NEW YORK—The IAB Tech Lab has announced the release of the Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines v2.3, an update to the industry's technical framework for measuring podcast downloads, audience, and ad delivery using server-side log data.

The updated guidelines clarify how measurement should be applied across both audio and video podcasts distributed through open RSS feeds and podcast applications that rely on server-side file delivery. The guidelines are available for public comment for 30 days until August 19, 2026.

[More on the growing interest in video podcasting in the new TV Tech, Radio World and TVBEurope ebook here.]

"Measurement only works at scale if everyone is counting the same way," said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. "These updates give the industry clearer guidance for today's podcast ecosystem and help reduce the inconsistencies that slow deals down and create unnecessary questions. That is good for buyers, publishers, and everyone responsible for reporting the numbers."

More specifically, v2.3 updates terminology from "listener" to "podcast consumer" and adds guidance around URL prefix measurement, RSS enclosure URL changes, invalid traffic considerations, and the application of different measurement window approaches.

These updates also provide clearer implementation guidance for organizations responsible for measuring podcast audiences and advertising delivery.

The change of terminology lays a foundation for work in 2027 on v3.0 guideline, which will be focusing on the growth area of streaming video podcasts. That next version of the guidelines is currently in development by the Podcast Technical Working Group, and anyone interested in supporting their development should email techlab@iabtechlab.com to join.

"Server-side log data remains the backbone of podcast measurement, and these updates reflect the continued evolution of the medium," said Hugo Martel, senior vice president of podcast and content delivery, Triton Digital. "Clearer guidance for video podcast measurement is a welcome addition, helping the industry adapt as podcast consumption expands across formats while giving publishers and advertisers greater confidence in the insights they rely on."

In releasing the new version, the IAB Tech Labs also noted that the podcast ecosystem continues to rely heavily on server-side log analysis because most podcast applications do not provide client-side playback confirmation yet. The updated guidelines help members reduce measurement discrepancies, better account for video podcasts, improve the handling of duplicate downloads and platform-driven anomalies, and promote more consistent reporting across the marketplace. For buyers, the guidance strengthens confidence that reported downloads, audience, and ad delivery are being counted consistently. For publishers, hosting providers, measurement vendors, and platforms, it provides clearer implementation guidance that supports a more trusted podcast advertising marketplace.

"These updates give the market more clarity around how podcast audiences and ad delivery should be measured, which ultimately benefits everyone relying on those numbers," said Robert Freeland, founder & CTO, Podtrac. "Our industry depends on trusted measurement that everyone can understand and apply consistently. These updates help bring that consistency."

The Podcast Technical Working Group led the development of Version 2.3 through industry collaboration and member input. IAB Tech Lab encourages publishers, platforms, measurement providers, and other stakeholders to review the draft and provide feedback during the public comment period before the guidelines are finalized.

To learn more about the Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines v2.3, click https://iabtechlab.com/podcastmeasurement2dot3

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—SMPTE has launched its 110th Anniversary Campaign, a fundraising initiative that honors a legacy of achievement while investing in the organization's vision for the future.

The campaign will support strategic initiatives that advance SMPTE's Standards, Education and Community programs, ensuring they continue to drive innovation, develop industry talent and connect the global media technology industry.

“As we ring in our 110^th anniversary year, there’s a lot to celebrate and a lot of work still to be done,” said SMPTE president Rich Welsh. “Our industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace, from AI-driven and cloud-based workflows to new approaches for content creation, distribution and even authenticity—making SMPTE’s role more vital than ever. This campaign represents a commitment to investing in initiatives that strengthen the foundations of our industry and ensure SMPTE continues to support current and future generations of media technologists.”

The SMPTE 110th Anniversary Campaign will help position SMPTE as a leader in the global media technology community into its next century. Campaign support will advance programs that expand access to technical knowledge, democratize standards access, support responsible innovation in AI and emerging technologies, cultivate the next generation of leaders, deepen local and global community engagement and ensure SMPTE remains prepared to address the evolving needs of the industry for decades to come.

“SMPTE has brought the global media technology community together for 110 years,” said Sally-Ann D’Amato, SMPTE executive director. “Today, more than ever, the industry needs a trusted community where people can share expertise, exchange ideas and address the challenges and opportunities shaping the future of media technology. SMPTE brings together media companies, creators, technologists, educators, students, and leaders from across the industry, and the 110th Anniversary Campaign will help ensure SMPTE continues to serve as that vital resource for the industry, powering another century of innovation.”

More information is available on SMPTE’s website.

WASHINGTON—ATSC has completed a major revision of its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television, marking the first comprehensive update to the industry reference since 2013.

ATSC said the revision, which expands the guidance beyond traditional television to address today's hybrid broadcast and streaming environment, is designed to help media organizations comply with loudness requirements and maintain a high quality viewing experience as they continue to transition toward IP-based and hybrid broadcast-broadband delivery models.

"As audiences increasingly consume content across both over-the-air and streaming platforms, maintaining a consistent listening experience has become more important than ever," said Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC. "This update to A/85 gives the industry practical, contemporary guidance that reflects today's production and distribution workflows while preserving the high-quality viewer experience broadcasters have worked to deliver for many years."

The newly revised ATSC Recommended Practice modernizes the document with numerous technical clarifications and introduces two important new annexes:

• Guidance for establishing and maintaining consistent loudness for streaming media services using both metadata-based and non-metadata-based audio codecs.
• A new Loudness and True Peak Quick Reference designed to simplify implementation for engineers and content providers.

More specifically, the revised A/85 Recommended Practice provides recommendations for audio measurement, monitoring, production, metadata management, dynamic-range control and loudness management throughout the content creation and delivery chain. By incorporating lessons learned from more than a decade of implementation, as well as addressing emerging streaming workflows, the document helps ensure consistent audio presentation regardless of how viewers access content, the ATSC reported.

The revised A/85 Recommended Practice can be downloaded here: https://www.atsc.org/atsc-documents/type/1-0-recommended-practices/

As broadcasters await a decision from the FCC to shut down the current ATSC 1.0 broadcast format, the industry’s leading lobbyist is reiterating its support for ATSC 3.0, (aka “NextGen TV”).

Since last October, when the FCC voted on a proposal to determine a date when to sunset ATSC 1.0, debate has swirled around the timing of the shutdown and what consumer protections will be in place to ensure viewers don’t lose access to free over the air broadcasting. The commission is expected to announce a final decision by the end of 2026.

The NAB, which has promoted NextGen TV as a way for broadcasters to better compete in the increasingly complex TV landscape, told the FCC six months ago that continuing uncertainty over the lack of a date is hampering progress.

“The record developed here confirms that the Commission’s central task is no longer to debate whether NextGen TV is worth pursuing—stakeholders across the ecosystem recognize that it is—but to decide whether the transition will be allowed to succeed through an orderly, coordinated framework, or instead be stranded indefinitely in a regime of regulatory uncertainty and half-measures, all to the detriment of the viewing public,” the NAB said in comments filed with the commission in February.

Currently approximately 76% of U.S. households can receive a NextGen TV signal, according to the ATSC. In April, Pearl TV Group, a consortium of broadcasters and tech suppliers, announced the launch of an initiative to develop consumer converter boxes that could retail for under $60.

The association has also launched a campaign to help preserve live sports on free over the air TV, again noting the increased competition from streaming giants.

The ability to access live sports over free TV, competition from Silicon Valley and the very survival of broadcasting were tied together in NAB’s latest blog. The association also took aim at viewers who criticize the content protection aspects of ATSC 3.0, with many claiming that certain devices on the market don’t carry the necessary software to decode DRM-protected signals.

“ATSC 3.0 includes security and service-protection mechanisms as part of its technical framework, just as modern communications and entertainment platforms routinely protect their content and distribution systems, the NAB said. “There is an important reason for these protections. Broadcasters invest substantial resources to secure sports, entertainment and other high-value programming. They also invest every day in local journalists, meteorologists, production professionals and the technology needed to keep communities informed and safe.”

“Without reasonable safeguards, unauthorized businesses can capture local stations’ signals and resell them at scale without permission or compensation,” the association added.

NAB also criticized the possibility that the broadcast industry could be saddled with outdated technology, impacting its competitiveness.

“Requiring broadcasters to operate a decades-old standard forever would effectively make free, over-the-air television the only major communications platform that is never permitted to modernize,” it said. “That would not protect viewers. Over time, it would leave viewers with an increasingly outdated service while streaming platforms, wireless providers and global technology companies continue to innovate.”

NAB’s latest blog can be accessed here.

Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR color verification tool as well as its Matchbox Panorama timing solution at IBC2026, Sept. 11-14 at the RAI Amsterdam. Expanding its capabilities beyond timing and synchronization, Spectra helps engineers confirm that color remains accurate as pictures move through complex production and distribution routes, the company said.

Live workflows now carry more formats and versions through the same facility, including SDR and HDR outputs from a single production. As signals pass through converters, routers, processors, LUTs and software workflows, one configuration error can leave the program technically wrong even when the picture looks acceptable during initial checks.

“In the pressure of set-up, errors in a video source can be missed because there is a recognizable picture,” said Russell Johnson, Director at Hitomi. “If the color path is wrong, that problem can travel through the workflow and affect the final program.

“Engineers are dealing with more sources, more formats and more delivery paths than ever before,” Johnson added. “With MatchBox, we made timing checks fast, objective and simple. With Spectra, we are applying the same thinking, giving teams certainty that the image is being handled correctly before it reaches the viewer.”

Hitomi’s color verification solution generates a defined set of test colors at the source, sends them through the normal program route and analyzes them at the end. By comparing the received colors with the expected result, it can highlight incorrect LUTs, unexpected conversions and routing errors between SDR and HDR paths.

That gives engineers a fast, objective check which reduces reliance on visual judgement alone and helps catch configuration errors before they become visible on air, according to the company.

MatchBox Panorama will also make its IBC debut following its launch at the 2026 NAB Show in April. Matchbox provides a wide view of timing throughout the entire production workflow of a live broadcast. Panorama brings timing measurements from across complex production workflows into one central view, helping teams identify where delay is being introduced across facilities, remote production and software-based environments.

MatchBox Panorama is a standalone software product designed for larger production environments. It is already proven within the Grass Valley AMPP ecosystem, with further integrations with other manufacturers to be released soon.

Hitomi will be in Stand 10.A40 during the show.

For most of broadcast history, captioning was treated as a metadata problem. QC systems checked whether caption data was present, whether files were correctly formatted, and whether character encoding was valid. If a CEA-608 or CEA-708 stream was embedded and a sidecar file — SCC, SRT, WebVTT — was properly formed, the asset passed. Whether the captions accurately reflected what was spoken was largely outside the scope of automated review.

FCC requirements in the United States and emerging mandates across Europe have moved from nominal compliance gates to substantive quality standards. Caption files that pass every technical check can still fail on accuracy, synchronization, or readability.

What broadcast and streaming organizations need is content-level validation: verifying that captions are accurate, properly timed, readable, and ready for multiplatform delivery. Captioning is becoming part of the broader media intelligence layer — one that evaluates a caption track against the content it accompanies, treating accuracy, timing, readability, and compliance as properties the system actively measures.

Caption Accuracy Starts With the Audio Track
The practical difference between metadata validation and content validation shows up in what each one misses. A traditional QC pass confirms that a caption file is present and well- formed. It does not detect dialogue that was misheard during transcription, lines that were omitted, or text that lags consistently behind speech — all failure modes that reach viewers and, increasingly, regulators.

Content-intelligent captioning systems work directly with audio. Modern automatic speech recognition (ASR) models transcribe spoken dialogue from the audio track, producing a reference against which existing captions can be checked, or generating a new track directly. Current-generation ASR achieves word error rates below 5% on standard broadcast dialogue — comparable to experienced human transcribers, and substantially lower than error rates produced under the time pressure of manual captioning at scale.

Accurate transcription addresses what is said; alignment addresses when it appears. AI alignment engines analyze audio waveforms to synchronize caption timing against actual speech, accounting for pace variation and pausing that fixed-offset methods miss. Captions that drift from dialogue constitute a real accessibility failure, and automated alignment catches those errors systematically across an entire content library. These systems can also surface compliance risk before delivery, flagging assets where timing drift, word error rate, or reading speed exceeds regulatory thresholds.

How Captions Render on Screen
A caption that is correctly transcribed and timed can still be difficult to follow if segmented poorly. Breaking mid-phrase or mid-clause forces viewers to piece together meaning across display windows. This presents a functional problem for all audiences and a more significant one for viewers with hearing impairments who rely on captions as their primary communication channel.

Rather than breaking text at fixed character counts, machine learning models identify natural language boundaries, such as clause endings, breath pauses, and semantic units, then segment accordingly. The result is captions that read more naturally. Emerging standards reflect this: quality evaluation is increasingly extending from file validity to content readability, including reading speed, display duration, and caption segmentation.

A complete evaluation also requires reference to the video frame. Text that covers a speaker's face, obscures on-screen graphics, or overlaps burnt-in text creates problems that fall outside the scope of transcription-level review. Managing visual placement has traditionally required frame-by-frame manual review or post-production adjustment — both slow and unsystematic at the scale modern workflows demand.

Video analysis integrated into current captioning platforms detects faces, on-screen graphics, and critical visual elements, then adjusts caption positioning automatically. These tools can also prevent captions from spanning scene-change boundaries, a source of visual discontinuity invisible to metadata validation. The caption track is evaluated against the full audio-visual context of the content it serves — a quality assurance step that operates where file-level checks end.

From One Validated Track to Many
Once a base caption track has been validated, the same content intelligence can carry through to multilingual delivery. Machine translation pipelines generate multilingual versions from that source track without a proportional increase in localization effort. Additionally, systems incorporating large language models can preserve timing, segmentation logic, and reading-speed compliance across the target language, so translated tracks inherit the quality properties of the source without a separate QC cycle.

Broadcast, OTT, and streaming platforms each impose distinct caption format requirements, and a caption track that passes QC for one delivery destination may fail for another. Generating and validating multiple output formats — SCC, WebVTT, TTML, and others — within the same pipeline means format-specific compliance is confirmed once, upstream, before distribution splits across platforms.

