BENGALURU & DEHLI, India & BALTIMORE, Md.—The long-awaited dream of Next-Gen TV reception on mobile phones took a big step forward today with the joint announcement that Saankhya Labs and Sinclair are collaborating on the design and launch of a variety of Direct-to-Mobile broadcast consumer devices in India.

With 1.05 billion cell phone users in India, the announcement could Next-Gen TV in cell phones on a trajectory that may one day see affordable handsets with ATSC 3.0 receivers becoming available to U.S. consumers.

The devices being produced in India will be powered by Saankhya’s Pruthvi-3 ATSC 3.0 chipsets. The company has done pioneering work on bringing to market broadcast radio heads for cellularization of single frequency networks (SFNs) and building the Mark One reference design of a 3.0-enabled D2M smartphone, Sinclair said. 

“As India’s foremost fabless chip company, Saankhya is delighted to see this path breaking D2M technology getting one step closer to launch,” said Parag Naik, founder and CEO of Saankhya Labs. “For rapid proliferation of the device ecosystem, we are actively working with a number of mobile device suppliers to develop solutions that integrate our award-winning Software Defined Radio (SDR) chipsets. As an end-to-end originator and supplier of D2M technology – chipsets, radios, software and network infrastructure, we are fully equipped to rapidly validate end-to-end performance and gear up for launch.”  

The consumer D2M trials, expected to begin in the first half of 2025, will include smartphones, USB dongle accessories, set-top box/gateways and low-cost featurephones. The goal is so demonstrate interworking with mobile system-on-a-chip from suppliers with a combined global market share of 70%, it said.

“I firmly believe that low-cost featurephones will be the biggest driver for domestic demand in India since 4G/5G, incentivizing over 300 million featurephone users to shift to broadcast-enabled phones at a low incremental cost. We expect to launch these devices for trials in the first half of 2025. This competitive market segment can be expected to produce affordable phones for the Indian and global markets,” said Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley. “ATSC 3.0’s time and frequency interleaving feature provides excellent mobile performance, which is why we played a foundational role in the creation and deployment of the standard for next generation broadcast.”  

Leading brands recognize the consumer value proposition of D2M service and are gearing up to meet the requirements of the Indian market, said Sumeet Nindrajog, director of FreeStream, India’s first and only Chips to Platform Deep Tech startup. "D2M will ride on the tremendous momentum to expand the mobile technology supply chain in India. As India’s first Chips-to-Platform DeepTech startup, FreeStream is working on putting together a D2M ecosystem that will realize PM Modi’s vision of India’s Techade.” 

More information is available on the Sinclair and Saankhya Labs websites. 

WASHINGTON D.C.—The Advanced Television Systems Committee honored TV engineer and visionary Glenn Reitmeier June 14 with its Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award and Saankhya Labs with its Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal during its awards presentation ceremony on day two of the NextGen Broadcast Conference.

Reitmeier, who founded the GlennReitmeierTV consultancy after serving as NBCUniversal vice president of Advanced Technology and then as senior vice president, Technology Standards and Policy, played an instrumental part earlier in his career while at Sarnoff Labs and a Sarnoff incubator company in the development, testing an ultimate standardization of digital HDTV and the subsequent A/53 ATSC standard (now called ATSC 1).

Later, he advocated to the ATSC board for a next-generation digital TV system. That suggestion, which he has described as a “What? You’re crazy” proposal, ultimately grew into the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards.

ATSC honors a member annually who has made invaluable and exemplary contributions to ATSC through his or her technical and leadership with its Lechner award.

Saankhya Labs CEO Parag Naik and vice president of sales Prashant Maru accepted the Mark Richer award on behalf of the company. That award is bestowed annually on an individual or team that demonstrates exemplary leadership in advancing the committee’s mission and epitomizes the vision and leadership qualities of Mark Richer, former ATSC president for whom the award is named.

The fabless semiconductor solutions company based in Bengaluru, India, is believed to have produced the world’s first cognitive Software Defined Radio (SDR) chipsets. Those chips have helped to accelerate NextGen TV adoption, offering tech manufacturers a flexible and affordable way to build reception of ATSC 3.0 as well as other television standards into their products. The low-power consumption version of that chipset is at the heart of the Mark One NextGen TV smartphone, made available in production samples in October 2020, that is being used to test and demonstrate the viability of NextGen TV reception in mobile phones.

Saankhya Labs and ONE Media 3.0, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, have teamed up on development of Cognitive SDR chips for 3.0 reception as well as agreed to work together to accelerate development of 5G Next Generation Broadcast to serve as an offload platform for wireless video traffic.

More information is available online. 

Part 1 of 2
After three years it was great to get back together with fellow engineers and exhibitors at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. Official attendance was more than 50,000 people but with the new LVCC West Hall and spread-out exhibits with plenty of meeting spaces, it was busy but not crowded. 

Like many attendees I spent time catching up with old friends. With the repack over, the focus shifted to launching ATSC 3.0 and that will be the main topic of my convention review, specifically analysis of ATSC 3.0 signals. 

Saankhya Labs
I looked for low-cost ATSC 3.0 receive devices such as USB tuners, excluding complete TV sets. New at the NAB Show were devices from Saankhya Labs in India. They are using a chip developed with Coherent Logic that can decode all DTV formats, including ATSC 3.0. 

