosted by the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s systems division and marks the second time that SBG has offered such sponsorship. (Previous Plugfests were held in Shanghai, China and in Seoul, Korea. Last year’s Maryland trials were held in March.)

These Plugfests allow manufactures of exciters and gateways to work alongside receiver providers to ensure that all intended functionalities of the nascent standard’s features and capabilities are correctly ported over to viewing and listening devices. Numerous trials and tests are performed at each session to ensure that nothing is missed and that the standard will be ready for “primetime” when all modules are completed and offered to broadcasters to begin over-the-air transmissions.

NOT QUITE LIKE WITNESSING A MAJOR SPORTING EVENT

Cables, switchboxes, programmable logic arrays, test gear, along with plenty of silence and patience are key ingredients at Plugfests. (PHOTO CREDIT: Sinclair Broadcast Group)

Much of the work is repetitive and is performed in relative silence, save only for a coordinator to order the shifting of modes, or the announcement of the successful completion of one area of evaluation and the move to another area of investigation. To outside observers it’s rather boring (SBG’s vice president of advanced technology, Mark Aitken, has referred to it previously as “like watching paint dry.”) However, it is a very necessary step in closing loops and eliminating any unforeseen consequences in the eventual rollout of ATSC 3.0.

Participating at the Jan. 23-27 trials were Enensys Technologies, Triveni Digital, DigiCAP, ATBIS, NERC-DTV/CMIC, GatesAir, ETRI, ProTelevision Technologyand TeamCast on the exciter/gateway side of things, and receiving and test gear developers/manufacturers LG Electronics, ETRI, Triveni Digital, DekTec and Avateq Corp. Testing involved exciter/receiver compatibility, SFN compatibility and STL compatibility.

Louis Libin, one of the Plugfest coordinators and senior director of new technology at SBG, summed up the week’s activities as follows:

"Plugfest tests are always challenging but necessary; often modifications to the testing needs to be done, the cooperation is always great to see because [these are] normally competitors, but for the Plugfest, it is about correctly interpreting and adapting to the standard."

STAND BY FOR MORE

When asked about additional Plugfests, Libin was quick to acknowledge that work isn’t over yet.

“There will definitely be more Plugfests,” said Libin. “We need to ensure that all features, configurations and functionality works.”

ATSC President Mark Richer, along with DekTec’s Stephane Billat,and Tribune Broadcasting’s Bill Van Duynhoven, are all smiles about the progress made during the Maryland ATSC 3.0 Plugfest. (PHOTO CREDIT: Sinclair Broadcast Group)

Asked about a timeline for ATSC 3.0 completion and inauguration, Libin commented that it will be happening “much faster than we all think. The broadcasters need it badly, even the ones who don’t yet see it (the need for a new digital transmission standard). The business opportunities have tremendous potential; we see more opportunities all the time.

James E. O’Neal is a retired television engineer and served as TV Technology’s technology editor for nearly 10 years. He still contributes articles to the publication on a regular basis and serves as its technical advisor.

For more TV Technology coverage, see our ATSC 3.0 silo.

As AES67-compliant products continue to come on the market, how can we be sure they are really compatible with each other with no test equipment currently available to verify compliance?

One way is to hold a “plugfest” where manufacturers of products that incorporate AES67 can get together, hook up their products to each other and see what happens. Such a plugfest was indeed held at the beginning of November 2015 at National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C. This followed up on a previous plugfest held in Munich, Germany in 2014.

“The idea of the plugfest is to be able to perform testing in a true engineering environment where ideas can be freely exchanged,” said Phil Owens, senior sales engineer, Wheatstone Corp.

Held under the aegis of the Audio Engineering Society, the plugfest was organized with the goal of checking the extent of interoperability of the 13 separate products brought in for testing. The manufacturers that participated were ALC NetworX, Archwave Technologies, Digigram, DirectOut, Lawo, Meinberg Radio Clocks, Merging Technologies, Telos Corp., Wheatstone Corp., and Yamaha Corp.

GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
Over the course of the plugfest a series of tests were conducted. The first test checked the ability of the devices to be synchronized to a central grandmaster clock configured for Precision Time Protocol (PTP) as defined by IEEE-1588. Actually two ports of the clock were used, each set to a different PTP domain. One of the grandmaster clock ports was set to PTP domain 0, which is the IEEE-1588 default profile; and the other for PTP domain 1, which is the media profile according to AES67, Annex A. AES67 recommends using this profile, but doesn’t mandate it.

Each clock port was connected to a different Ethernet switch, each from a different manufacturer. Then those two switches were connected together so that each PTP domain was available on both switches. In the course of testing, the various devices under test were hooked up to each of the master switches.

The next test checked multicast streaming with multiple devices transmitting streams and multiple devices in turn receiving the streams. A standard stream was used for all tests with its parameters described in Session Description Protocol (SDP).

The third test checked unicast streaming with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). There are three SIP modes—receive only, send-only and send/receive, that were all tested.

There was also a test checking on the network itself and media clock recovery.

From left: Johan Boqvist (Swedish Radio) in discussion with Greg Shay (Telos Alliance) and Sonja Langhans (IRT). Image courtesy of AES.THE RESULTS?
How did everyone do? Pretty well, actually, although some issues were discovered. In the spirit of open discussion and discovery, the results of the tests did not identify the names of the products, which were indicated only by random letter designations.

“There are benefits for the process to have anonymity,” said Greg Shay, chief science officer, Telos Alliance. “Otherwise vendors might be hesitant to participate.”

The good news was that most of the devices were able to synchronize with the grandmaster clock in either PTP domain. One device didn’t work with one of the switches, but worked with a different non-PTP switch. And another device didn’t work with the PTP domain 1.

In the multicast streaming test, most of the devices successfully interoperated with each other, although there were some issues related to SDP. Some receivers were more sensitive than others in interpreting SDP packets. In other cases, non-compliant SDP packets were produced, which prohibited the streams from being received. Some devices could read SDP automatically, others manually. AES67 doesn’t specify how SDP data is transferred for multicast sessions.

For the unicast streaming test, most devices were interoperable in one mode or another, but there were issues with SIP. In only one caller-callee combination of devices, all three SIP modes worked. But it was more common that only the receive-only mode worked, where the caller receives the audio stream.

There were some combos where receive-only and send-only (where the caller sets up the path, but the callee receives the audio) operated correctly, and a couple of combos where only the send/receive mode (bidirectional streaming where both caller and callee are sender and receiver) operated correctly.

“We learned that there is a good level of basic connectivity between all the participants’ equipment,” Owens said. “Overall the results were promising and bode well for the continued development of AES67. Further work on SIP was identified as a good next step in refining the protocol.”

Even with the SIP issues discovered, Shay said, “implementation of session initiation protocol was less of a hurdle than some people expected.”

Besides testing interoperability among the various devices, the plugfest showed that the standard itself was well-written and unambiguous.

“The fact that the success rate was very high was taken to mean that the heart of the standard is complete, well thought-out and explained enough,” Shay said.

Another factor to the interoperability success is attributed to AES67, which—although it is a new standard—is based on technologies that have been in existence for 15–20 years, and is used in telecommunications and other fields. This made it easier to understand and implement for pro audio applications, according to Shay.

A pleasant surprise that came out of the plugfest was that one of the vendors wrote a utility tool for doing third-party translations of different methods of discovery.

“In Appendix E of AES67, there are four different methods of discovery listed, and the standard didn’t mandate the use of any one. To choose one would be limiting,” Shay said. “There is room for innovation in solving the discovery problem, and we knew it would get solved in time.” That someone brought in such a tool to help the discovery process was an example of the innovation that could be possible.

Shay said there were expectations as well as hope that manufacturers of pro audio test equipment would add an AES67 test option to their gear to aid in checking compliance.

The number of manufacturers participating in the most recent plugfest indicated to Shay that there is “wind in the sails” in implementing AES67.

“You wonder when a new standard comes out: ‘Will companies commit their resources, do their own development and make this work?’” Shay said. “We see people are leaning into this and we got a good cross-section of vendors. Without a doubt, AES67 has critical mass now. All of the vendors of proprietary audio-over-IP are on board actually delivering first workable implementations, and with this [past] fall’s AES convention and the plugfest, we feel that AES67 is over the hump and is embraced for real by all the vendors.”