Accuracy That Compounds With Use
One persistent limitation of traditional captioning pipelines is that errors recur without systematic correction. When a captioning process mishandles a recurring term, such as a character name, an athlete, or a brand, that error propagates across multiple assets with no mechanism to resolve it at the source.

Content-intelligent platforms address this through a continuous learning loop. When operators review and correct AI-generated captions, those corrections are captured and used to fine-tune the underlying model. Over successive production cycles, the system becomes progressively more accurate for that organization's specific content mix, speakers, and terminology. This provides a meaningful advantage over static vendor relationships, where the same errors resurface without correction.

Moving Quality Decisions Upstream
These capabilities move captioning from a production checkpoint into a media quality system. Content-intelligent workflows generate structured, validated caption data that feeds directly into MAM systems, localization platforms, and distribution pipelines. The caption track arrives at each stage as a verified asset, ready for use without additional QC. That changes where quality decisions happen. Compliance risk is surfaced before delivery.

Multilingual tracks inherit the quality properties of the source. Format-specific requirements are confirmed once, before distribution splits across platforms. The underlying shift is from discovering caption failures at the point of delivery, where correction is costly and timelines are unforgiving, to catching them at the point of production.

NEW YORK—In an important development that will improve ad planning and measurement by establishing standardized definitions for digital video product types and their advertising formats, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released the Redefining Media Types (RMT) Standard for public comment.

Developed with IAB Tech Lab, the standard is open for public comment from brands, agencies, publishers, ad tech partners, networks, and other industry stakeholders through August 8.

“As the video marketplace has expanded across platforms, formats, and viewing experiences, the industry needs a more consistent way to define and classify digital video environments,” said Jamie Finstein, vice president, Media Center at IAB. “The Redefining Media Types Standard is intended to give buyers, sellers, publishers, and platforms a shared, future-proof language that improves planning, execution, and measurement across the entire ecosystem.”

“Many of the technical systems supporting digital advertising still rely on inconsistent or outdated classifications for video,” IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said. “By partnering with IAB on this framework, we can help connect these definitions to the technical standards and infrastructure needed to support adoption across the industry.”

The RMT Standard is aims to create comprehensive, standardized definitions for digital video product types and their associated advertising formats, including connected TV, online video, social video, FAST, video podcasting and retail video. The definitions consider channels, screens, context and ad formats, with the goal of serving as an authoritative guide for media agencies, publishers, networks, technology partners, and brands.

The standard addresses a core problem in video advertising: legacy media classification terms were built to describe distribution technology and business models, not consumer experience.

For brands and agencies, inconsistent definitions can lead to misaligned planning strategies, incomparable measurement across platforms, and media investments that do not reflect the intended viewing environment. For publishers and platforms, inconsistent terminology can create confusion around inventory packaging, monetization, and buyer expectations. For ad tech and measurement providers, the lack of standardized classification makes it more difficult to support interoperability and consistent reporting across systems.

The IAB noted that the RMT Standard provides a two-layer classification system designed to support both strategic planning and operational execution.

The first layer organizes video advertising environments into four macro buckets grounded in consumer viewing experience, including “Lean Back Viewing”, “Personal Screen Viewing” and “Passive and Communal Viewing.” These buckets are based on how a viewer is cognitively and physically oriented to the screen, rather than the technology delivering the content or the business model funding it.

The second layer applies binary impression-level attributes that allow individual impressions to be classified with precision across platforms and devices, including:

• Sound state
• Skip-enabled versus completion-required
• Full-screen presentation
• Addressability
• Availability of signals
• Measurability
• Device
• Ad Formats

This operational layer gives planners, buyers, measurement vendors, and ad tech platforms a shared set of signals that can be used at the point of transaction, the IAB explained.

Together, the two layers support both planning and technical execution. The macro buckets give the industry a shared language for strategy and cross-platform planning, while the operational attribute layer provides a framework for impression-level classification that can be encoded into OpenRTB bid requests and Project Eidos taxonomy fields.

The framework is intended to create clearer expectations and more consistent communication across the buy-side, sell-side, and technology ecosystem by:

• Helping brands and agencies align media investment with the intended consumer viewing experience.
• Giving publishers and media owners more consistent ways to package and describe inventory.
• Supporting more interoperable reporting and measurement across platforms.
• Providing ad tech and measurement providers with standardized signals that can be used operationally at the point of transaction.
• Creating a more stable standards foundation as video formats, platforms and viewing behaviors evolve, and new media types enter the mix.

A number of industry players praised the release in these statements:

• “Given the extent of change in the video marketplace, from what and where people watch to how advertisers execute ad campaigns, it was critical to come together as an industry and develop a new, contemporary video marketplace framework,” said Adam Gerber, head of strategy, Media.net. “The ambiguity and obsolescence of legacy definitions and ways of working were holding back growth and creating friction in the market. This new standard attempts to fix that and provide a common language for all marketplace participants to apply within the context of their individual businesses.”
• “With the constant innovation and increased complexity of our digital ecosystem, it is important for the industry to have consistent guiding principles in place,” said Alex Stone, senor vice president, managing director, Horizon Media. “These IAB standards are our guardrails which we will use as our progression accelerates for years to come.”
• “As streaming and cross-platform video consumption continue to evolve, premium video remains one of the most effective environments for brands,” said Michael Reidy, senior vice president, Small and Medium Business Growth, Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal. “As an industry, we have an opportunity to align around clearer, more consistent standards that drive greater media effectiveness and deliver simplicity for our partners across buyers, sellers, and technology platforms.”
• “The way people watch video has changed dramatically, but the language the industry uses to describe it hasn’t kept pace,” said Colt Cheadle, senior manager, sales activation, Spectrum Reach. “As video continues to evolve across platforms, screens, and viewing experiences, establishing a common framework is essential to reducing complexity, improving collaboration, and helping buyers and sellers make more informed decisions."

The public comment period for the RMT Standard is open from July 8 through Aug. 8. IAB and the IAB Tech Lab will continue working with industry stakeholders, working group participants, and standards contributors to refine the framework and support adoption across the ecosystem.

To learn more about the Redefining Media Types Standard and to provide feedback, click here.

NEW YORK—The IAB Tech Lab digital advertising technical standards-setting body has announced SupplyChain v1.1, a significant proposed upgrade to the OpenRTB SupplyChain Object, commonly known as “schain” that is designed to give advertisers and buyers a more complete view of how programmatic bid requests are generated and handled.

“This is one of the most significant transparency enhancements to the digital advertising supply chain in years,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. “Advertisers deserve to understand not only who participates in a transaction financially, but also who takes full control of a given request before it reaches a buyer. By expanding SupplyChain to include technical custody, we're providing the industry with a more complete picture of the programmatic ecosystem and creating a stronger foundation for trust, accountability, and investment in the open internet.”

IAB Tech Lab also invited the industry to participate in the public comment period until August 21, 2026.

The update, developed through extensive work by the Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group and guided by the Programmatic Supply Chain Commit Group, expands the role of schain beyond the traditional payment-flow view of the supply chain.

The change will allow buyers to see not only which companies participate in the commercial flow of a transaction, but also which entities take technical custody of a bid request as it moves through systems such as Prebid, ad servers, SSAI platforms, SDKs, wrappers, and other infrastructure.

The result, the IAB Tech Lab reported, is a more complete and accurate view of the programmatic supply path. The update is expected to help buyers improve supply-path optimization, reduce duplicative bid requests, and better identify all companies involved in the programmatic transaction.

In announcing the update, the IAB Tech Lab also released statements from industry leaders across the buy side, sell side, and advertising infrastructure ecosystem voicing strong support for SupplyChain v1.1. Those statements included:

• “OpenRTB exists to make programmatic advertising more interoperable, more scalable, and more trustworthy,” said Neal Richter, VP, Amazon Ads, and Chair of the IAB Tech Lab Board of Directors. “This update is an important step forward because it gives buyers a clearer understanding of how supply is actually created and transmitted. Greater transparency is how we build a healthier marketplace and give advertisers more confidence to invest in the open internet.”
• “The open internet should be the most transparent, accountable, and efficient place for advertisers to spend money,” said Paul Bannister, Chief Strategy Officer, Raptive. “This change helps make that possible. When buyers can see both the commercial path and the technical path of a bid request, they can make better decisions, reward high-quality supply, and reduce waste caused by opaque or duplicative infrastructure.”
• “Longer supply chains are not automatically worse supply chains,” said Rob Hazan, The Trade Desk. “A longer chain that accurately discloses the parties involved in the impression is better for buyers than a short chain that hides important information. With fully traceable supply chains, the industry can finally move beyond simplistic node-counting and toward a more sophisticated understanding of which supply paths best correlate to advertiser performance and outcomes.”
• “Advertisers should not have to choose between scale and clarity,” said Chris Kane, Founder, Jounce Media. “The best supply paths are the ones buyers can understand. By expanding schain to include technical custody, the industry gets closer to a world where efficiency is measurable, duplication is easier to identify, and value-added partners can be distinguished from unnecessary hops.”

The OpenRTB Working Group considered multiple implementation approaches and recommended a model that adds custody-taking entities directly to the main schain, using the hp=0 designation when an entity is not part of the payment flow.

This approach preserves the integrity of the existing schain model while giving buyers a fuller view of technical participation in the bid request lifecycle.

The Working Group also recognized that, in many cases, schains will become longer as transparency improves. To support adoption and minimize disruption, IAB Tech Lab will provide rollout guidance recommending that SSPs and DSPs coordinate staged testing, validate parsing behavior, monitor bid health, and progressively scale SupplyChain v1.1 traffic.

The proposed update also reinforces the open and collaborative nature of OpenRTB. The specification has long served as the common language for real-time bidding across the digital advertising ecosystem, and this change reflects months of discussion among companies across the buy side, sell side, and infrastructure layers.

SupplyChain v1.1 is intended to help buyers understand three critical dimensions of a bid request: how it originated, who took technical custody of it, and which parties participated in the payment flow. Together, those signals can improve trust, reduce ambiguity, and help the market direct spend toward the most efficient and highest-quality supply paths.

To review the guidance visit https://iabtechlab.com/supplychainv1dot1

SMPTE, has announced that it is making its entire Standards catalog is free to the global media technology community. This includes all published SMPTE Standards, Recommended Practices, Engineering Guidelines and Registered Disclosure Documents (RDDs), as well as all future releases.

For more than a century, SMPTE Standards have provided a foundation for the entertainment technology industry. By removing barriers to access, this milestone is expected to accelerate adoption and implementation, strengthen interoperability, and help drive the next generation of innovation.

“This was a decision we did not make lightly,” says SMPTE President Rich Welsh. “For 110 years, SMPTE has evolved alongside the media technology industry, helping to drive change and innovation — and we’re not stopping now.

“Our industry is confronting transformative shifts, from IP-based workflows to AI authenticity and content provenance, and we find ourselves at another inflection point. We listened to our Members, Partners and the global Standards community, and the answer was clear: Interoperability is essential to the future of media. Now is the time to open the gates and ensure the next generation of media technology is built on a stronger, more accessible foundation.”

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—SMPTE has launched its summer 2026 education lineup, which includes two standalone courses, an intensive boot camp and a hands-on practical lab built to develop expertise in IP networking and SMPTE ST 2110.

Introduction to IP Networks and the ST 2110 Intensive Boot Camp begin June 11, with Understanding ST 2110 starting later in the summer.

Introduction to IP Networks (ITIPN), June 11-July 9, provides a foundation in IP networking suited to those new to the field as well as experienced professionals seeking a refresher. Participants work through every layer of the network stack, cover multicast and protocols, such as DNS and RTP, and gain hands-on experience with Wireshark, earning a certificate of completion and eligibility for the SMPTE Practical Lab.

The comprehensive ST 2110 Intensive Boot Camp for IP Networking Professionals, June 11-Sept. 1, includes 20 modules across three courses, Introduction to IP Networks, Understanding ST 2110 and IP Network Design. Participants progress from networking fundamentals through PTP timing, synchronization and redundancy, network design and operational change management. Live coaching sessions, led by technologists from organizations, including the EBU, Lawo, Arista, Cisco and Meinberg, run Tuesdays and Thursdays and are recorded for on-demand access. Participants who complete the program and pass the final exam earn the industry-recognized SMPTE Certificate of Achievement.

Starting later in the summer, Understanding ST 2110, July 21-Sept. 1, offers an in-depth, practical exploration of the ST 2110 standard, covering uncompressed and compressed video, audio and data encapsulation, timing and synchronization, redundancy and network traffic shaping.

The SMPTE Practical Lab, available to those who complete Introduction to IP Networks, Understanding ST 2110 or the full Boot Camp, provides a sandbox environment in which to design, sync and troubleshoot live-production workflows. The Practical Lab is made possible by the support of partners, including Lawo Academy, Arista, Blackmagic Design, Meinberg, Bridge Technologies, Matrox and AJA Video Systems.

The standalone courses and the boot camp are instructor-led with live coaching sessions recorded and available on demand within 24 hours so participants can take part from any time zone.

“The move to IP is one of the most significant shifts our industry has seen, and our goal is to make the expertise behind it accessible to everyone who needs it,” said Maja Davidovic, director of education at SMPTE. “Our instructors are real-world practitioners who design and run these systems every day, our live sessions bring in special guest participants, and the learning stays hands-on and interactive throughout. Whether you’re taking your first steps in IP networking or preparing to lead a full ST 2110 migration, you'll be working through real challenges alongside the people shaping the field.”

SMPTE is offering member and non-member pricing for the courses, including:

• Introduction to IP Networks (ITIPN): $399 for members and $599 for nonmembers.
• Understanding ST 2110: $399 and $599.
• ST 2110 Intensive Boot Camp: $799 and $999.
• Practical Lab: $99 and $199.

Student and hardship discounts are always available for all SMPTE Education courses. Registration is available online.

WASHINGTON—Sam Matheny, CEO of newly launched Merkhet Solutions, today told a House subcommittee that the country is becoming “dangerously overdependent” on GPS satellites for delivery of precise timing and positioning data.

Merkhet Solutions is the company spun off from the National Association of Broadcasters to develop commercial uses for the Broadcast Positioning System, a terrestrial backup to GPS. In testimony before the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Matheny warned lawmakers that GPS disruptions from jamming, spoofing, cyberattacks or natural failures could endanger critical infrastructure including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services.