The company does not sell directly to consumers but was showing a smartphone with a built-in ATSC 3.0 receiver as well as a dongle that will work with a smartphone with a USB port. (Fig. 1 shows the dongle in use receiving an ATSC 3.0 broadcast from Saankhya Labs’ low-power transmitter that will be offered for use as a low-power ATSC 3.0 booster.) Tolka also showed a dongle it plans to offer for sale to broadcasters. 

Airwavz
There were several products on display for analyzing ATSC 3.0 signals. The lowest cost options, both from Airwavz, remain the RedZone Receiver Plus (RZR-1400) and new TVXplorer 2.0 software, which was released at the show. TVXplorer 2.0 now includes the ability to decode and analyze Dolby AC4 audio as well as providing thumbnails of all the video streams with up to four concurrent PLPs. With the new version, the price increased to $2,595. The RZR-1400, which uses the Sony receiver chip, is $900. 

I think I was the first person to buy TVXplorer 2.0. I didn’t get it installed in my Windows 10 VM until after the NAB Show but had a chance to test it in Los Angeles. It worked fine, with both video and audio playing along with full details on all the tables and a service guide. 

The software comes with a lifetime license and development is continuing. I was told an update might support the Silicon Dust tuner, which would dramatically lower the cost of the package and help keep it competitive with the alternatives. The dongle and software are available on-line at https://redzonereceiver.tv/ or from Comark or Unisoft. 

Dektec
Dektec showed a new USB DTV tuner that is SDR-based, so it can handle multiple standards and looks like the Dektec USB universal DTV modulator. The device comes with basic software to decode ATSC 3.0 tables, but for a complete analysis, it needs to be paired with software like Triveni’s StreamScope XM or Stream Verifier. 

The software does not currently include a spectrum analyzer but since the receiver is SDR-based it shouldn’t be too difficult to add that in the future. The cost is under $4,000. 

ENENSYS
I knew ENENSYS was one of the leaders in developing ATSC 3.0 scheduler and gateway products but didn’t learn about their range of ATSC 3.0 monitoring equipment until I visited their booth at the show. Their “REFEREE3,” introduced at the last NAB Show in 2019, provides ATSC 3.0 signal characteristic measurements (useful for field tests) as well as stream analysis down to the frame level. 

For more detailed measurements at a fixed location, they have the “Edge Probe.” I don’t have room to list all the features here. See www.test-tree.com/product/atsc-advanced-monitoring-probe/ for details on it and other ENENSYS monitoring products. 

IPguard
Another item that caught my attention was the IPguard, which can monitor ATSC 3.0 STL-TP streams and switch to a backup in case of a failure. The switch depends on a flag inserted in the stream, which I hope will be supported by other scheduler/gateway vendors. 

Promax
All the portable measurement devices I’ve described so far require a laptop or computer for operation. Promax was showing a new standalone portable in their Ranger line that offers ATSC 3.0 reception, including video and RF constellation displays and a spectrum analyzer. With tabs on the display, you can view table content and signal characteristics. 

I was told it will support LDM, which could come in handy for field measurements. It also includes an Ethernet port for monitoring IP streams and logging data on a laptop. Pricing had not been set but was expected to be slightly above the price of their other Ranger units, which would put it in the $10,000 range. As of May 1, no data on this unit was available on the company’s website (promaxelectronics.com).

Triveni Digital
Most readers are familiar with the Triveni StreamScope XM ATSC 3.0, which has become the standard for detailed ATSC 3.0 signal analysis. 

They now offer a lower-cost product, the Stream Verifier, for around $4,000, which provides basic data on the ATSC 3.0 stream and a quick check on the quality and compliance of the stream. It needs to be paired with a compatible ATSC 3.0 receiver such as their dongle, one of the Dektec receivers or the Avateq receiver. 

Avateq
Avateq had their line of ATSC1.0 and ATSC 3.0 monitoring receivers on display, including the AVQ-200. Avateq is now offering STL-TP analysis in their products. 

One thing to keep in mind when considering ATSC 3.0 monitoring is whether the device or software will continue to be able to display video and audio after broadcasters begin encrypting streams. While all the tables and signal characteristics should remain available (unless the device has a key from A3SA, the ATSC 3.0 security authority), they will not be able to display encrypted content. 

Tablo
Preparation for encryption caused Tablo to delay the release of their ATSC 3.0 gateway and DVR product until they could modify the hardware to support the keys. Since the key has to be in secure storage it could not be offered as a firmware update. 

The introduction of digital rights management should not be an issue for most if it can be handled the same way NetFlix, Hulu and other streaming services protect their content. If implementation is more onerous, then it could slow the adoption of ATSC 3.0 by limiting the development of new ATSC 3.0 devices and the options viewers have to receive ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. 

In Part 2, I’ll have more on my experiences with the TvxPlorer 2.0 program, using the HDHomeRun ATSC 3.0 gateway in a portable configuration; a description of the NAB session dealing with drone measurement of antenna patterns and RF system heating; and some transmitter- and antenna-related NAB Show news I didn’t have room to include here. 

As always, I welcome comments and questions. Email me at dlung@transmitter.com. I try to answer all emails promptly, but if I’m busy and the email gets buried, I might miss it. If you don’t get a response within a week or so, email me again.

CHELMSFORD, Mass.—The White Space Alliance, a group advocating for the use of TV band white spaces for wireless applications, has said new use cases for the devices that will take advantage of unoccupied TV channels are emerging.

TV white spaces are used around the world and in some instances provide those without access to wireless internet service, including lower-income households and those in rural areas, with broadband service. They can be used to provide middle- and last-mile connectivity where it is not cost-effective to deploy wired infrastructure, said the White Space Alliance.