Mary C. Gruszka is a systems design engineer, project manager, consultant and writer based in the New York metro are

SHANGHAI, CHINA —History was made here last month as a multinational group of television engineers gathered to perform systems compatibility testing of the ATSC 3.0 digital TV standard. The event, officially dubbed “Plug Fest 2015,” was hosted by China’s National Engineering Research Center of Digital Television (NERC-DTV), Oct. 19-23.

The engineers were convened “to confirm a common understanding of the ATSC 3.0 specifications A/321, A/322 and other relevant standards, and/or working drafts,” according to the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the U.S.-based organization tasked with developing the next-gen broadcast standard.

(A/321 is the standard’s signal discovery and signaling layer and A/322 is its physical layer. In September, A/322 was elevated from “document” status to “candidate standard” and A/321 underwent a similar change in status earlier this year. These elevations signified that specifications were sufficiently in place for construction of hardware and software devices to generate and demodulate the specialized DTV signal.)

The event also included an ATSC 3.0 Bootcamp held at Shanghai’s International Convention Center, which updated attendees on ATSC 3.0’s progress and potential for delivering a high quality television experience. The day-long conference featured keynotes on various aspects of ATSC 3.0 from a number of individuals working closely with the project and attracted more than 150 individuals from some 10 nations.

MAJOR STEP FORWARD

L to R: Lachlan Michael, Lynn Claudy, Glenn Reitmeier, Richard Friedel, Kim Jong Gyu and Mark Richer

The Plug Fest testing is seen as a significant milestone in moving the standard ahead to its 2017 targeted completion date. It was also important because it allowed participating transmitter and receiver companies to exercise a large number of parameters and options designed into the standard, thus proving its flexibility and commercial viability.

ATSC President Mark Richer traveled to China along with several other ATSC board members to witness the testing, and was elated with the results. “It was a defining and historical event,” he said. “For me it was not as much about the technology as it was about the collaboration. I think we’ll always remember the incredible cooperation between organizations to make the Plug Fest a reality and to make it successful.”

Lachlan Michael, chair of the ATSC’s S32-2 modulation and coding group, and coordinator of the Shanghai testing event was also pleased with the outcome.

“I would rate it very much a success,” he said. “We had 150 parameter sets that we defined for this Plug Fest and we managed to get through all of those parameters during the week of testing. We achieved all the goals we set out to achieve, we’ve got people talking to each other, we’ve got people working getting more people excited about ATSC 3.0, and we’re just looking forward to the next time when we can get together and show even more features operational.”

Dr. Richard Chernock, chairman of the ATSC Technology Group (TG3) addresses the ATSC Boot Camp, which was held in conjunction with the Plug Fest.

LOW-KEY EVENT Testing took place in a temporary laboratory facility set up by NERC-DTV that measured approximately 30x60-feet. It was filled with workstations occupied by Plug Fest participants Sony, Enensys, Samsung, DekTec, Teamcast, NERC, and Korea’s ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute). Despite the importance of the outcome and the intensity of those participating, the overall atmosphere was surprisingly low-key and subdued.

There were no tall racks, flashing lights, or alarms going off —just assemblages of PCs and relatively small prototyping setups replete with power supplies and an abundance of programmable logic arrays. The comparative silence was broken only occasionally by Michael when he called out in his clear and distinctive Australian accent for testing participants to shift to another mode of operation. All in all, some 70 pages of testing program documents were worked through by the group. Despite the great significance of what was being accomplished there, an outsider who wandered in would only think that he or she had entered a college computer lab.

When Michael announced that testing was at an end, there were no champagne toasts or “high-fives,” just contented smiles on the faces of all those present as they began to break down and pack up their gear. And despite the apparent success achieved, Michael was careful to note that there was still a lot more work ahead for both the ATSC and companies working with the organization in developing the new broadcast standard.

“What we’ve done in this Plug Fest is implement part of the standard,” Michael said. “We haven’t implemented all of the features. Obviously it’s not a complete system yet and there were some issues found on both the modulator and demodulator side, but I think we can say that there were multiple demodulators and multiple modulators that worked for every single combination.”