These “risks endanger virtually every American critical infrastructure sector, including energy, telecommunications, data centers and financial services, where a disruption to precision time can trigger grid instability, network outages and lost transactions,” Matheny said.

BPS provides a backup to GPS by leveraging the nation’s TV broadcast transmission infrastructure to deliver precise timing information. “BPS is a patented terrestrial timing and position technology that leverages existing high-power broadcast infrastructure and licensed spectrum already covering the United States,” Matheny told the subcommittee. “BPS was first conceived by my team at NAB in 2021, and you can think of it as the terrestrial equivalent of GPS.”

A potential loss of GPS would affect national security and pose an economic risk of $1 billion in losses per day, Matheny testified.

Matheny laid out five BPS advantages, including:

• An infrastructure that is already in place.
• Transmission of BPS signals from high-power, tall towers in diverse locations, making it difficult to jam or spoof at scale.
• BPS uses existing licensed spectrum.
• BPS supports unlimited simultaneous users, meaning no bottlenecks—an essential element for emergency and critical infrastructure applications.
• BPS is independent of GPS and other global navigation satellite systems, functioning even when GPS is compromised.

Congress can help advance the speed and scale at which BPS can begin offering reliable GPS backup service, Matheny said.

“First, Congress should help accelerate BPS installation and operations through funding for traceable time, station hardware, calibration and ongoing network operations and monitoring,” he said.

Congress also “should support and work” with the Trump Administration in designating a lead agency to “expedite the activation of BPS and other complements to GPS,” he said.

“Finally, Congress should encourage the Federal Communications Commission to complete the important work it has already initiated on ATSC 3.0,” Matheny said. “In addition to the significant benefits to television viewers, including upgraded picture and sound and better emergency alerting, the full benefits of BPS cannot be harnessed until the FCC completes its work on the ATSC 3.0 transition.”

More information on Merkhet Solution is available on the Merkhet website.

WASHINGTON—At its annual NextGen Broadcast Conference this week, ATSC honored Julia Kenyon of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) with the 2026 Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award.

“Julia is an excellent consensus builder and techno-diplomat who is a graceful and very competent leader,” ATSC President Madeleine Noland said. “She knows how to help groups get things done efficiently and collegially, which is a real art. Not only has she led multiple ATSC committees, but Julia also has a terrific sense of humor and is able to blend levity with the serious nature of standards work. She is always curious, and most recently has been helping ATSC participants really lean into the benefits of developing artificial intelligence tools.”

Kenyon has served as Vice Chair of ATSC Specialist Group on Interactive Environment (TG3/S38), Vice Chair of ATSC Implementation on Conformance (IT-3), and Chair of ATSC Specialist Group on Management and Protocols (TG3/S33). Additionally, for more than three years, she has served as CTA’s lead technical representative for the NextGen TV Test Suite development, working not only with ATSC but as chair of CTA’s own groups that work with the test suite.

Kenyon also guided ATSC in the development of A/381, the recommended practice for use of the broadcaster application for NextGen TV.

“Julia Kenyon brings unique skills to the challenge of ensuring NextGen TVs work properly with the advanced services ATSC 3.0 broadcasts provide,” said Brian Markwalter, vice chair of the ATSC board of directors and senior vice president of research and standards for the CTA. “Besides her visible leadership in ATSC and CTA standards groups, Julia directs the TV testing program that backs the NextGen TV logo. CTA commends Julia on this recognition of all she has done for ATSC and the industry.”

“Julia is an exceptional contributor to ATSC 3.0,” added Dr. Paul Hearty of Technology Advisors, an ATSC board member and ATSC Technical Group 3 (TG3) chair. “She leads and contributes to standards and compliance development both in ATSC and in CTA, covering the spectrum from origination of services at broadcast to consumption at consumer devices. She maintains balance, fairness, and technical rigor—as well as humor—throughout.”

The Bernard J. Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award is given each year to an ATSC member whose technical and leadership contributions have been exemplary. It is named for its first recipient, the late Bernard Lechter, retired staff vice president, Advanced Video Systems at RCA Laboratories, whose 30-year career covered all aspects of television and display research.

Lechner Award recipients:

• 2000 – Bernard Lechner, Consultant
• 2001 – Rich Chernock, Triveni Digital
• 2002 – Regis Crinon, Microsoft
• 2003 – Glenn Adams, Extensible Formatting Systems
• 2004 – Graham Jones, National Association of Broadcasters
• 2005 – John Henderson, Hitachi
• 2006 – Art Allison, NAB
• 2007 – Mark Eyer, Sony Electronics
• 2008 – Michael Dolan, TBT
• 2009 – Wayne Bretl, Zenith/LG Electronics
• 2010 – Pat Waddell, Harmonic
• 2011 – Jim Starzynski, NBC Universal
• 2012 – S. Merrill Weiss, Merrill Weiss Group
• 2013 – Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast Group
• 2014 – James Kutzner, PBS
• 2015 – Luke Fay, Sony
• 2016 – Madeleine Noland, Zenith/LG Electronics
• 2017 – Skip Pizzi, NAB
• 2018 – Mark Corl, Triveni Digital
• 2019 – Adam Goldberg, AGP/Sony
• 2020 – Jae-Young Lee, ETRI
• 2021 – Alan Stein, InterDigital
• 2022 – Youngkwon Lim, Samsung Electronics
• 2023 – Glenn Reitmeier, NBC Universal/Sarnoff Labs
• 2024 – Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• 2025 – Aldo Cugnini, AGC Systems
• 2026 – Julia Kenyon, Consumer Technology Association

With the Federal Communications Commission rules for an auction of at least the congressionally mandated 100 MHz of C-band spectrum expected as soon as July, many broadcasters had a laser-beam focus on how best to proceed with signal contribution and distribution alternatives during the 2026 NAB Show.

A breakfast event organized by The Hive Group, a public relations and creative agency headquartered in McLean, Va., on behalf of LTN, shed a great deal of light on the issues and alternatives from both the broadcaster and vendor points of view. For the purposes of this column, I’ll focus on the former.

Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports, moderated a panel discussion about the challenges of living with less C-band spectrum. Panelists included David Johnson, senior vice president of technology at The Walt Disney Co., Alastair Hamilton, senior vice president of distribution, engineering and architecture at Fox, and Ken Fuller, vice president of distribution and technology operations at Paramount/CBS.

While video of the event posted to YouTube is available, panelists made several points worth calling attention to here.

There are multiple ingredients to success, including quality, reliability and availability, that must match what broadcasters have today in C-band. What each broadcaster ultimately chooses to do will include a mix of technologies. “There is not one silver bullet solution that gives us what we have today,” Fuller said. Finding what’s right will require “a testing curve” and a “learning curve.”

Matching C-band reliability is a big job. As things stand today, broadcasters have 99.999% C-band reliability. Disney has a lot of experience using non-satellite fiber IP and the public internet. That provides it with a good basis for comparison with C-band. “The primary challenge there is, it’s not five 9s,” said Johnson. “When you think about five 9s compared to four 9s, that’s four minutes difference in a 30-day period.” That translates into a “significant difference in quality and reliability that we need to solve for.”

Packet recovery via the internet is concerning. Some alternatives to C-band involve multiple transport paths, such as Ku-band with internet backup for dropped packets. After looking at nearly 200 major markets, Fox found ISP internet outages to be “quite alarming,” said Hamilton. “Some major markets were down for hours and hours.”

Distribution to small MVPDs will be a challenge. Taken together, Disney, Fox, Paramount/CBS, Warner Bros. and other major broadcasters deliver more than 10 Gbps of content to MVPD partners. That’s not a problem for the largest players with fiber connectivity. But the 10% of MVPDs that are smaller operators is “the bit that worries me,” said Hamilton. “I think we are going to have to get creative to service those.”

Opex reimbursement will be key. Unlike the last C-band auction, maintaining service won’t simply be a matter of replacing capital equipment. Recurring operational expenses for alternatives to C-band will be a major factor. “The blanket statement…is you [government reimbursement funds] will have to pay for our Opex for 10 years,” Fuller said. “Now, what does that mean? We don’t know yet.”

We will be holding a TV Tech Talk webinar July 29 on the ramifications of the C-band auction and available alternatives. Rebecca Hanson, director-general of the North American Broadcasters Association, will be our featured speaker. I am moderating.

NEW YORK—As media companies face growing problems with AI bots and crawlers, the IAB Tech Lab has issued guidance that is designed to help publishers and content owners better evaluate and manage how non-human agents, including AI systems, access their content as they work to adopt the Tech Lab’s CoMP API framework for managing content crawling.

The new guidance, which is now available for public comment until June 26, 2026, outlines different approaches content owners and publishers can take to inform access from non-human user agents with the aim of helping the ecosystem make more informed decisions alongside the adoption of the CoMP API V1.

“Giving content owners clear, practical guidance is key if we want adoption to move forward in a meaningful way,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. “This work helps simplify a complex area so companies can make decisions that fit their business while supporting a more sustainable marketplace.”

The IAB Tech Lab noted that following the release of the CoMP API V1, it became clear that many content owners and publishers have not yet developed formal strategies around their approach to bots and crawlers, which sit outside the scope of the API itself.

To address this gap, the CoMP Working Group developed this guidance to outline the range of available approaches and the advantages and trade-offs of each strategy. This gives stakeholders a clearer understanding of how to manage access from all non-human traffic, including AI systems in a way that aligns with their business goals.

More specifically, the guidance is designed to support the adoption of the CoMP API by helping content owners navigate an area that can be operationally complex and resource-intensive and is aimed at non-technical leadership to give them the questions they need to ask.

Those questions will ultimately help them understand the value and hard costs associated with each lever they pull. With clearer direction on these strategies, organizations can make more confident decisions, reduce risk, lower their operating cost, and operate more efficiently as they engage with AI systems. Establishing these strategies is also critical to enabling partnerships between AI systems and content owners, which are necessary to build a sustainable and scalable content marketplace.

A number of industry participants involved in the development of the guidance also emphasized the importance of clarity and practical direction as the ecosystem evolves.

“Content owners are being asked to make important decisions quickly, often without clear frameworks,” said Shailley Singh, EVP & COO, IAB Tech Lab. “This guidance helps break down the options so they can choose an approach that aligns with their goals.”

“The AI revolution has caught many publishers with their front doors wide open, essentially leaving the lights on for bots and crawlers to pilfer intellectual property.” added Scott Messer, principal & founder, Messer Media, “This IAB Tech Lab guidance is the essential roadmap content owners need—a practical framework to navigate the complex maze of decisions, tech, and tools available to protect their business. By empowering publishers to identify who is really there, this guide helps them distinguish between a value-driving 'ally' and a resource-draining 'extractor'. Managing AI bots is no longer just a technical background task; it is a critical business strategy for protecting what you’ve built and restoring a fair exchange of value for your content.”

Similarly, Dave Bellous, vice president of strategy, Metal Toad, explained that “non-human traffic now dominates most of the open web, and AI agents and crawlers are steepening the curve. Blanket bot-blocking is no longer a useful strategy. For publishers, advertisers, and ad-tech alike, distinguishing beneficial automation from invalid traffic through graduated, standards-based controls has become a baseline requirement. The Bot and Crawler Guidance from IAB is a much-needed tool in crafting a modern web strategy.”

Tom Koch, head of sales, ads and marketing ecosystem at TwelveLabs also highlighted the importance of the guidance in addressing the problem of bots and crawlers: "As AI agents increasingly serve as proxies for consumers, publishers and platforms need clearer frameworks for transparency and control. The crawler management framework is an important step toward giving content owners greater visibility into how their content is accessed and used. TwelveLabs is proud to contribute as this work is foundational to ensuring video, the richest form of data, is no longer overlooked in how AI engages with the web."

The guidance was developed by the CoMP Working Group, with public comment providing an opportunity for industry feedback ahead of finalization. IAB Tech Lab will continue working with members to support implementation and encourage adoption of both the guidance and the CoMP API.

IAB Tech Lab invites the industry to participate in the public comment period until June 25, 2026. To review the guidance, https:///iabtechlab.com/botmanagement/.

VIENNA—Big Blue Marble has announced that its Nakolos platform is the first end-to-end 5G Broadcast solution worldwide to implement the complete feature set introduced with 3GPP Release 19, achieved in collaboration with ecosystem partners Bitstem, TRedess and SYES.

The milestone follows two years of active standardization contributions with organizations including the European Broadcasting Union and Broadcast Networks Europe, and for the first time enables broadcasters and broadcast infrastructure providers to validate and deploy all major Release 19 enhancements in real-world environments, Big Blue Marble said.

U.S. broadcasters are also considering the use of 5G in ATSC 3.0, with many low-power TV broadcasters advocating a switch from ATSC 1.0 to 5G Broadcast after 1.0 sunsets.

Built on a carrier-grade, 3GPP-native architecture, Nakolos has evolved continuously from Release 14 through Release 19, according to Big Blue Marble. The platform now supports a complete set of new capabilities that directly address the economic and operational realities of 5G Broadcast rollout, including Time Frequency Interleaving (TFI), which enables the reuse of existing transmission sites while improving signal robustness; CAS-Muting functionality, which allows existing DVB-T2 infrastructure to be repurposed for 5G Broadcast transmission, substantially reducing initial deployment costs; and support for the new early-deployment frequency bands B112, targeting the U.S. market, and B113, targeting Europe and other global markets.

In combination with Release 19-compatible transmitter solutions from TRedess and SYES, and the new Bitstem 5GR receiver platform, released in conjunction with this announcement, customers can now validate and deploy complete interoperable 5G Broadcast chains under real operating conditions rather than in isolated proof-of-concept environments.

“Release 19 represents a concrete step forward for commercial 5G Broadcast, not a future promise,” said Johann Mika, chief innovation officer at Big Blue Marble. “The features introduced in this release give network operators a credible path to cost-efficient deployments using infrastructure they already have. With Nakolos, they can begin that transition today, ahead of the first generation of commercial 5G Broadcast-enabled consumer devices.”

Devices should be commercially available within the next few years, said Big Blue Marble, which is positioning Nakolos “as the platform for operators who need to be infrastructure-ready before mass-market adoption begins.”