“Beyond its distance advantages, TV white space infrastructure is proving to be a versatile solution to a variety of communications challenges,” said Parag Naik, CEO of Saankhya Labs, a White Space Alliance member company.

Saankhya Labs technology has been deployed around the world. In New Zealand, its base station and customer premise equipment are being used to navigate logging machines through areas with dangerously steep slopes. 

PLUS: White Space Changes Proposed by FCC

Another application used by a rural cable TV provider is based on Saankhya white space equipment and its Broadcast Radio Head. The technology allows the provider to intelligently direct video traffic over the air while using TV white space for two-way communications for interactive and educational TV, the company said.

The company’s technology is also being used in support of video surveillance and for backhaul lines for Internet of Things applications, it said. 

The company’s products conform to international standards for wireless regional area networks. They are based on the IEEE 802.22 specification and comply with Wi-FAR.

More information is available on the White Space Alliance website.

BALTIMORE & BENGALURU, INDIA—ONE Media 3.0, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, has announced an agreement with Saankhya Labs, an Indian-based developer of wireless systems and cognitive Software Defined Radio (SDR) solutions, to develop networking technology to combine 5G cellular networks with the ATSC 3.0 (aka “Next Gen TV”) broadcast standard.

The 5G Next Generation Broadcast Offload Platform, which ONE Media 3.0 President Mark Aitken discussed with TV Technology at CES, will enable 4G and 5G wireless operators to offload streamed and live content dynamically on to an over-the-air "one-to-many" broadcast digital terrestrial network such as ATSC 3.0. Under the agreement, Saankhya Labs is developing an end-to-end cooperative network platform including radio nodes and mobile end user devices.

“This platform sits at the center of 5G convergence,” the companies said in their announcement, adding that the hybrid network would constitute numerous “firsts” for the broadcast industry by:

• "Cellularizing" broadcast architecture to enable indoor reception of DTT with mobile and portable devices
• Dramatically improving DTT spectrum utilization, providing more bits/higher robustness through spectrum reuse
• Introducing artificial intelligence (AI)-based analytic engines to provision and directly offload traffic from congested 4G/5G networks
• Providing content delivery networks (CDN) with significant improvement in the streaming experience by moving OTT traffic to the broadcast platform
• Enabling hyper-localization of broadcast content (video/audio services, datacasting, advertising, emergency alerts)

Demonstrations of the 5G-related components of this new cooperative network have been exhibited at CES2019, Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2019 and NAB Show 2019. The first phase of product and system development will establish real-world proof-of-concept (PoC) deployments in India and the United States.

"Broadcasters have a critical seat at the 5G table. This work and product development will provide a 'level set' against expectations for broadcast services that are embraced by the 3GPP 5G standard," said Aitken. "These first deployments will elevate understanding of the cooperative role NextGen (ATSC 3.0) broadcast can play to make 5G networks highly efficient Broadcast/Broadband convergent networks. The 'Direct to Mobile' focus of this activity will leverage the one-to-many efficiencies of broadcast in a new topology that can provide high-reliability and large bandwidth solutions and make them available to the competitive marketplace."

"Saankhya is excited to expand its partnership with ONE Media and Sinclair to build an end-to-end solution that transforms the delivery and consumption of both linear and non-linear video,” said Parag Naik, CEO of Saankhya Labs. “Broadcast video networks are essentially 'constant quality' networks compared to the current 'best effort' unicast mobile networks, especially for video delivery. Our Direct-to-Mobile solution provides a new tool combining broadcast and OTT content over a new video distribution platform. We are convinced that OTT content players and mobile network operators will take full advantage of this unique video delivery solution." 

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

Part 2

While the International CES 2019 was top of mind for Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media LLC and vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group (as discussed in part 1 of this Q&A), far more is happening with regards to broadcast standards and ATSC 3.0.

In part two of this interview, Aitken reveals Sinclair’s plan to rollout ATSC 3.0 in 26 markets in 2019, where Sinclair’s Dallas SFN rollout stands, why 3.0 naysayers will soon see they are off target, the effect multistandard TV exciters and receivers may have on the future of standards and his thoughts on the announcement that ATSC President Mark Richer will soon retire.

(An edited transcript.)

TV TECHNOLOGY:ENENSYS/TeamCast and Comark recently announced they were showing a DTV exciter with support for both 3.0 and DVB-T2 waveforms at BES Expo 2019, India.

At CES, ONE Media rolled out its new multi-standard DTV tuner chipsets with support for at least a dozen standards, including 3.0.

It seems to me that multistandard TV exciters and receivers may usher in a new era in which TV standards become something different than they traditionally have been. In other words, it’s hard to see how TV standards in the future will serve as mechanisms to protect markets, regions, economic interests and even competing political systems. What do you think?

MARK AITKEN: I am sure that I have said Broadcast Market Exchange, BMX, to you on more than one occasion.

We started seven or eight years ago –before we even entered the ATSC process for this standard. We started putting out some white papers and articles about the notion of a Broadcast Market Exchange.

Part of that was looking at what was going on in the spectrum sharing worldview and a lot of that came out of the foundational work even before there was CBRS (citizens band radio service).

CBRS is different spectrum, but it’s all about spectrum sharing and providing spectrum access. So, the Broadcast Market Exchange we envisioned tied together broadcast stations on a virtual basis to create a national network.