[The completed standard will also include additional layers and elements addressing such items as synchronization, video and audio standards, A/V content watermarking, delivery signaling captioning and subtitling of content, user personalization, service announcements and more.]

The two-day ATSC Plug Fest in Shanghai attracted a number of distinguished television engineers from around the world.
Plug Fest Also Demonstrates LDM

A specially equipped van offered Plug Fest attendees a real-world demonstration of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0.

Layered division multiplex (LDM) is a very recent development in the evolution of the ATSC 3.0 DTV standard and will provide broadcasters with the ability to control over-the-air signal characteristics to favor different types of viewing devices and environments. An extremely robust signal—but with resolution tailored for portable handheld devices—can be transmitted, while at the same time a very high quality content stream—but without the enhanced robustness—can be sent to large screen HD displays in less challenging (fixed) environments.

So far, LDM demonstrations have been mostly confined to laboratory environments. However, a real-world demonstration of the technology’s capabilities was offered to participants at ATSC’s Shanghai Plug Fest. An equipment package constructed by ETRI engineers and fitted into an NERC-DTV van was used to dynamically demonstrate LDM’s capabilities. The package included a spectrum analyzer and a prototype ATSC 3.0 receiver which broke out LDM “upper” and “lower” layers. The upper, more robust, signal was routed to a small tablet and the higher-quality lower layer output was fed to a large screen HD display. A signal was provided from a low-power (40 Watt) UHF transmitter with the transmitting antenna located several stories above ground level.

An equipment package constructed by ETRI engineers and fitted into the NERC-DTV van was used to dynamically demonstrate LDM’s capabilities.

Once the van started moving around the NERC-DTV complex, the received RF signal level rather predictably began to vary. Initially, both displays provided stable images; however, as the van began to move in Shanghai traffic and around high-rise buildings, signal variations became more extreme. Video on the large-screen monitor alternately froze or disappeared completely; however, the tablet picture remained stable throughout the several kilometer path followed by the van, providing a dynamic and convincing indication that LDM really works.
James O’Neal

Michael said that he anticipated additional testing events as additional portions of ATSC 3.0 reached candidate status and this was echoed by Richer. “I think there’ll be more industry Plug Fests of the physical layer and also the other layers and I think they’ll all be big events,” he said. “There are also going to be companies working privately doing their own internal tests with different products. There’s a lot we won’t see, but we’ll know what’s going on because we’ll hear about the different issues that are identified as those events move forward.”

Richer also praised the assistance and cooperation received from the NERC-DTV group and others in connection with the testing.

“They did a really fabulous job,” said Richer. “It was just amazing the amount of resources the NERC-DTV put into the testing.”

MULTICOUNTRY MISSION

The Shanghai Plug Fest marked the final stop for Richer and others associated the ATSC. He described visits in Japan and Korea that were part of the association’s “Far East” mission.

“Japan was our first stop and we met with our colleagues at NHK and it was a wonderful meeting,” said Richer. “ATSC has worked with NHK for a long time and NHK has been a big contributor to the development of ATSC 3.0. We were happy to go to Japan and hear about their plans. NHK is really focused on 8K satellite and cable transmission and reception, so that’s really going to be moving things forward in terms of technology in a few years. We’re focused more on terrestrial delivery of 4K, but there is a lot of collaboration between the NHK team and the others in ATSC. We also met with Sony to talk about their plans and to thank them for their efforts. Sony has really shown a lot of leadership in the development ATSC 3.0.”

Reflecting on the ATSC’s visit to Korea, Richer said, “we have a very good relationship of course with many organizations in Korea. Korea adopted the ATSC 1.0 standard and has developed a lot of technology for that standard. They’ve made a lot of contributions to ATSC 3.0. Samsung, LG and ETRI, as well as others in Korea have been working hard to make ATSC 3.0 a success. The focus in Korea is getting on the air with ATSC 3.0 and being able to provide 4K services during the 2018 Olympics in Seoul, so they are very focused on their goal of getting on the air with ATSC 3.0. At this point it’s very likely that Korea will have the first commercial broadcasts services in ATSC 3.0, and we will work with them to make sure that that becomes a reality.”

James O’Neal is a retired broadcast engineer and current technology advisor forTV Technology.