BEAVERTON, Ore.—HDR10+ Technologies LLC, an industrywide consortium with more than 180 adopter companies, has been selected to administer the certification program for Eclipsa Video, a new open source video standard.

Eclipsa Video is based upon SMPTE 2094-50, the recently developed specification created by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), with experts from Google, Apple and NBCUniversal leading this initiative.

Roshan Baliga, Google Product Lead for Eclipsa Video explained that "we decided to leverage HDR10+ Technologies LLC’s proficiency in premium video standards, making their organization the ideal partner to administer the Eclipsa Video program.”

The Eclipsa Video program helps to ensure the highest-quality video on compatible smartphones other and next-generation devices. This latest effort marks the second time that the HDR10+ Technologies LLC has been selected to administer a program for Eclipsa. Last October it was selected to administer the Eclipsa Audio certification program

“For years, HDR10+ has been at the forefront of video innovation by delivering a spectacular viewing experience,” Bill Mandel, co-manager of HDR10+ Technologies LLC said. “With Eclipsa Video, we can now expand our pioneering work in Eclipsa Audio certification, in order to deliver a more seamless and immersive audio/video environment”.

Eclipsa Video seamlessly integrates with the broadly supported HDR10+ standard. Devices certified for both standards may utilize the name Eclipsa Video powered by HDR10+.

The new Eclipsa Video program will initially address smartphones, with other devices to follow. The first Eclipsa Video approved devices are expected to be introduced later this year.

For more information on licensing and testing Eclipsa Video, please visit www.eclipsamedia.org

WASHINGTON—ATSC, The Broadcast Standards Association, today announced that Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media and senior vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group, will be honored on June 2 as the 2026 recipient of the prestigious Mark Richer Industry Leadership Medal.

This annual award honors individuals or teams who demonstrate exemplary leadership in advancing ATSC’s mission and embody the vision, tenacity, and commitment that defined the legacy of former longtime ATSC President Mark Richer. Richer led the organization through two decades of transformative innovation, from the original ATSC 1.0 standard to the launch of ATSC 3.0 next-generation standards.

The 2026 Richer Medal will be presented to Aitken during ATSC’s 2026 NextGen Broadcast Conference during the first week of June in Washington. Registration is now open for the event.

The ATSC board of directors awarded Aitken the Richer Medal for his longtime work to advance next-generation broadcasting in the U.S. and throughout the world. Promoting ATSC 3.0 as the most flexible IP-based broadcasting option available to broadcasters, Aitken has invested significant energy and time in developing new avenues for ATSC 3.0—particularly in India.

“From the beginning, as ATSC members began discussing how broadcasting should evolve to meet the changing needs of the industry and consumers, Mark Aitken has played a pivotal role in helping to build support for next-generation broadcasting as both an obvious upgrade for viewers but also for the new business opportunities that emerge with ATSC 3.0,“ ATSC President Madeleine Noland said. “With Mark’s leadership and personal engagement, the ATSC 3.0 standards have rapidly advanced to meet the needs of stakeholders and consumers throughout the world. Mark has also been instrumental as we sought to reimagine ATSC itself, not just as a television standards body but as THE Broadcast Standards Association. He exemplifies the very qualities that Mark Richer himself embodied during his leadership of ATSC.”

Said Aitken: “I am deeply honored to receive the ATSC Mark Richer Medal, an award that carries special meaning because of Mark’s extraordinary legacy of technical leadership, collaboration and service to the broadcasting community. This recognition belongs as much to the colleagues and partners who have worked alongside me to advance the future of broadcasting as it does to me.“

Aitken has spent more than four decades shaping the evolution of modern broadcasting technologies and standards, joining Sinclair in 1999 after accumulating more than 25 years of industry experience with companies including CCA Electronics and COMARK, where he specialized in advanced RF and transmission technologies. Since joining Sinclair, he has led the company’s efforts in emerging broadcast technologies, spectrum innovation, advanced networking systems, and digital television deployment.

As President of ONE Media Technologies, Aitken helped establish Sinclair’s technology innovation platform focused on developing advanced broadcast systems that integrate broadband, mobile connectivity, datacasting and enhanced video delivery. Aitken currently serves on the boards of the ATSC and the Advanced Television Broadcast Alliance (ATBA), and previously served as a board member of Saankhya Labs, a semiconductor and software-defined networking company specializing in broadcast and wireless technologies. He is also an active member of professional organizations including IEEE, SMPTE, and the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE).

An accomplished inventor and author, Aitken holds multiple patents related to RF devices, broadcast architectures and next-generation communication systems. He has written numerous technical papers focused on digital broadcasting strategies, advanced transmission systems, and emerging media technologies. His contributions to the industry have earned him several prestigious honors, including the NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award, the ATSC Bernard Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award, the Broadcasting & Cable Technology Leadership Award, and recognition as a fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.

WASHINGTON, SAO PAULO, SEOUL, South Korea—ATSC, Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital Terrestre (SBTVD) Forum from Brazil and South Korea’s Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) May 12 inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish a formal framework for cooperation on the development, harmonization and worldwide promotion of next-generation terrestrial broadcasting standards.

“This agreement represents an important milestone for the global broadcasting industry,” said president ATSC Madeleine Noland. “By aligning efforts across North America, South America and Asia, we are creating a stronger foundation for interoperable next-generation broadcasting technologies that will benefit broadcasters, manufacturers, developers and viewers worldwide.”

The agreement reflects a shared commitment to strengthening global interoperability for advanced broadcasting services and to accelerating international collaboration around the evolution of ATSC 3.0 and related technologies. The collaboration was made official during a signing ceremony in Seoul.

“This MOU reinforces the importance of international cooperation in shaping the future of broadcasting,” said Raymundo Barros, president of SBTVD Forum. “A harmonized standards ecosystem enables greater innovation and creates new opportunities for broadcasters and technology providers globally.”

Under the MOU, the organizations will collaborate on the development of broadcasting standards and recommended practices, support testing and certification activities, exchange technical and strategic information and coordinate joint industry engagement efforts across key global markets. The partnership is particularly significant as broadcasters worldwide continue transitioning toward IP-based, software-defined and integrated broadcast-broadband delivery systems enabled by ATSC 3.0 and related next-generation standards.

All three standards organizations agreed to hold regular coordination meetings aligned with major international broadcast industry events, including NAB Show in Las Vegas, KOBA Show in Seoul and SET Expo in Sao Paulo.“TTA is pleased to collaborate with ATSC and the SBTVD Forum to support the evolution of next-generation broadcasting technologies,” said TTA president Seunghyun Son. “Closer cooperation between standards organizations is essential to ensuring global compatibility and sustainable industry growth.”

The MOU establishes cooperation on:

• Collaboration on next-generation broadcasting standards and recommended practices. 
• Promotion of worldwide interoperability for terrestrial broadcasting services and products. 
• Coordination on testing and certification of broadcasting equipment and services.
• Support for cross-referencing and harmonization of technical standards.
• Exchange of technical and strategic information between organizations.
• Joint communication initiatives, including sharing press releases and member newsletters.
• Appointment of liaison officers to coordinate collaborative activities.

The organization will also consider expanding participation to additional standards development organizations adopting 3.0 or related technologies.

By strengthening coordination among standards organizations in the Americas and Asia, the agreement is expected to help reduce market fragmentation, encourage economies of scale for device manufacturers and accelerate innovation in areas, such as immersive media, advanced emergency information, targeted services, datacasting and mobile reception.The agreement also recognizes the importance of maintaining flexible collaboration structures that can potentially include additional standards development organizations in the future while respecting each organization’s intellectual property policies, governance models and legal frameworks.The MOU takes effect immediately and reflects the Parties’ mutual intent to deepen international cooperation in support of the future of terrestrial broadcasting worldwide.

More information is available on the ATSC website.

“LPTV has discovered a path for the future; it is time for full power to find a path of its own. Then again, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. —‘SuperFrank” Copsidas, Chairman and Founder, LPTV Broadcasters Association

To the editor of TV Tech:

This is in response to Mark Aitken’s op-ed posted on May 14, Op-Ed: Stop the False Choice—5G Broadcast Can Ride Inside ATSC 3.0, and We Can Deploy Now.

There is no false choice. Mark Aitken’s public acknowledgment of 5G Broadcast’s real strengths—its native alignment with mobile ecosystems, familiar tooling, and clear potential for reaching everyday phones—is refreshing. Still, the situation for Mark and the dedicated team at Sinclair/ONE Media is understandable.

They have invested years of sincere engineering effort into ATSC 3.0, and watching it struggle for relevance in a mobile-first world must be exhausting. The Op-Ed reads less like a confident vision and more like a heartfelt plea to keep the dream alive through increasingly complex workarounds. When so much has been invested, letting go is painful. But good intentions do not make the hybrid proposal practical.

The Time-Slicing Compromise Is a Sad Technical Patch
It is unfortunate to see talented engineers spotlighting three delicate scheduling “knobs”—CAS muting cycles, 5 ms frame alignments, and bootstrap timing promises—as if they represent breakthrough innovation. In reality, this is a fragile hack: two mismatched waveforms awkwardly sharing spectrum, complete with guard times, drift compensation, and coordination overhead that reduce efficiency and introduce real operational risks.

The small-scale Castanet pilots are admirable as lab efforts, but the use of ATSC 3.0 in Castanet is essentially a bandaid solution until 5G Broadcast is fully licensed and available. Presenting this as ready for broad deployment feels like wishful thinking born from necessity rather than strength. Much creativity is being spent gluing incompatible systems together instead of pursuing cleaner solutions.

The “Chips in Phones” Claim Deserves Gentle Honesty
The repeated emphasis that ATSC 3.0 mobile receivers are ready today comes across as more hopeful than realistic. Saankhya/Tejas demodulators exist in niche Indian reference designs, yet mainstream consumer smartphones remain untouched. Full receiver integration—antennas, RF front-ends, power management, and usable software—stays confined to controlled demos, not products people actually buy and carry.

Meanwhile, 5G Broadcast benefits from riding inside the cellular modems already present in billions of phones. The community continues to hold onto “we built some tablets” stories while the broader ecosystem has moved on.

The India D2M Hope Feels Like a Distant Lifeline
Reliance on India’s government-backed trials to generate global momentum and open the stubborn U.S. market for ATSC 3.0 is understandable. India’s unique policy environment and genuine need for low-cost solutions are real. What the Op-Ed does not mention, however, is that India’s largest wireless carrier, Jio, is actively involved in 5G Broadcast trials nationwide together with Prasar Bharati, India’s public broadcaster. Jio’s 5G Broadcast trial in Delhi, for example, is testing delivery to smartphones for both broadcast TV and public warning notifications.

Expecting India’s ATSC 3.0 efforts to magically overcome America’s carrier-controlled ecosystem, regulatory gridlock, and consumer apathy toward broadcast tuners is more poignant than persuasive. It reads like a last best hope rather than a credible strategy and does not fully reflect what is actually happening in India or Brazil.

The Phased Plan Reflects Deep Investment, Not Momentum
The three-phase roadmap—scale today’s limited ATSC 3.0 datacasting, publish yet another coexistence profile, then hope India delivers devices—feels less like bold progress and more like a holding pattern to protect existing infrastructure. After all these years, broadcasters are still being asked to wait for meaningful mobile datacasting wins.

In the end, Mark’s sincerity and the solid technical merits ATSC 3.0 offers for home and portable reception are not in doubt. But it is unfortunate to watch talented people defend such convoluted hybrids and optimistic projections when the mobile world has already chosen its direction.

True progress in broadcast datacasting will come from technologies that meet consumers where they are—inside their everyday phones—rather than asking them to embrace yesterday’s compromises. The ATSC community deserves better than fighting these rearguard actions. They deserve a graceful evolution.

Mounting demand for a next-generation video streaming solution that surpasses the latency and unidirectional limitations imposed by the currently dominant streaming architecture is generating strong support for a new standard known simply as "MOQ" (Media over QUIC).

While by all accounts, it will take at least a few more months before the Internet Engineering Task Force finalizes the MOQ specifications, there are now multiple projects underway allowing producers to try out this new multidirectional, multi-latency approach to streaming.

“There’s a buzz and excitement in the air about MOQ we’ve never seen before,” says Will Law, chief architect for the cloud technology group at Akamai and a leader in the IETF MOQ initiative.

HEIGHTENED INTEREST AT NAB
This was evident at the recent NAB Show where MOQ demos abounded on the exhibit floor and an overflow crowd filled the large meeting room devoted to the NAB’s first-ever session on the standard. Entities announcing infrastructure support for MOQ included public CDN operators Broadpeak, CacheFly, Cloudflare, and CDN77 as well as cloud compute platform providers Akamai, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

Streaming software system suppliers demonstrating delivery of payloads and advanced features over MOQ-enabled facilities included Ateme, Bitmovin, EZDRM, Nomad Media, Norsk Media, Oracle Media, Synamedia, Red5 and Wowza,.

While proprietary real-time streaming systems supporting video conferencing and a host of other applications have been around for several years, MOQ is meant to satisfy the need for a standardized, ubiquitously available two-way superhighway over which video flows in any direction at any scale with latencies attuned to specific use-case requirements. That’s why Red5, a successful provider of a highly scalable WebRTC-based streaming platform, is throwing its weight behind MOQ, says Red5 CEO and co-founder Chris Allen.

“WebRTC was designed as a peer-to-peer protocol, which means there’s no standard for scaling the way we do by building out clustered cloud resources,” Allen says. “MOQ was designed from the get-go as a scalable broadcast technology for the internet, which we believe will accelerate adoption of next-generation streaming.”

The foundational set of MOQ specifications, known as MOQ Transport (MOQT), marks an incompatible break with conventional streaming modes like HLS and MPEG DASH that are based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). As a so-called connectionless platform, MOQT employs a simple publish/subscribe approach to streaming by signaling the start and end points of a session while avoiding the thousands of request/response exchanges that transpire between clients and servers in HTTP streaming.