That in fact to a large degree was the reason we worked with Nexstar to start Spectrum Co. And Spectrum Co is involved in a lot of conversations right now based on our own commitment to build out [ATSC 3.0] in 26 markets this year and finding other partners in those markets.

That’s all backdrop. The point is we had this thing called the Broadcast Market Exchange that envisioned this world of virtualization. The very same world that is at the heart of 5G –not a bunch of hardware, but in fact cloud-based, virtualized functions.

Well on the other side of the world in India, one of the things that attracted me to Saankhya is that they shared a very, very similar view and about four years ago wrote a series of white papers–and there will be another one coming out shortly—on something called a cognitive radio access network.

Cognitive is now being morphed into AI because everybody believes they know what AI means.

To your point, imagine a network where you have software-defined radios, software-defined receivers. You have a network that when you apply AI has a cognitive ability to determine based upon a set of requirements of how best to deliver a wireless set of packets.

If you can describe the attributes of various technologies, you suddenly have a network that can on its own define unique waveforms to deliver [data] in the most effective and efficient way.

The short word for this is AI-RAN [AI Radio Access Network] where you deploy a network with the ability to shape waveforms and radios that can conform to those waveforms. You can begin to envision a world in 10 years, perhaps less, where you don’t even have a standard per se of a fixed set of waveforms. But in fact you have a network that is capable of producing its own waveforms on a flexible, desirable basis.

I would add that I think that becomes almost essential in a future world where you are looking for security at all levels.

Imagine the ability on a data-frame-by-data-frame basis to convey that data with a slightly different waveform based on a 128-bit or 256-bit encoding scheme.

Suddenly not only are you encoding data, but you are effectively encoding waveforms and obviating the need for a fixed standard.

TVT:So this would be a whole new level of security.

MA: Exactly. You could define your own unique waveform. You are not going to hard code that into a chip because it’s your unique waveform. It’s your own modulation, your own coding scheme. The only thing that is common is this bootstrap.

TVT:Probably from its inception, there have been 3.0 naysayers. Some, given the dearth of 3.0 TVs at this year’s CES, say the Next-Gen TV standard is 'DOA.' Clearly, you don’t see it that way. How would you respond to the naysayers?

MA: I’ve not gone to two CES shows in a row where the theme and the thrust of the show on the outward side wasn’t about something new.

CES is always about something new, and this year, surprisingly or not, it wasn’t just one thing. On the surface, you certainly had 5G, 8K and autonomous vehicles. But all of those things, if you think about it, come back to a flexible means to convey any and all of that.

And so, while there was not a big stage for ATSC 3 television devices, ATSC 3 fits into all of those devices.

And I think if you talked to the manufacturers there are a couple of reasons they haven’t launched new ATSC 3 product lines. One of them is technical, and one of them is market.

On the technical side, it is the issue of content protection. You know the ability to ensure that content [remains safe], creating a high enough bar that you haven’t got easy theft, easy access and therefore easy distribution of an all-IP piece of content.

We are a long ways down that road, and I think in a couple of months there will be an announcement of industry alignment and cohesion around a content protection solution.

And I would venture and say it will be supported by the consumer electronics industry, broadcasters and the MVPDs. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to sell ATSC 3 sets into a marketplace.

Probably the more important piece–and I fully understand this from a product manufacturer’s perspective—where are the 3.0 signals? Where is the content?

We are answering that with an absolute public commitment to launch 26 markets by the end of this year.

When we start launching those markets and there is a clear set of objectives for where those markets are and how the content is going to be protected–when all those things come together—the problem is not a technical problem, it’s the realities of a new market, making sure the new market is alive.

TVT:Have you announced Sinclair’s 26 ATSC 3.0 rollout markets for this year?

MA: We have not publicly stated those yet. We have internally as of today, and we will externally two weeks hence.

We know the 26 markets in which we need nobody to participate to create channel shares and offload channels from one to another to clear a channel for 3.0.

But we have also engaged ourselves in discussions through Spectrum Co. We actually have more than 26 markets. I can tell you that we have commitments from a number of broadcasters to participate in a large number of markets. We have one broadcaster that will be working with us in five markets –somebody outside of Spectrum Co.

I think you will see a public announcement of those markets in a couple of weeks.

TVT:Where does the Sinclair SFN deployment in Dallas stand?

MA: It will light up March 1 at all sites. Actually, I just reminded myself I have to check with legal on this one. The holdup on this one is the MVPD notification process, and the FCC is a stickler on making sure we run out the 120 days. That is why it is March.

But I am saying that with a smile because I don’t know how this partial government shutdown impacts that. I am certainly hopeful that the government will be back to being as dysfunctional as it can be by then.

TVT:Sinclair has announced its STIRR OTT service. It seems like this might be a good learning experience and springboard for launching many aspects of an over-the-air IP-based broadcast service like ATSC 3.0. Is that the case?

MA: There is nothing that we are doing that is not focused on the 3.0 future. So, there is a whole lot of learning that comes out of these things.

So, yeah, STIRR is local-advertiser-supported. It has a lot of the moving pieces that end up being connected to 3.0.

When you think of 3.0, you think of broadcast and broadband. OTT sits right alongside of OTA, and while the ad tech might be slightly different between OTT and OTA because OTT is unicast, a one-to-one relationship with folks, there is a lot of technical convergence between the two.

TVT:Finally, the Advanced Television Systems Committee announced that its president, Mark Richer, would soon be retiring. I know you and Mark have a long history–I believe going back to the early DTV days at Comark. What are your thoughts?

MA: I could almost say I love Mark like a brother, and it’s not as though we haven’t had our differences. We have.