QUIC is a modern transport protocol built on UDP that is designed to make web connections faster, more secure, and more resilient. It was originally developed by Google and later standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force as RFC 9000

Moreover, the new standard provides a way to automatically tune end-to-end latencies to whatever levels meet user requirements, including real-time 200-400ms latencies that are imperceptible to humans as well as what Law calls “interactive live” at 2 seconds for use in sports betting, online casino gambling, banking and similar applications and “conservative live” supporting ironclad HD, 4K, and, eventually, 8K quality persistency at 5 seconds.

ALL YOU NEED IS CACHE
With decoding and other device rendering processes managed through leading browsers, MOQ in most instances doesn’t require client plug-in software. And depending on how MOQ-ready CDNs are designed, MOQ can also support recording live content for short-term replay and catchup and long-term storage for VOD archives and cloud DVR applications. “VOD just means my cache is big enough to hold stuff that was live a while ago,” Law says.

Paralleling MOQT development, there are other initiatives within IETF and through the closely affiliated ad hoc organization known as the OpenMOQ Software Consortium that are aimed at creating a practical operating environment for the transport protocol. They include media layer streaming formats emerging from IETF, a new client player template developed by Red5 and endorsed by the consortium, and several ready-to-deploy players, , including a MOQ-based plug-in for Bitmovin’s new multi-purpose Player Web X platform.

“We have an array of features we enable, and each is treated as an individual plug-in,” says Bitmovin product manager Jacob Arends, who describes Player X as the latest, completely rebuilt version of its popular Web X player. “From a player [configuration] perspective there’s not much more to it than that,” but with MOQ playback departing from the HTTP norms, “it takes a lot of heavy lifting on the cloud side.”

While much of the focus on MOQ has to do with overcoming the limitations of conventional B2C streaming, the protocol also needs to be accommodated in post-production playouts to producers’ broadcast and OTT affiliates, notes Gwendal Simon, senior director for video network technology at Synamedia. “We’re bringing MOQ into our Quortex PowerVu multitrack contribution management system,” Simon says.

STAMFORD, Conn.–The LPTV Broadcasters Association today sent a formal letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr calling for immediate regulatory action to allow low-power television to use the 3GPP 5G Broadcast standard as a voluntary transmission option for LPTV stations.

The letter urges the Federal Communications Commission to fast-track a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in response to HC2 Broadcasting’s 2025 Petition for Rulemaking (MB Docket No. 25-168) and move expeditiously toward final rules. HC2—which owns 131 LPTV/Class A stations and four full-power stations—has been granted experimental licenses to allow two LPTV stations in Connecticut to test 5G Broadcast.

If approved, LPTV operators say they could use 3GPP 5G Broadcast to deliver linear TV, live events, emergency alerts, and datacasting directly to millions of 5G- and 6G-enabled smartphones and tablets—no additional hardware or SIM card required.

The association has been at the forefront of using 5G Broadcast as an alternative to ATSC 3.0, (aka NextGenTV), to which U.S. broadcasters are transitioning. 5G Broadcast is a direct-to-mobile platform that runs independently of any other service on a smartphone chip be it cell service, satellite, wifi, or Bluetooth.

Frank Copsidas, an early advocate of 5G Broadcast—which has garnered more support in Europe than in the U.S. so far—is chairman and founder of the LPTV Broadcasters Association and began publicly pushing for the use of 5G Broadcast in 2023 after he formed “XGN,” a startup dedicated to promoting the standard. That same year, XGN began testing 5G via LPTV station WWOO-LD in Westmoreland, N.H., which had been awarded the industry’s first application for an experimental 5G Broadcast STA.

At the NAB Show last month, another start-up, Castanet, announced the launch of a hybrid ATSC 3.0 and 5G Broadcast internet pilot network in Las Vegas. The pilot network uses ATSC 3.0 as the transport layer for 5G Broadcast in alignment with current FCC regulations and industry standards. Castanet said the deployment demonstrates how LPTV spectrum can serve as a foundational asset in next-generation internet infrastructure.

In his letter to the FCC chairman, Copsidas said broadcast TV “has been stuck in the regulatory Stone Age while cellular technology has advanced at lightning speed.”

“Recognizing 3GPP 5G Broadcast under Part 74 will unleash a major new opportunity for investment,” Copsidas wrote. “Industry forecasts show the U.S. market for 5G Broadcast services and infrastructure is poised to grow tenfold over the next five years**. It’s time to delete this outdated dichotomy and give American broadcasters — especially agile LPTV operators—the tools to capture this explosive growth while strengthening emergency communications and delivering the mobile-first experience consumers demand.”

Copsidas said that new smartphones that support 3GPP 5G Broadcast are slated to be deployed this fall and said that LPTV is the “ideal proving ground for this technology.”

“The spectrum, technology and Q3 2026 smartphone rollouts are ready,” the letter concludes. “The only missing piece is forward-looking policy.”

NEW YORK—IAB Tech Lab has announced new Attributes to describe live content and a new Substitution Macro in OpenRTB.

It has also opened up public comments on them through May 28, 2026.

The updates introduce standardized bidstream signals that help define whether content is a livestream, real-time, or a first broadcast, along with enhancements that allow more explicit communication of pricing and discounting between supply and demand platforms.

"As more live events move into programmatic channels, a total shift in strategy is needed; buyers must condense weekly budgets into mere hours," said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. "By providing clearer signals, we're giving buyers and sellers the transparency they need to fully capitalize on ultra-premium, real-time inventory."

The update clarifies an existing field and adds two optional fields to OpenRTB and AdCOM objects that allow sellers to describe the "liveness" of content in the bid request. These fields distinguish between content that is occurring at the exact moment a bid is sent, content that is being streamed in real time but not necessarily live, and content that is in its first scheduled broadcast window. This added layer of signaling gives buyers more precise context about the nature and timing of the inventory they are evaluating.

In tandem, updates to substitution macros refine how price-related data is passed in the bidstream, specifically enabling clearer communication of discounts and net pricing back to demand-side platforms. Together, these changes improve how both content metadata and pricing signals are expressed within OpenRTB, reducing interpretation gaps between buyers and sellers.

These enhancements address growing complexity in programmatic environments, particularly with the rise of CTV and live event inventory supported by initiatives such as the Live Event Ad Playbook. As more live and near-live programming becomes available programmatically, differences in timing and format, from live sports to premieres to streaming channels, directly influence how inventory is valued. Clearer signals help buyers make more informed bidding decisions and support more efficient pricing and yield for sellers.

"Live content signals help us better understand the context of live inventory so we can deliver buyers' budgets effectively," said Rob Hazan, GM, Product Management, The Trade Desk. "This enables agencies and advertisers to better achieve their marketing goals and sellers to more effectively monetize their most valuable media assets."

The work was developed through the Programmatic Supply Chain Commit Group, with continued industry input encouraged during the public comment period, which remains open through May 28, 2026. Feedback will inform final specification updates and broader adoption across the ecosystem.

To learn more about the Attributes describing live content and the new Substitution Macro in OpenRTB and submit comments, please visit https://iabtechlab.com/openrtb/livesignals/

LAS VEGAS—Complaints from viewers unable to access free over-the-air ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals are giving the standard (aka “NextGen TV”) a black eye in the view of many consumers and the ATSC is using the NAB Show to address those concerns.

As broadcasters gather in Las Vegas for the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22, the Security Authority (A3SA), member of the broadcast standards group reiterated the importance of securing ATSC 3.0 over-the-air broadcasts and said that the “vast majority” of the 40 or so NextGen TV sets available on the market are fully capable of accessing decrypted broadcast content.

The announcement comes after the Pearl TV consortium announced the launch of a campaign to develop new low-cost $60 or under NextGen TV devices in an effort to kickstart the transition from ATSC 1.0 to 3.0.

In addition to prototype boxes from DTH, Skyworth, and Zinwell, the A3SA will showcase new and existing upgrade receivers from Airwavz, MyVelo TV, and Zapperbox, to demonstrate secure and reliable delivery of ATSC 3.0 broadcast content while delivering new recording and in-home distribution options for consumers and broadcasters. Attendees can check them out at the ATSC Booth in the Central Hall (C1655)

A3SA Managing Director Joe St. Jean explained the importance of securing 3.0 broadcast signals in an age of ever more sophisticated piracy technologies that have long been a mainstay of streaming companies.

“Free, over-the-air television remains one of the most important and accessible platforms for delivering news, sports, and entertainment to American households,” he said. “Content security is a key enabler of that future, giving content owners the confidence to continue making high-value programming available on broadcast TV. We know that content piracy is a real threat and imposes multi-billion dollar revenue losses on the sports industry, particularly.

“It’s a fact that premium sports and live programming increasingly require content protection as a condition of distribution platforms and that broadcasters are competing directly with streaming platforms that have long used content protection,” St. Jean added. “ Without protection, high-value programming will migrate to subscription-based platforms. And content protection helps preserve free over-the-air television as a competitive platform for premium content.

“We’re also pleased to note that A3SA recently commissioned a focused review, conducted by a certified public accounting firm, of A3SA-enabled televisions in the market today. We confirmed that nearly 40 NextGen TV models from Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and TCL, comprising the vast majority of the 18.5 millions A3SA-enabled televisions sold, are fully capable of decrypting protected content, with or without an Internet connection, ensuring that consumers can reliably access the full benefits of next-generation broadcast services.”

New Receiver Innovations on Display:

• Airwavz.tv will showcase the TvXplorer Suite with decryption capabilities for A3SA-protected content. A broadcaster professional analysis tool, the TvXplorer suite’s support for A3SA’s technology protects premium content while enabling seamless delivery to authorized users. TvXplorer delivers trusted protection at scale with enterprise-level security and authentication, ensuring content stays protected from source to screen.
  
• MyVelo TV, a next-generation broadcast-first platform provider, introduces the MyVelo TV Premiere, designed to seamlessly unify free NextGen TV, streaming apps, and premium picture performance into a single experience. Built for how people actually watch TV, MyVelo TV supports all major HDR formats, including Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HLG, and Advanced HDR by Technicolor.
  
• The ZapperBox Whole-Home Gateway is available in quad-tuner, dual-tuner, single-tuner, and mini configurations to extend ATSC 3.0 signals throughout the home. Zapperbox will show a new hardware model—the first NextGen TV quad-tuner whole home gateway with Zapper Mini receivers for secondary rooms. ZapperBox will also showcase a new software release with Advanced HDR by Technicolor for dual-tuner and quad-tuner receivers.

PRINCETON, N.J.—Triveni Digital today announced that it has added ISDB-Tb capability for its StreamScope MT-70 MPEG analyzer platform. Designed specifically for Brazilian broadcasters, the solution provides comprehensive monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities for ISDB-Tb services while supporting the country’s transition to TV 3.0 (also known as DTV+), according to the company.

Triveni will showcase StreamScope MT-70 with support for ISDB-tb and TV 3.0 at the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22, in Las Vegas in ATSC booth C1655.

In 2025, Brazil announced adoption of the physical layer of the ATSC 3.0 protocol for TV 3.0, its next generation broadcast standard.

“As Brazil transitions to TV 3.0, broadcasters need reliable, end-to-end visibility across both legacy and next-generation broadcast television services,” said Mark Simpson, president and CEO at Triveni Digital. “With StreamScope MT-70 ISDB-Tb, we’re extending our proven monitoring and analysis capabilities and empowering Brazilian broadcasters to deliver exceptional quality, quickly resolve issues, and confidently manage the complexities of operating in a dual-standard environment.”

The new version of StreamScope MT-70 seamlessly integrates with Triveni’s StreamScope Enterprise centralized quality assurance system, enabling broadcasters to monitor and analyze quality across their entire broadcast operation—from ISDB-Tb to TV 3.0 services. This unified approach is critical as Brazil enters a lengthy simulcast period where both standards will coexist on air, Triveni said.

Built with Brazil-specific support for SBTVD ABNT NBR 15603 tables and descriptors, StreamScope MT-70 ensures accurate validation and deep visibility into regional broadcast requirements. The solution is available in multiple deployment options, including rack-mount systems, software, and in the cloud, giving broadcasters the flexibility to deploy it based on their operational needs.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has released more details about the SMPTE ST 2110 IP Media Roadshow at the 2026 NAB Show, announced last month.

On Tuesday, April 21, SMPTE will hold a a first-of-its-kind, full-day in-person bootcamp, designed to equip media professionals with the practical knowledge needed to confidently design, deploy, and operate IP-based production systems.

The program runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Rm. N252 in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Grounded in real-world broadcast, live production, and hybrid environments, the Roadshow goes beyond theory — focusing on how IP media systems actually perform in the field. As the organization responsible for developing and maintaining the SMPTE ST 2110 standards, SMPTE brings a depth of expertise and vendor-neutral perspective unmatched by any other training provider, connecting specification language directly to operational practice.

“The industry’s shift to IP-based production is well underway, and professionals need more than theory — they need practical, systems-level knowledge they can apply from day one,” said Jesse Janosky, Senior Engineering Leader and ST 2110 Instructor at JPM Technology Consulting. “This Roadshow bridges that gap — grounding standards in the real-world decisions engineers face every day.”

Full-Day Program Schedule
Opening with a welcome and introduction to the SMPTE ST 2110 Working Group from Merrick “Rick” Ackermans — Director of RF and Transmissions Engineering at CBS/Paramount, Chair of the SMPTE ST 2110 Drafting Group, and a SMPTE Fellow — the bootcamp moves through six structured modules that progress from foundational concepts to hands-on system design. Jesse Janosky provides a run-of-day overview before the technical sessions begin.

• Module 1 — ST 2110 Foundations & Standards Overview (Chris Lapp, Cisco): An introduction to the ST 2110 standards suite and the foundational principles of IP-based media transport.
• Module 2 — Precision Time Protocol (ST 2059) for Live Production (Willem Vermost, EBU): A deep dive into how PTP enables deterministic synchronization across live production facilities, followed by a supplementary session on warning signs and failure modes when PTP begins to drift, led by Steve Kolta of Meinberg.
• Module 3 — Audio Over IP in ST 2110 Environments (Andreas Hildebrand, Lawo): Coverage of AES67 and ST 2110 audio transport standards, including packetization, flow configuration, MADI over IP, and practical deployment considerations.
• Module 4 — Network Fabric Design for Media (Gerard Phillips, Arista Networks; Chris Lapp, Cisco): Multicast routing, bandwidth planning, and redundancy strategies for networks carrying real-time, uncompressed media, followed by a session on identifying bottlenecks led by Cassidy Lee Phillips.
• Module 5 — Deployment and Operational Failure Points (Nestor Amaya, EVS): Identification of the design decisions and configuration errors most commonly encountered in the field, and a practical framework for avoiding them.
• Module 6 — Team Practicum: Sample RFP and System Design (Jesse Janosky & Cassidy Lee Phillips): A collaborative exercise built around a realistic RFP scenario covering client needs assessment, workflow mapping, functional diagramming, product research, and deployment partner qualification. The day concludes with team RFP presentations.