When we are together we have this little routine that we go through that we are the “Co-Marks.” Mark ran the Comark Digital Services Group. That is what he was hired in to do at Comark. It was me and the president at the time who brought him in.

We’ve remained very close. We’ve always had the utmost respect for each other, and very recently I had the pleasure of spending a lot of time together with him in India. We went to the Taj Mahal together.

The industry will miss him. The industry will come to understand that leading an organization that demands consensus is a very trying job. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of talent to try to maintain congeniality in the face of confrontation. It takes a lot of effort to intercede and provide a calming effect and bring aggrieved parties together.

A lot of this is finding the common ground as opposed to highlighting the differences. Mark has affected a lot of people in a very positive way, and he made it look really easy, but I can assure you it was a most difficult job that he was a champion of.

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

HUNT VALLEY, MD.--Fresh off the rollout of a multistandard DTV receiver chipset with support for ATSC 3.0 at the International CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media LLC and VP of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group is greatly encouraged about the prospects for ATSC 3.0.

Taking center stage for ONE Media at the annual consumer electronics extravaganza was the rollout of a receiver chipset capable of receiving 12 different digital television standards, including 3.0.

But Aitken’s enthusiasm extends well beyond the favorable reception the receiver chipset received at the show. The exhibit also featured a new broadcast radio head designed to integrate the inherent efficiencies and effectiveness of one-to-many OTA broadcasting into 4G and 5G wireless data networks.

Aitken–a long-time proponent of offloading the one-to-many portion of wireless network operators’ traffic to broadcast—says the broadcast radio head was favorably received by representatives of wireless networks and their suppliers in Las Vegas.

In this, the first of a two-part interview, Aitken talks about the multistandard DTV receiver chipset, the new broadcast radio head, LTE Broadcast and 5G and how 5G standards development envision integration of multiple wireless networks. He also provides an update on his offer to give away 1 million of new receiver chips to any vendor that promises to build them into mobile and portable devices.

(An edited transcript.)

TVTechnology:How would you characterize the reaction coming out of CES 2019 to ONE Media’s rollout of two multistandard DTV receiver chips with support for ATSC 3.0?

Mark Aitken: I would say I was startled by the level of activity and positive feedback.

What I mean by that is we had various meetings set up with Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Indian and U.S. companies—makers of dongles, set-top boxes, TV sets and gateways.

The discussions were not just about the chip. The other thing that was in the room as a backdrop for the chip was Saankhya had almost a dozen different applications of software-defined receivers. They ran the gamut from USB dongles and tablets to satellite radios and modulators.

Alongside of that was a product we are in the process of developing as a direct result of our conversations on the convergence of broadcast and broadband. We showed a prototype broadcast radio head.

TVT:What’s that?

MA: A broadcast radio head is a small, outdoor-mount utility device, not at all unlike an LTE radio head, except supporting broadcast.

We were involved in designing that for a customer deployment. The idea is pretty simple–a box that can sit on a tower alongside LTE and 5G that is designed to tie into the data network, the intelligent network of a telecom operator. In the 4G world, it’s the “EPC” [Evolved Packet Core]. In 5G, it’s the new 5G Core architecture.

The point is we are headlong into defining the interconnect of Next-Gen Broadcast to the world of telcom as a supplemental download or auxiliary download or however you want to view it—but a broadcast spectrum-enabled device that allows the conveyance of telcom data across an ATSC 3 waveform.

By the way, I almost hate to say ATSC 3 because with the implementation that is being prototyped and coming into a proof of concept we are supporting parts of the ATSC 3 standard that are extensions that will be enabled and signaled via the bootstrap. So, we are already evolving the standard.

TVT:So, from a wireless operator’s point of view, does this broadcast radio head fulfill what you have talked about for a long time: a technology that enables an operator to offload its one-to-many data traffic to broadcast, thus preserving a significant portion of its wireless network?

MA: Absolutely. It is being designed as a replacement to the very poorly conceived, very poorly implemented multicast mode in the LTE environment.

It’s known to the consumer as LTE Broadcast. It’s eMBMS [Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service].

But eMBMS is a unicast-enabled multicast mode of operation, and it is unicast-enabled because it can’t stand on its own as a broadcast waveform. It lives in the unicast environment and demands the ability to do lost packet replacement knowing there is going to be lost packets replaced versus a designed broadcast standard that is meant to stand on its own.

We are doing all of the plumbing. We are involved in India, not just with the chip development, but we are also a member of the telecom standards organization in India, TSDSI [Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India].

They are working at defining the standard that would allow anybody to a take a non-3GPP [Third Generation Partnership Project] broadcast radio—and I call it a radio because that’s how the telcom guys like to think of it—and tie it into a 3GPP access network. We are defining all the attributes that allow this non-3GPP radio to be integrated into that network.

TVT:What about 5G? It seems like you will be going head to head against what operators plan for 5G broadcast.

MA: Well, these go hand-in-hand. What we are doing is providing an invaluable supplemental feed that is actually aligned with the 5G standard.

TVT:Let me clarify what I was asking. I guess it’s a matter of perspective because I know some broadcasters—and you specifically—have talked about 3.0 being an integral part of a future 5G network. But I don’t know if the wireless industry has shown it is receptive to that and will let broadcasters play in their sandbox.

MA: Look, part of this is a matter of who owns the spectrum. Part of this is a matter of who controls the network.