What attendees gain extends well beyond the six modules. A shared technical vocabulary, greater confidence in infrastructure decision-making, and a clearer picture of where adjacent technologies — including IPMX, NDI, Dante, and JPEG-XS — fit within the broader standards landscape are among the key takeaways. The program is suited for broadcast and media engineers, systems integrators, live and remote production teams, media IT and cloud professionals, early-career professionals, and students.

Registration is available a la carte and includes a NAB Show Floor Pass. Non-members pay $550; SMPTE members, NAB members, students, and government attendees are eligible for the $450 rate. Discounts are also available for SMPTE Education alumni.

Register for the show here. Click here for more information about the SMPTE ST 2110 IP Media Roadshow /

For broadcasters that have yet to convert from Serial Digital Interface (SDI) to SMPTE ST 2110 IP production workflows across portions or all of their facilities, three new industry initiatives within and outside SMPTE bode well for accelerating the pace of IP adoption.

While ST 2110 has taken center stage as the driving force behind the industry’s ability to embrace the scaling, remote connectivity and other efficiencies of IP software technology, SDI still serves as the dominant production backbone in 82% of broadcast operations, according to the 2026 edition of Haivision’s annual survey on global broadcast tech trends released last month.

‘It’s a Pain’
As Samuel Recine, Matrox Video’s vice president for strategic partnerships, noted, “It’s not easy to migrate entire facilities to 2110.” Even as new-build requirements and aging SDI facilities unleash inevitable migrations to IP production, ST 2110 users attest to facing hurdles they would rather not contend with.

For example, when executives at a recent industry gathering were asked about their biggest challenges with ST 2110, several singled out problems with using the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) to ensure synchronization across video, audio and metadata streams.

“It’s a pain,” said Peter Wehner, executive vice president of technology operations and engineering at Mobile TV Group, which supplies mobile units for live sports and other productions. “When something goes wrong, there are different reasons every time.”

“I agree; it’s PTP,” concurred Jason Taubman, senior vice president for technology at Game Creek Video, another mobile production fleet supplier. In addition, while “we’re all in on 2110,” another big issue has to do with scaling, where managing “tens of thousands of signals is a huge challenge,” he said.

But the good news is “we’re now feeling comfortable with IP interoperability,” Taubman added. “We can cherry-pick vendors from off the shelf.”

Indeed, there’s every reason to expect the pace of ST 2110 adoption will accelerate as interoperability extends into other areas vital to usage. This includes vendor compatibility enabled by the IP Media Experience (IPMX) standard backed by the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), the Linux Foundation-backed Media eXchange Layer (MXL) software development kit (SDK) and SMPTE’s emerging ST 2138 standard, also known as Catena.

So far, when it comes to live venue-centered production, “2110 in the field is typically limited to large deployments—big trucks, big network centers, where you need lots of streams, lots of devices,” Cobalt Digital Chief Technical Officer Ciro Noronha noted. “All those big guys are going to 2110.”

Bringing Pro AV Into the ‘MiX’
This has been a major step toward minimizing the amount of field-deployed equipment via remote connectivity over IP to core production centers. Now, thanks to IPMX, these benefits can be more readily exploited in smaller live broadcast productions as well as a vast range of other use cases that have been off limits to ST 2110, including Pro AV, corporate media and education productions that traditionally rely on High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) switchers and cable for digital operations.

This year’s ISE in Barcelona demonstrated how suppliers are rapidly adopting IPMX as a software upgrade to existing ST 2110 products and as the foundation for a new generation of products that work at extremely low latencies with asynchronous and synchronous sources in compressed or uncompressed modes without requiring the use of PTP. “I call it ST 2110 made easy,” Noronha said.

At the 2026 NAB Show, Cobalt is introducing IPMX in one of its audio monitoring units along with the new blueCORE “processing box” supporting 2110 input and output gateway functionality. “Everything we do from now on will be
IPMX-compliant,” Noronha said, bringing “all the benefits [of ST 2110] without the big price tag.”

Elsewhere on the show floor, Imagine Communications is promoting features unrelated to IPMX that have been added to its ST 2110 products, but in the broader scheme, the company is highly focused on bringing the new standard into its portfolio, according to John Mailhot, Imagine’s senior vice president of product management. The company will soon obtain certification for products already in line with the standard, he said, while “others will be compatible
over time.”

For now, Imagine will concentrate on touting ST 2110-related advances like a new graphics workflow enhancement to its recently introduced XVR playout engine and an expansion of multiview capabilities in workflows under control of its Selenio Network Processor. In the latter case, Mailhot said, Imagine is leveraging technology obtained with its recent Pixel Power acquisition to “present operations people everything they need to see all their work in one solution,” including low-latency remote feeds from satellites and other sources.

Matrox, another supplier all in with IPMX, has exploited the compatibility between IPMX and ST-2110 to the fullest extent by offering each of its ST-2110-related products as a “superset” that can be deployed with software tuned to either mode.

For example, Recine said, an IP/SDI converter that’s used in a complex ST 2110 broadcast environment where all live flows must be synchronized can also be purchased in IPMX mode for conversions in business, education or other more limited production situations where PTP synchronization isn’t essential, including portions of a broadcast facility that aren’t involved in “the mission-critical part of producing live content.”

Media eXchange Layer
Meanwhile, another realm of versatility that alleviates ST 2110 usage burdens is opening with the introduction of the MXL software development kit (SDK). By creating a template for packaging video, audio and data essences as microservices in container-virtualized data centers, MXL “is a way of breaking down the barriers, not having to encapsulate 2110 every time you want to do another bit of processing in the workflow,” said Daniel Robinson, product manager for MXL at Matrox Video.

MXL has strong industry support with collaboration from the EBU, the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) and a growing coterie of European and Canadian media companies such as CBC/Radio-Canada, BBC, France TV, RTÉ (Ireland), SRG SSR (Switzerland), SVT (Sweden), SWR/ARD (Germany) and VRT (Belgium). Extending the reach to global proportions, including the U.S., are vendor “implementers” Appear, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Intel, Lawo, Matrox Video, NVIDIA, Riedel Communications and Telos Alliance.

Matrox is one of about six vendors “that have actually got it working in our product,” Robinson said. Many components in the Matrox product line were already configured to work in the containerized environment, but there is greater demand for the cost savings that come with such efficiencies in an open-source environment, especially one that avoids a drawn-out standardization process, he noted.

Hardware Control
The third initiative, SMPTE ST 2138, would expand interoperability essential to speeding the transition to IP by defining an open-source media control system that securely connects all devices pertinent to broadcasters’ IP-based production operations, regardless of whether transport is via ST 2110, NDI or something else.

This includes support for connecting everything that receives production output, as well as devices supporting data-center lighting, power maintenance and other operations, noted Chris Lennon, a SMPTE fellow serving as director of standards strategy at Ross Video, who has been a key figure behind the initiative.

“From our perspective, SMPTE ST 2138 is driven by customer demand,” Lennon said. “It’s hard to deny we have a serious problem with well over 200 proprietary control systems in operation.” The open-source OpenGear Protocol (OPG) developed years ago by Ross Video is the foundation for ST 2138, which has been greatly enhanced for today’s cloud operations with microservice-based scalability and other innovations, he explained.

At press time, five documents defining the 2138 protocol stack were slated for posting for input from the community at large, with a tentative cutoff date six months from now, depending on whether there’s enough consensus to merit the final push to standardization. It remains to be seen how broad industry support will be at this early stage, as other approaches to a universal IP device control system take hold in other industries’ forums.

“Luckily, many of them can work with the rapidly growing standards like 2110 and IPMX,” Sam Racine noted. One aspect that could be critical to broadcast industry buy-in to ST 2138 is that it is fully compatible with MXL. “We’ve done proofs of concept to show they are complementary and can work together,” Lennon said.

For many suppliers, the question of incorporating ST 2138 into their software stacks is still on the back burner. “If it’s important to our customers, we’ll support it,” Imagine’s Mailhot said. “Right now, there are a lot of things customers say they want that we’re actively doing.”

But the overall direction in broadcast production is clear. The all-out hunt is on for whatever it takes to make ST 2110 a more viable bridge from SDI to IP.

All of these new initiatives (and more) will be highlighted at SMPTE’s IP Showcase, part of the Tech Chat Theater in the West Hall during the 2026 NAB Show, April 19-22 in Las Vegas. The showcase is sponsored by AIMS, AMWA and the VSF.

Pearl TV’s over-the-air converter box survey, released last month, reveals the existence of a long-suspected viewer class.

As the industry awaits a rulemaking from the Federal Communications Commission it hopes will bring certainty to the end of ATSC 1.0 to make way for a full rollout of 3.0, Pearl TV appears to be attempting to reassure regulators with research showing over-the-air TV viewers are willing to spring for an inexpensive converter box to ensure post-transition reception.

The research, conducted by Magid and released in the “Pearl TV Over-The-Air Converter Box: Consumer Key Findings” report, asked 600 adults 25-65 years old who watch a minimum of two hours of OTA TV per week what they thought about the prospect of shelling out a few dollars for a one-time purchase of a converter “to maintain free access to local TV content without recurring monthly fees.”

Spoiler alert: Four out of five respondents would buy a converter box with basic features. That should give some peace of mind to the commission if it chooses to set a date or dates certain for a 1.0 sunset as NAB has petitioned rather than continue with a voluntary transition, albeit with fewer regulatory restrictions.

While highly pertinent to the transition discussion, the thing that caught my eye was the report identifying the “emergence of the ‘Omni-Viewer’ segment” of OTA TV fans.

Who are omni-viewers? The “tech-savvy group… who intentionally blend free local broadcasting with digital streaming,” the report said.

“Nearly two-thirds of antenna users also subscribe to streaming services, demonstrating that, for these consumers, broadcast television is complementing, rather than being replaced by, modern digital platforms,” it said.

I’ve long suspected this class of TV viewer exists. After all, I am one. I’ve also suspected TV broadcasters can take advantage of the existence of this set of viewers who are equally adept at streaming content via the internet and OTA TV. Here are three ways they can:

• Cement viewer loyalty and grow the OTA audience. Installing a rooftop antenna or one in the attic isn’t especially hard but neither is it particularly easy or convenient. (Was that really a brown recluse spider I saw in the roof rafters as I squirmed on my back across the ceiling joist?) But with OFDM-based ATSC 3.0, a simple indoor antenna may be all that’s needed for reliable reception. That may be enough for omni-viewers to spread the word to their friends and family.

• Enhance the viewing experience with interactivity. Broadcasters already have some experience leveraging both OTA and streaming delivery of television, à la Broadcast Enhanced Streaming Channels and RUN3TV-based program start over. How else might they enhance TV viewing and benefit economically? Targeted ads, QR code-triggered shopping carts and others not-yet imagined or at least made public?

• Hyper-local news and advertising content. Who needs the expense and headache of local SFNs and deploying LDM solutions if it’s possible to deliver specific, targeted news and commercials to neighborhoods, districts and other defined zones? Even to individual omni-viewers?

Bottom line: The omni-viewer has arrived. Broadcasters need to begin acting like it.

Email Phil Kurz at tvtechphil@gmail.com.

The Media eXchange Layer (MXL) has officially moved from Release Candidate to a stable production release.

The project’s steering committee has officially launched version 1.0.0 of MXL on GitHub, enabling vendors and developers to integrate MXL support into their products.

According to the European Broadcasting Union, which has been shepherding MXL to its release, the development process included alpha versions and release candidates, which were tested by EBU members and the industry. Their feedback contributed to the finalization of the stable production release. Work to update MXL’s roadmap will continue.

The EBU added it expects to see the first MXL-compatible products announced in the next few months, possibly at NAB Show.

More coverage is available in these stories:

Interoperability, flexibility, scalability: the benefits of MXL for the broadcast industry

MXL: Aligning broadcast production with software

[This article originally appeared in our sister publication TVBEurope.]

While broadcasters eagerly await an FCC rulemaking they hope brings clarity to a sunset of ATSC 1.0, the TV industry continues incremental progress on ATSC 3.0 with new technology, business and marketing developments that will play important parts on the NextGen TV stage at the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

(Editor’s Note: This article was written prior to the Federal Communications Commission rulemaking [MB Docket No. 16-142] reply comment deadline of Feb. 18.)

Among them are the latest developments on the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS), various enhancements to the standard, addressable multicast service, datacasting business progress and the latest on the headway ATSC 3.0 is making outside the United States. These and other 3.0 developments, however, are overshadowed by any FCC movement on its pending Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at the transition to NextGen TV and sunsetting the existing ATSC 1.0 digital television service.

“I think what we need to see happen is a clear sunset date,” said Robert Folliard, senior vice president for government relations and distribution at Gray Media. “Everybody knows from their own personal lives that without a deadline, nothing ever happens. I think consumer electronics, manufacturers, broadcasters, everyone needs a clear road map for us to get this done.”

Leave No Viewer Behind
Perhaps the thorniest issue obstructing bringing today’s DTV to a date-certain conclusion is 3.0’s lack of backward compatibility with 1.0. For an industry that’s built upon serving the public with free news, sports and entertainment—and relies on the ad and retrans revenue they generate—a flash cut stranding over-the-air viewers is simply out of the question.

In January at CES 2026, Pearl TV announced an effort to take on this issue with its Converter Box Initiative, a program that aims to make affordable converter devices with a target price below $60 available to viewers for their existing TVs. At the 2026 NAB Show, the business group representing seven major TV station groups will discuss the progress it’s made on the initiative since then.

“Right now, we’re pulling together the tenets of the program, which provide for set-top box makers to participate where we’ve negotiated special discounts on aspects that would otherwise commercially be higher priced without this negotiation,” Pearl TV managing director Anne Schelle said.

While such lower-cost converters may not include the full attributes of the standard available on a NextGen TV, they will ensure viewers can maintain their over-the-air service and receive “the better audio and video capabilities” of 3.0, she said.

Converter boxes meeting the program’s specifications will qualify manufacturers for special component discounts Pearl TV is negotiating that will help to keep the price down by guaranteeing volume. “Guaranteed volume means everything in the supply chain to drive lower costs,” she said.

At the show, Pearl TV will release details of the devices’ specifications, as well as the findings of a qualitative study conducted by Magid Associates to test the $60 price target against feature trade-offs, Schelle said.

Delivering a lower-cost converter today would be a challenge given the AI server-
driven demand for DDR5 RAM and the associated price spike. However, by the time final FCC 3.0 transition rules are set and implemented, it’s likely memory costs will go back down, she said.

The availability of lower-cost converters addresses one of three main questions the FCC raised in its NPRM, Folliard said. “I think if we as broadcasters were to go to the FCC and say, ‘Give us a sunset date, thank you,’ the answer is going to be ‘no.’

“But if we go in, which is what we’re doing, saying, ‘We’re going to produce a low-cost converter device that makes sure consumers are not left behind,” he said. “We’ve done consumer research that finds over-the-air antenna users today say, ‘Yeah, I would pay that price. That’s a bargain.’ We’ve addressed the DRM concerns that are out there and solved the signal signing concerns that are out there, if we can tick off each of those items, I think it’s a different story.”

Tech Developments
NAB Show traditionally gives vendors the chance to roll out their latest advancements. The same is true of those focused on 3.0 technology with exhibits in their own booths, the ATSC booth in the Central Hall (C1655), the Pilot Pavilion and elsewhere.

At the time of this writing, many of these exhibit details are unclear. However, as in year’s past, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is producing a tearsheet that will be available at the show to inform attendees the location of vendor booths with 3.0 technology, the times and locations of 3.0-related presentations and “all the fun stuff, the happy hours and the cool events,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

ATSC’s new vice president of standards development, Luis Fausto, and Noland will present an update on ATSC 3.0 during the SBE Ennes workshop on April 22.

Sinclair will highlight its work on development of “Broadcast-to-Everything” (B2X) in the ATSC booth. “That work is essential for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which is opening up the total available market to our IP platform,” said Mark Aitken, president of ONE Media and senior vice president of Advanced Technology at Sinclair.

Work is underway at ONE Media Technologies and more broadly by ATSC to align the standard with all of the 3GPP platforms and services. Among those is enabling IP multicast via 3.0 with addressable data flows, something datacasting clients can rely upon to ensure their valuable data is only received by those to whom they intend to send it.

“The work going on right now is a bridging technology that will bring us all the way to physical layer addressing, which changes the nature of the waveform itself,” said Aitken, adding that proof-of-concept deployments are expected in the second half of the year.

ATSC 3.0 Network Design
Advancing ATSC 3.0 network design is among the projects going on at the standards organization and will likely be a topic of discussion at its NAB Show booth. “We’re working on Recommended Practices for network design,” ATSC’s Noland said.

“How many transmitters do you need? What kind of robustness do you need? We have some of that work done in A/327 already, but this is a little bit of a bigger project where you’re really thinking about, ‘How can you set up your ModCods and your towers to achieve a given goal,’” she said.

Gray Media intends to tout its efforts to leverage the 3.0 over-the-top back channel to ensure robust OTA reception.

“One of the key things we have heard loud and clear from consumers is that the 1.0 signal is not great,” Gray’s Folliard said. “It’s not robust; it’s not reliable. If you can give me a way to get a more reliable signal that I don’t lose when the wind blows, that alone may be the biggest underappreciated consumer benefit of the 3.0 signal.”

Gray has been working with ATSC and others on updating the 3.0 standard to allow what the station group is calling “recovery channels,” he said. “If you are getting an over-the-air signal and it’s all fine, and then you temporarily lose it—maybe because of the digital cliff effect—what will happen is you’ll be able to get the signal automatically via the internet.”

Calling these recovery channels a “game changer” for OTA television, Folliard said the update to the standard will enable broadcasters to deliver “a perfectly stable and reliable OTA signal to viewers.”

Much work still needs to be done, and “much of what we have done is still theoretical,” he said. “Nonetheless, it is incredibly promising and another example of why we need to push the 3.0 transition forward.”

NAB Show will also give broadcasters the chance to learn the latest advances in BPS, including what’s going on with the U.S. Department of Transportation-funded BPS testing and a realignment of NAB tech leadership to focus on the ATSC 3.0-based backup to GPS. Several papers will be presented on BPS as well as demonstrations in the NAB Pilot booth and vendor booths.

EdgeBeam Wireless, the 3.0 datacasting-focused joint venture of E.W. Scripps, Gray Media, Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair formed in January 2025 and announced later that year, will be at the NAB Show with two goals in mind: supporting its partners and talking to other broadcasters that could help it extend its 3.0 footprint, EdgeBeam CEO Conrad Clemson said.

Expanding the Ecosystem
“From the time I got here [June 2025] up until a couple of months ago, we would look at both the breadth and depth of our ATSC 3 deployments and say, ‘Wow, look at all the places we are. Isn’t this great?’” Clemson said. “Now we have a different conversation: ‘We’re trying to get an opportunity up here, and I don’t have coverage or I don’t have the depth of coverage I need.’”

NAB Show is “a great time” for EdgeBeam to start the process of expanding its coverage ecosystem, he said.

The show will also see a large contingent of broadcasters from other countries on hand to support or investigate the standard. Fresh off success in Brazil, where the ATSC 3.0 physical layer and other components of the standard were selected for that nation’s new DTV+ (formerly known as TV 3.0) standard, the ATSC organization will focus its efforts on the Americas and India, said Noland.

“We’re putting our resources there because our feeling is that in the Americas, there’s more of a clear path,” she said.

All of these 3.0 developments will occur against the backdrop of the FCC rulemaking that many broadcasters hope will bring clarity to an ATSC 1.0 sunset. For his part, Aitken is encouraged by recent Truth Social posts from President Donald Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr in support of Nexstar’s acquisition of Tegna, which he said demonstrate the government’s understanding of the vital role local TV broadcasters play in their communities.

“The relevance of local markets, the relevance of what we do in those local markets is increasingly understood,” he said. “Our uniqueness is distinguished by the roles we play there. We’ve now got this platform [3.0] to make a new business and strengthen our ability to serve our local communities. But we are resource-constrained [by the channel-sharing 3.0 rollout].

“There has to be some deference given to ensure the success of that service because an authorized service that cannot be received is not a service. It’s a policy failure.”

GENEVA—The HbbTV Association, a global initiative dedicated to providing open standards for advanced interactive TV services via broadcast and broadband networks, has published version 2.0.5 of its core specification.

HbbTV 2.0.5 is an update to HbbTV 2.0.4, published two years ago, and represents a significant technical advancement for hybrid and interactive television services. The update was approved at the latest meeting of the HbbTV Steering Group.

“HbbTV 2.0.5 represents an important step forward in the evolution of hybrid TV services,” said Vincent Grivet, chair of the HbbTV Association. “With formalized DRM, support for next-generation codecs such as AV1 and VVC, enhanced DVB-I integration, and WebAssembly capabilities, the specification aligns to the most recent and impacting market trends, enabling more sophisticated, secure and feature-rich services. It demonstrates HbbTV’s continued commitment to advancing the connected TV ecosystem for broadcasters, platform operators, content owners and viewers alike.”

The most notable change is the formal integration of Digital Rights Management (DRM) into the core specification.

While HbbTV devices have supported DRM for many years, this is the first time it has been explicitly defined, providing a harmonized, interoperable approach across the ecosystem. Support for at least one of the DRM systems listed in the HbbTV DRM specification published six months ago – Microsoft PlayReady or Google Widevine – is required.

This formalization is essential for enabling secure delivery of premium content and meeting the requirements of broadcasters, platform operators, rights holders, and content owners, ensuring a compelling experience for viewers.

WebAssembly support, already present to some extent in HbbTV devices via browser engines such as Chrome or WebKit, is now formally included in the specification. This allows advanced features such as efficient decoding of auxiliary video streams, including sign language services demonstrated by Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat at trade shows IBC 2025 and HbbTV Symposium and Awards 2025.

Additional web security measures have been incorporated, and support for the VVC and AV1 video codecs has been defined, although implementation of these codecs is optional. Several simplifications for implementers have also been introduced: unused features have been removed, others marked for deprecation, and some requirements relaxed to improve interoperability.

The integration between HbbTV and DVB-I introduced in HbbTV 2.0.4 is further improved in 2.0.5. The specification now clarifies how DVB-I applications associated with entire service lists can be supported, enabling platforms or service aggregators to obtain GDPR consent or agreement to terms and conditions. Implementation feedback, particularly regarding HbbTV and DVB-I integration, has resulted in numerous technical corrections being included.

The HbbTV Association plans to issue a Request for Proposals (RfP) in the coming weeks to extend its Conformance Test Suite to support HbbTV 2.0.5.

The HbbTV 2.0.5 specification and an associated explainer document are now available in the HbbTV Resource Library.

I can still remember the first time I clipped a lavalier microphone on someone for a TV broadcast. It was during my internship at AT&T Corporate Television in 1978, back when razor blades were still used for editing and the smell of hot glue meant progress.

The mic was a Sony ECM-50, a small, rugged piece of engineering that quickly became my favorite. It needed a quirky little “N” battery that you could only find in specialty stores, but it sounded beautiful.

A few months later, I met what felt like pure science fiction: my first professional wireless microphone system. It was a Sony UHF transmitter and receiver paired with that same ECM-50 element, and for the first time, I could capture sound without being chained to a cable. The audio was clear, the signal was stable, and there were no wires to trip over. It just worked.

For a long time, wireless microphones felt like magic. Today, they feel more like triage. The magic has been replaced by management. Behind every concert, broadcast, or corporate event, there’s now a quiet war being fought over invisible real estate: radio spectrum.

The Shrinking Airwaves
Wireless microphones used to have plenty of room to breathe. For decades, most systems operated comfortably within the UHF television range from 470-806 MHz. These frequencies offered the perfect balance of power, antenna size, and propagation. But that was before governments realized the commercial value of those airwaves.

The first big hit came in 2009, when the transition to digital television freed up the 700 MHz band. The Federal Communications Commission auctioned that space to mobile broadband carriers like AT&T and Verizon, shrinking the number of open TV channels available for wireless microphone use. A few years later, it happened again with the 600 MHz band, much of which went to T-Mobile. Each time, the usable spectrum for professional microphones shrank.

While those auctions raised billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury, none of that windfall ever found its way back to the professional audio community that once depended on those frequencies. Wireless microphone users—from broadcasters to theaters to houses of worship—lost access to critical portions of the spectrum without compensation or assistance to transition. The mobile carriers that won the auctions gained valuable assets, while production teams were left scrambling to replace equipment and redesign systems at their own expense. In effect, it was a one-sided trade: Culture and communication ceded ground so commerce could expand.

What had once been an open field is now a narrow alley. In most major cities, there may be only one or two available TV channels left for unlicensed wireless microphones. The rest belong to high-power mobile networks or other licensed users. As one engineer put it, “It’s like trying to park 50 trucks in a two-car garage.”

Problems and Solutions
I recently sat down with Mike Sinclair, a professional sound designer, to chat about problems and possible solutions. He's worked on everything from live events to concerts to corporate audio and described it bluntly: “You can plan every cue, map every signal path, and test every channel, but if you don’t have enough frequencies to manage the production there’s very little you can do.”

Even when you do find enough open frequencies, it doesn’t mean it will stay quiet. Modern environments are packed with devices that share or spill into the same spectrum. Multiple digital services are now actively competing for what is ultimately the same limited bandwidth.

The problem isn’t just about congestion; it’s about unpredictability. What used to be simple “set and forget” gear now requires active management. Sound engineers who once mixed audio now find themselves either running RF scans, plotting frequency tables, and negotiating for airspace—or spending a boatload of additional cash buying wireless systems that will do the investigating and hopping for you. Every production feels like a temporary truce with chaos.

The answer is often counterintuitive. You might think throwing more power and more money at the problem would make things easier, but in many cases, it doesn’t. As Sinclair told me, when multiple wireless systems have to coexist in tight spaces, very close together—like, for example, Broadway theaters—the solution is precision, not brute force. Engineers have to be surgical, using highly directional antennas and carefully tuned devices that keep their signals tightly contained to avoid interference.

Devices Fight Back
To survive in this new landscape, manufacturers have had to reinvent their technology. Early wireless microphones operated on fixed frequencies. Modern systems can tune across wide ranges, automatically scan for open spectrum, and adjust power output on the fly.

One possible approach could be treating each microphone as a separate radio signal, using one wide channel to transmit dozens of audio streams using time-division multiplexing. In simple terms, it sends tiny slices of each audio channel in rapid succession so that multiple mics can share a single piece of spectrum without stepping on each other. Sennheiser, one of the world’s leading innovators in professional wireless audio, has been at the forefront of developing new spectrum-efficient technologies, such as Wireless Multichannel Audio Systems (WMAS).

Joe Ciaudelli, the company’s director of spectrum and innovation, explained that WMAS technology "occupies a broader bandwidth but transmits multiple audio channels within that space using time-division multiplexing. This design dramatically increases spectral efficiency, enabling dozens of microphones to operate in a single TV channel.”

Solutions like this allow both microphones and in-ear monitors to operate in the same RF channel, dynamically allocating bandwidth based on priority. A lead performer can get full-fidelity, low-latency audio, while a backstage communication channel can tolerate higher latency and lower quality. For large productions, this means far more microphones can coexist peacefully in the same space.

For high-profile events, technology alone isn’t always enough. On-site professional frequency coordination can offer productions peace of mind by managing and accounting for each frequency.

Companies like Professional Wireless Systems (PWS) provide RF management and coordination for various events, including major productions like the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Jim Van Winkle, general manager at PWS, emphasizes that their competitive edge lies in on-site experience. He notes that an experienced RF coordinator is a "game-changer," bringing invaluable knowledge for pre-planning and crucial troubleshooting if issues arise.