So, the 3GPP spectrum I am talking about is “TS22.261, Release 16.” http://www.3gpp.org/news-events/3gpp-news/1831-sa1_5g. There are all kinds of pieces to this puzzle, but it [broadcast spectrum] is one of the many.

TS22.261 is the 3GPP technical standard and system aspects that define service requirements for 5G systems. It’s known as Release 16, and it’s not finished yet. But from its inception, Release 16 has continued to address the requirements to work in conjunction with 3GPP and non-3GPP systems.

There is an absolute recognition that 3GPP doesn’t live in the world by itself. There are other standards, and the true nature of 5G has nothing to do with specific spectrum.

You say 5G, and there are some people who think it is 20 GHz, or it is millimeter wave or it’s 60 GHz. People jump to the spectrum side of it, and there is some spectrum that is being opened up for advanced radios.

But at its heart, 5G is about convergence. 5G is about multi-radios. 5G is about how do we assemble all of the available radio assets into a unified environment? How does a telco fully utilize WiFi, how does it fully utilize all the efforts that are going on in CBRS [Citizens Broadband Radio Service].

How do all of these things get pulled together in one place? That is what this 5G spec is all about. It’s about convergence. It’s about heterogeneous networks—that’s the fancy term. Hybrid networks is an easier one to think about. And we have talked for so long about this convergence of broadcast and broadband—I don’t know how many different ways I have tried to describe it, but it goes much deeper than simply it’s [3.0 is] IP-enabled.

But I can tell you that if it weren’t IP-enabled, there would be no discussion on the table.

Great, it’s IP-enabled. That means the same stuff that flows across the carrier’s [spectrum] can flow across our spectrum. Check that box off. Well, how do you control that? How do you put that as an active, living mechanism under the control of a network operator? We are doing that work.

And I say all of that because if you walked into the room [at CES] and you could have the big screen TVs and the very same 3.0 chip doing ATSC 3 on one screen and ATSC 1 on another screen. If you wanted, it could have been DVB-T, DVB-T2 or ISDB-T. It could have been some of the advanced DVB satellite [standards]. It could be any of those.

But the point is in the background of that was this whole vibrant discussion of what if broadcasters were doing something more than television. There’s a shock.

I always have to draw people’s attention to the fact that ATSC was building a television standard. We were engaged in ATSC because we wanted a broadcast standard.

What you have in ATSC 3 is a broadcast standard, a broadcast television standard, but by nature of elements that were foundational—and by the way ours, I mean down to the IPR [intellectual property rights]—we ensured that we were not precluded from doing the other things we knew were possible with a newly baked, green field broadcast standard. Now we are beginning to explore those areas.

TVT:What sort of things?

MA: A very simple example, if you want high-speed mobility, an 8K FFT [fast Fourier transform] is not good enough. 8K gets you up to 100-plus mph. But what if you want a broadcast standard that can operate at Autobahn speeds or will support bullet trains? What if you have a broadcast standard that is more than just automobiles?

Well, you need a 2K or 4K FFT—neither of which are in the ATSC 3 standard, but are fully possible if you want to create a modulator that will do a 4K FFT for example—and a receiver that will process a 4K FFT.

Guess what. We have a software-defined radio. So, we can literally create a waveform on the front end and demodulate that waveform on the backend because both ends of that are software-defined.

We are doing simple stuff first, but it will advance to different coding techniques, different modulation schemes. We are crawling. We are just starting down the road.

So, in the background in this room [at CES], there was this radio head on a big tripod and an antenna attached to it that was demonstrating to people that there are products being envisioned and prototyped and that are going to be deployed that fit directly into the mobile network operator environment.

I choose those words carefully because it wasn’t until we were having discussions with one of the major providers to the telco industry, as we are describing this, that they said you are describing an architectural element.

We said, you are absolutely right. This is building a mobile network operation a bit differently. It’s just the primary architectural element is broadcast, not unicast. It’s not to the exclusion of unicast.

TVT:A couple of years ago at the ATSC annual meeting, you made an offer to provide 1 million ATSC 3.0 mobile receiver chips for free to mobile or portable device makers. Did your CES chipset rollout get you any takers?

MA: We had a couple of conversations with dongle manufacturers who wanted to know how they would take advantage of our offer. So, we’ve now got two vendors with whom we’ve had that first level of discussion. We are getting down to how we make that happen.

I can’t give you all the details of that, but the criteria for that was simply that it’s a party that commits to putting a million of these chips into mobile and portable devices, and that is a fairly broad range of products. And they may not all be ATSC 3.

In Part II,  Mark will discuss his concept of a "broadcast market exchange," content security within ATSC 3.0 and Sinclair's plans for Next Gen TV deployment in 2019. 

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

LAS VEGAS--As Yogi Berra might have observed about this year’s CES, “It was déjà vu all over again,” (at least with regard to the next-gen TV sets being displayed by both large and small manufacturers.)

Last year, with the ink still drying on the 3.0 standard and the FCC’s green-lighting of its use by the nation’s TV stations a couple of months earlier, ATSC, NAB and CTA industry officials gathered to celebrate its arrival with a champagne toast on the opening day of the CES. However, there was not a single 3.0-capable set to be found among the super-bright, super-big, super-colorful, super-intelligent, (and, in some cases, super-expensive) television receivers that literally reached the ceiling of the Los Vegas Convention Center which hosted the 2018 show.

Fast forward a year—has there been any change in the 3.0 situation?

In a word, no! If anything, there was less ATSC 3.0 presence this time, as one TV manufacturer did put up a sign in its 2018 CES display space that touted the benefits of the new DTV transmission standard. Not even the sign was there this time.

CRITICAL MASS

While most of the TV set exhibitors quizzed about the lack of ATSC 3.0 product (which has been available since 2017 in South Korea) were silent about its absence at CES, John Taylor, senior vice president of public affairs for LG USA did offer an explanation.

“You’re a year or so early,” he said. “We’re trying to time the introduction of the product with the critical mass of Next-Gen TV broadcasting, and the whole industry seems to be moving toward a 2020 product launch.” Taylor did seem fairly certain that the 3.0 sets would be populating manufacturers’ exhibit spaces at the 2020 CES to “prime the pumps” of buyers who would be at that show to decide what to stock their stores with for the 2020 holiday buying season.

And while others in the industry have hinted that there may be a problem with delivery of some of the components needed for 3.0 sets, Taylor was quick to state otherwise.

“There’s no technology issue at all,” he said. “It’s a business marketplace consideration about the right time to introduce the product in the U.S. market. We could ship the product today. As you know, we’re shipping ATSC 3.0 TVs in Korea, but it has to make sense for the U.S. market and that’s heading towards 2020.”

Taylor noted that LG and its Zenith R&D subsidiary are providing receiver products and technical support for some of the U.S. ATSC 3.0 field trials.

THE VIEW FROM OVERSEAS

Peter Siebert, head of technology for the DVB (Digital Video Broadcast organization, a Swiss-based consortium that sets digital broadcast transmission standards for Europe, and is roughly the equivalent of the Advanced Television Systems Committee), was at the show and had a slightly more pessimistic view when asked about the appearance of ATSC 3.0 TVs at the 2020 edition of the “world’s biggest consumer electronics show.”

“I don’t think so,” said Siebert. “And the reason why I don’t think so is that there has to be a strong commitment from the broadcasting community to say ‘we will introduce the service,’ and personally from a European perspective, I don’t hear this message from the North American broadcasters.

“It’s a typical ‘chicken and egg’ problem and there must be somebody breaking it,” he continued. “The broadcasters must say ‘we offer a service.’ It doesn’t help that the industry develops products first. For example, when I look at the televisions, there are many 4K televisions on the market. However, this doesn’t mean that we have 4K broadcasts. I think the broadcaster has to make a firm commitment to introduce the service and then the receiver industry will follow.”

Siebert noted that when the United Kingdom decided to migrate from the original DVB-T (terrestrial broadcast) standard, which was struck in 1997, to an updated version, DVB-T2, which was completed in 2008, there was no “chicken and egg” situation because there was a clear commitment from the BBC for a rollout of the improved HD service via DVB-T2.

“It can go very fast if well planned,” he said, noting that the transition was accomplished in Ukraine in a single year and in two years in Germany. Siebert did admit that the move to DVB-T2 didn’t go quite so fast in every European nation, explaining that “typically, the more a country is relying on terrestrial television, the longer it takes, because you have a much bigger legacy of receivers that you have to update before you can start a new service.”

However, lack of suitable receivers didn’t seem to be an issue in the DVB-T2 transition.

“In Germany, when we went from DVB-T to DVB-T2, we had all stakeholders sitting together at a round table and making a plan on how to introduce T2,” said Siebert. “It was very clear. The broadcasters said on this date we will switch our transmissions to the new DVB-T2 specification. And it was also very clear that the consumer industry [would be] ready way before this, providing the necessary equipment. So, at the time the switchover happened, quite a high percentage of receiving equipment was ready. I think it is necessary that all stakeholders sit together, to agree on a plan and then stick to the plan.”

THE VIEW FROM SINCLAIR

Since ATSC 3.0’s inception, one of its biggest backers has been the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and for the past several years the broadcast station group has been at CES to promote the standard, even operating a transmitter on Black Mountain south of Las Vegas to provide TV set exhibitors with 3.0 signals to demonstrate reception of OTA UHD video at the show. Sinclair has also hosted demonstrations of 3.0 technologies a few blocks away from the convention halls in a suite at the Wynn Hotel.

Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s vice president of advanced technology, was on hand this year to offer his take on the absent ATSC 3.0 hardware.

“I think it’s very simple,” said Aitken. “There two issues. The difficult one is content protection, and this issue has not been answered. You’ve got a lot of dancing around on the part of the networks with respect to what their requirements are for content protection, and not a single solution that has been put on the table has been supported by all of the content providers—and I might add content distributors or MVPDs. So, you have a bit of a stalemate. For me, it’s a fairly easy one to resolve. I look at it and say as a starting point ‘if Widevine [DRM] is good enough for Netflix, why isn’t it good enough for broadcast?’

“The networks will always try to extract the broadcaster from out of the middle of the relationship with the consumer,” continued Aitken, noting that reluctance of networks and program providers to allow their content to be transmitted by affiliates deploying ATSC-M/H [aka Mobile DTV] was one of the reasons for that mobile initiative’s ultimate demise.

“I think there’s been a soft promise made on the part of broadcasters that we’re willing to come to a solution. There’s been an unwillingness on the part of the large content players to sit down and really try to solve that problem, at least with Sinclair. They have their own views and their views are not shared equally with all broadcasters. And so, for the very same reasons that we ended up with Dolby AC-4 as an abstraction of the Atmos production environment in Hollywood, the issue of content protection is being driven by those same Hollywood entities, which for a broadcaster is driven through the network.”

Aitken summed up the situation by stating: “It is a political problem, absolutely.”

Aitken said that Sinclair will light up 26 markets by the end of 2019.

“There’s a requirement by the FCC that there be some replication across ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0,” he said. “There may have to be an opportunity to force that issue at a regulatory level, which nobody really wants. But at the end of the day sometimes you solve problems by spilling a little blood first.”

THE CHIP

Despite his disappointment with this stalemate in the rollout of 3.0, Aitken was in a celebratory mood as he announced the release of an integrated circuit specially designed and fabricated for Sinclair. The chip’s unveiling marked the end of a nearly two-year journey that began with a pledge to supply free ATSC 3.0 demodulator chipsets to any company manufacturing smartphones or other handheld viewing devices that would commit to including them in their products.

Explaining the genesis of the project, Aitken—who is a firm believer that broadcast television’s future lies in mobile devices—said that after surveying existing 3.0 chip products, he quickly came to the conclusion that none were really satisfactory for mobile device applications.

“We knew what sort of power the available chips consumed,” said Aitken. “It’s easy enough to guess the power requirement specs, because it’s almost like a curling iron if you’ve ever put your finger on one. If we were ever going to have a mobile-enabled device—something that was suitable for embedding in phones, something that could couple-up to a cellphone without draining the life out of the phone—we would have to create it.”

Frustrated that none of the large consumer electronics firms showed much interest in mobile TV products, he decided to go it alone.

“We went literally to the top of the ladder, and at the end of the day, they saw the world the way that they choose to see the world,” he said. “They saw no place for mobile ATSC; certainly not at this time.”

Aitken recalled an Indian company with a reputation for low-power consumption specialty integrated circuit design—Saankhya Labs—from his involvement with ATSC M/H—and contacted them.

“I decided to pick up the phone and have a conversation with Praag Naik, who is the president,” said Aitken. “We had a conversation, and it became evident that we shared a much higher-level understanding of what was possible, so Sinclair invested.”

The result was the creation of a very low-power consumption chip that can easily be incorporated within a mobile viewing device without substantially decreasing its battery life or increasing its physical profile.

NOT JUST FOR ATSC 3.0

Aitken said that as Saankhya had an established reputation in software-defined radio (SDR) technology, it was decided early on to create a chip that was signal agnostic, with software dictating which of a dozen or so digital TV signals it will decode, including ATSC 1.0 and the European DVB-T2 standard.

“We’re not building an ATSC 3 chip,” he said. “We’re building a chip that can go in set-top boxes, in televisions, in tablets, for any global broadcast standard, including digital radio. You level your risk by having a multistandard chip.”

Aitken says that at present about 1,000 of the chipsets have been created, and the foundry is ready to roll out millions more. Asked about takers for the free devices, he acknowledged that this has been a bit of a hard sell, but sees some light on the horizon.

“We’ve offered a major carrier five million chips. We’ve also offered the engineering of that chip into the device and we’ve offered the availability of the IP data stream, but that has not been enough to entice them to do that yet, but we are knee-deep into discussions with a USB manufacturer.”

Aitken views this as a first step to getting the chips into mobile devices, explaining that they would be part of a USB-C “dongle” equipped with an embedded antenna and designed to plug into mobile devices. And by the chip’s not being specific to ATSC 3.0, the dongle could be used virtually anywhere that digital over-the-air broadcasting is taking place.

“It would host DVB-T2, ISDB-T, ATSC 1, and other standards just by changing the software,” said Aitken. “It could be used in any part of the world.” 

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

LAS VEGAS—ATSC 3.0 reception in devices ranging from televisions, home gateways and set-top boxes to mobile consumer devices and automobiles today took a major step forward with the launch of two new digital television demodulator chips supporting Next-Gen TV.

The Sinclair Broadcast Group’s subsidiary ONE Media 3.0 LLC and Saankhya Labs in collaboration with VeriSilicon and Samsung Foundry announced the multi-standard System-on-a-Chip demodulators at the 2019 International CES in Las Vegas.

"These mobile 3.0 chips validate the 'sea change' in over-the-air distribution of, not only television, but all digital data,” said Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media 3.0. “Broadcasters are doing their part by deploying the NextGen transmission facilities, and now there will be devices enabled to receive that data – personalized and in mobile form. This chip is the key to that disruptive future in a 5G world."

Based on Saankhya’s software defined radio platform, the demodulator chips support 12 DTV standards, including ATSC 3.0, DVB-T2, ISDB-T and satellite and cable standards for TVs, home gateways, set-top boxes, automotive applications and mobile use.

The new SL3000 demod-only chip is designed for linear TV applications in TVs and other home devices. The SL4000 supports mobile and portable applications. It is intended to accelerate adoption of 3.0 in direct-to-mobile TV applications as well as broadcast-broadband converged uses.

Saankhya Labs designed and developed the demodulator SoC with ASIC design and manufacturing services from VeriSilicon and using Samsung Foundry’s 28FDS (Fully Depleted SOI process technology).

"We are excited to bring disruptive changes to the broadcasting industry with the launch of our most advanced mobile and terrestrial TV demodulator SoC,” said Parag Naik, CEO of Saankhya Labs Pvt Ltd.

“This mobile TV SoC is an essential component of our patented broadcast offload convergence solution. This will help broadcasters and telecom service providers enable their vision to bring unmatched video viewing experience anywhere, anytime, to the consumer,” he said.

More information is available on the ONE Media 3.0 website.

For comprehensive coverage on ATSC 3.0, visit TV Technology's ATSC3 silo.