For smaller or budget-limited productions, advanced technology safeguards can still help avoid chaos. One such approach uses wireless transmit/receive pairs that continually search for and stand by with clean backup channels. If interference or dropouts are detected on the main channel, the devices automatically switch to that backup while beginning a new search for the next available path.

Another company that has fully embraced the need for adaptability is Wisycom, a manufacturer long respected for its RF engineering in broadcast, live performance, and location sound. Its CEO, Davide Morsiani, said RF coordination has become "one of the biggest challenges in modern production—not because engineers lack skill, but because the spectrum itself is shrinking and unpredictable. Every location behaves differently, and even the same venue can change throughout the day. Our goal is to give users visibility and flexibility across the widest possible tuning range, so they can adapt instantly rather than rely on luck."

And one final approach that should be mentioned, despite its quixotic nature, would be for the FCC to actually begin policing the use of approved frequencies, as it's clear that everyone isn’t playing nicely in the sandbox.

Unified Voices
Technology alone isn’t enough. The professional audio industry has also learned that it needs a stronger and more unified voice in the policy arena. Shure led the formation of the Wireless Microphone Spectrum Alliance (WMSA), bringing together manufacturers, engineers, and end users to create a coordinated front at a time when spectrum access continues to shrink.

Shure has been deeply involved in the development of regulations in the United States and other countries, with spectral efficiency as the center point of its advocacy. According to Prakash Moorut, Shure’s global head of spectrum and regulatory affairs, WMSA now provides a platform for the industry to proactively educate policymakers about preserving wireless microphone access to spectrum, even as manufacturers innovate to use the remaining airwaves more efficiently.

The WMSA's work is already gaining traction. With more than 200 members, it has begun drawing attention in Washington at a critical moment, as the United States prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup and later welcome the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, two enormous global events that will rely on hundreds of wireless microphones for live performance, broadcast, and ceremony production.

Its outreach spans the White House, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), FCC, and Congress, reinforcing how essential wireless microphones are to live performance, broadcast, cultural storytelling, religious services, and civic engagement. As Sinclair put it, “We can innovate all we want, but without spectrum, we’re just building better paperweights.”

Sinclair also floated an idea that goes beyond better microphones and smarter antennas—fixing the imbalance at its source. Many parts of the radio spectrum are still occupied by legacy government systems that haven’t been modernized in decades. Instead of pleading for scraps of spectrum, the professional audio industry could partner with agencies to modernize their outdated communications equipment, offering better technology in exchange for access to cleaner airwaves.

He suggested manufacturers and private sector innovators could help by providing modern replacements for that aging infrastructure, freeing up underused bands for shared, coordinated access. “There are military and public safety systems out there still running gear designed in the 1970s,” Sinclair said. “They’re holding huge chunks of spectrum hostage because no one’s upgraded them.”

As Moorut noted, during the 600 MHz auction, broadcasters—one of the largest groups of professional wireless microphone users—received roughly half of the auction’s proceeds, around $10 billion. That scale of compensation underscores how valuable this spectrum is to the wider media ecosystem, why the wireless production community must be included when national spectrum decisions are made, and how meaningful funding already exists to support the kind of modernization Sinclair is calling for.

Engineering Creativity Under Constraint
Despite the challenges, the show always goes on. Engineers have adapted by developing meticulous coordination strategies that resemble air traffic control. Frequencies are planned weeks in advance, with backup sets pre-programmed and tested. Large events can involve dozens of engineers managing hundreds of transmitters and receivers, all synchronized to avoid collisions.

Sinclair recalled a recent broadcast where every spare frequency was spoken for. “We had to label each transmitter like it was a boarding pass," he said. "One mistake and someone’s mic would vanish mid-sentence.” Some productions have even started reverting to wired microphones for reliability, not as a nostalgic choice but as a practical one.

It’s a strange twist: The technology that once symbolized freedom now represents a kind of scarcity. Yet within those constraints, creativity thrives. It forces precision, collaboration, and a renewed respect for the craft of live sound.

If history is any guide, the demand for wireless bandwidth will only grow. Each new generation of mobile networks (5G, 6G, and beyond) will hunger for more spectrum. Without deliberate protection for professional audio, the remaining white spaces could vanish entirely.

Spectrum is a shared public resource. Every wireless signal, from a singer’s microphone to a teenager’s smartphone, travels through the same air. What’s at stake isn’t just bandwidth, it’s the ability to express and connect through live sound.

The professional audio community has always been inventive, finding ways to make art work under constraint. But the next chapter will depend on collaboration—engineers pushing technology forward, manufacturers sharing innovation, and policymakers ensuring that culture has a place in the spectrum. The future of wireless audio won’t be about finding empty space. It will be about learning how to share it wisely.

This op-ed originally appeared on our sister brand AV Networks/Systems Contractor News.

The Society of Broadcast Engineers, the association for broadcast and multimedia technology professionals is launching its annual member recruitment drive, which will run March 1-May 31. The drive calls on current SBE members to encourage their non-member colleagues to join the association. In 2025, 49 individual members were recruited.

As a recruiting incentive to members, the SBE is asking for prize donations from SBE sustaining member companies. In addition, the recruiter will earn $5 per new member (up to $25) off his or her 2027 membership dues. Several SBE Sustaining Member companies plus the SBE are providing prizes this year, ranging from shirts and hats to broadcast equipment. Those companies include BSW, Dielectric, GatesAir, Heartland Video Systems, LBA Group, SCMS, Telos, and Time Base Consoles. The SBE donates logo items, a copy of CertPreview, and a free Webinars by SBE registration.

The theme for the 2026 drive is "Shape the Future."

The Society of Broadcast Engineers is the professional organization of television and radio engineers and those in related fields. The SBE has nearly 4,000 members in 117 chapters across the United States and in Hong Kong and Eastern Europe. There are also members in more than 25 other countries.

For more information about the SBE, contact Mike Downs, executive director, at mdowns@sbe.org or 317-846-9000, or visit the SBE website, sbe.org

WASHINGTON—ATSC has appointed Indian broadcasting executive Anil Bhardwaj as director of Technology & Strategy for India and Emerging Markets, the committee said today.

Bhardwaj’s appointment reinforces the organization’s strategic engagement across India and key international markets and demonstrates its commitment to advancing next-generation broadcast standards, it said.

He will represent ATSC’s interests in India and have a focus on collaborating with the Telecommunications Standards Development Society (TSDSI), India’s telecommunications standards development organization, while driving broader relationship-building efforts across the region.

Bhardwaj is an electronics and communication engineer with postgraduate qualifications in marketing and information technology. He has two decades of broadcast industry experience, specializing in terrestrial broadcasting across South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Bhardwaj has successfully led international sales operations, expanded market presence and secured high-value broadcast projects throughout his career.

“Anil’s extensive international experience, strategic mindset, and deep understanding of both technology and regulatory landscapes make him an exceptional addition to the ATSC team,” said Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC. “As Direct-to-Mobile (D2M) commercialization gains momentum in India, his leadership in will be instrumental in building strong partnerships, advancing standards collaboration and accelerating the adoption of next-generation broadcast technologies for mobile and more.”

Bhardwaj has held leadership positions with globally recognized organizations, including GatesAir, Jampro Antennas and Triveni Digital. In these roles, he was instrumental in strengthening market share, cultivating strategic partnerships and advocating for advanced broadcast technologies in emerging markets.

Besides his technical and commercial expertise, Bhardwaj holds a law degree and is a Registered Advocate with the Delhi High Court. His legal background provides valuable insight into regulatory frameworks and compliance requirements, as well as government tender processes—an increasingly important dimension of international standards adoption and market development, ATSC said.

Bhardwaj has also completed an executive program in FinTech and financial blockchain from IIM Calcutta and has been recognized with the Indian Achievers Award and the CEO’s Award for Sales Excellence.

Over the past several months, as ATSC’s senior advisor in India, Bhardwaj has engaged industry stakeholders, strengthened partner networks and contributed strategic insights that support ATSC’s objectives in the region. His focus on collaboration with TSDSI and other key organizations is expected to help ensure alignment between global standards development and regional market needs.

More information is available on the ATSC website.

OSLO, Norway—Appear, a global provider of live production technology, today announced that its X Platform has been officially verified by YouTube for Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) live streaming. This verification enables broadcasters, rights holders, and production teams to deliver high-quality live content to YouTube using Appear’s X5, X10, and X20 hardware platforms, providing a seamless, resilient and low-latency high-quality streaming workflow for news, sports, and live event coverage, the company said..

“Becoming a YouTube-verified encoder partner is a significant step forward for us and our customers,” said Thomas Bostrøm Jørgensen, CEO at Appear. “It reinforces our position in professional-grade IP contribution and gives our users a powerful new route to reach global audiences across one of the most important platforms in digital media.”

Appear says its partnership with YouTube was prompted when a major European broadcast platform approached YouTube to request support for Appear’s encoders in their production pipeline. That initiated a collaboration between Appear and YouTube, culminating in full verification for Appear’s hardware-based AVC/HEVC encoding and SRT streaming, further expanding Appear’s reach across a broader ecosystem of FAST, OTT and hybrid broadcasters.

“YouTube collaborates with technology partners to ensure their products meet our highest standards for reliability and performance when streaming to YouTube Live” says Callum Hewett, Live Solutions Consultant, YouTube. “We’re pleased to verify Appear’s X Platform for SRT delivery which we hope will streamline content delivery for all of their partners. It’s been great working with Appear on this and I look forward to seeing high-quality, resilient live production workflows delivered to YouTube via the Appear platforms.”

The broadcast industry has seen major transformations, but what we’re facing now is a deeper shift. It’s not just transport or tools. It’s a rethinking of how we build, scale, and operate live production infrastructure.

You’ve probably heard “infrastructure as code” a lot lately. For some, it’s the next step in automating and scaling live production. For others, it sounds like handing your OB van to a DevOps engineer with a YAML file.

I get the skepticism. But if you look at where the pain points in live production are today, you’ll see this isn’t just another tech trend. It’s a strategic necessity.

Why This Feels Risky (and why it’s necessary)
For decades, broadcast engineering has been a hardware-first, hands-on craft. SDI routers, frame syncs, multiviewers, and patch panels were built with precision and meant to run 24/7. Rebuilding a live environment on demand in the cloud? That’s a radical shift.

This works well for customers in sports, OTT, and fast-channel environments. They want modular workflows, not one-size-fits-all systems. But flexibility brings complexity.

It’s relatively easy to code infrastructure to spin up servers, storage, and connections. But configuring tech from 10 different vendors? That’s the real challenge. You need a unified, software-based control system.

The Real Bottleneck: Control
The industry’s made progress solving video transport. SMPTE ST 2110 helped us move beyond SDI into scalable IP production. But in focusing so hard on transport, we overlooked something else: control.

As we added more vendors, cloud services, and hybrid workflows, that gap became more obvious. It’s not just the complexity. It’s the manual overhead of stitching together multiple systems in real time. That doesn’t scale.

Customers don’t want one big system from one vendor. They want to curate their own stack. At Ross, we now support over 200 control protocols across our products. No one would design a system that way, but here we are.

Event-based, ephemeral infrastructure makes sense. But with a dozen vendors, each with different APIs and quirks, spinning it up isn’t trivial.

What is Infrastructure as Code?
It means managing infrastructure with software logic instead of manual steps.

Think:

• Configuration as version-controlled text files
• Automated deployments of full production environments
• Predefined templates that launch workflows in minutes

Engineers don’t need to become Python programmers. But they’ll spend less time fixing protocol mismatches and more time producing content.

In software, Infrastructure as Code defines entire environments, networks, services, storage, application workflows, via configuration files. Tools like Terraform and Ansible aren’t just for DevOps anymore. Broadcast engineers need them to deliver scalable, on-demand infrastructure.

At AWS, this approach runs some of the most advanced live workflows in the industry. It’s not just about cost, it’s about agility.

Not Just Hype: A Culture Shift
Let’s be honest: not everyone’s ready for this.

Broadcast engineers aren’t usually trained in cloud orchestration or declarative configs. That’s not a criticism. It reflects how the industry grew up. Our workflows were built to be robust and hands-on.

Going in as a traditional engineer will be tough. If we don’t invest in training — or use automation to bridge the gap — adoption will stall. But tools exist to help. That’s part of what SMPTE ST 2138 (Catena) is about.

ST 2138 provides a vendor-agnostic, software-based control layer across on-prem, private cloud, and public cloud, without rewriting APIs each time.

The Payoff: Real Agility
The goal isn’t to turn live production into a science experiment. It’s to reduce friction—especially when you need to launch fast, reconfigure often, and scale on demand.

Software-defined infrastructure lets teams work faster and more consistently. It’s the only path forward if you need to do more with less. You can’t afford brittle, inflexible systems.

With a software-defined control layer you can:

• Launch events in hours, not days
• Automate failover, resource allocation, and monitoring
• Test environments in isolation
• Run infrastructure only when needed
• That’s not just smart engineering. It’s good business.

Final Thoughts: Change is Hard; Standing Still is Harder
ST 2138 provides a unified control standard across vendors, platforms, and environments. It simplifies control and enables multi-vendor automation.

This shift challenges legacy thinking, skills, and comfort zones. But it’s already happening. If you’re skeptical, that’s healthy. But the transition won’t wait.

To future-proof operations and protect quality and creativity, we must stop start seeing infrastructure as code: reusable, testable, scalable, and under your control.

That’s not the end of engineering. It’s the evolution of it.

Infrastructure as code won’t replace the art of live production. It just changes how we manage the canvas.

The draft of ST 2138 (Catena) is now open for consultation. If you’ve ever wrestled with multi-vendor control or hybrid workflows, we need your help.

Click here to review the draft and join the conversation.

NEW YORK—IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, has made a notable move to improve the way buyers plan and reserve advertising on live programming with the release of the Live Event Ad Playbook (LEAP).

As more high profile sporting events move to streaming and digital media, the release is particularly notable because the industry still lacks consistent ways to forecast and reserve inventory in advance. This proposal aims to move planning earlier in the workflow and make live inventory more visible and actionable across programmatic systems, the organization said.

The proposed specification is also designed to help address a long-standing industry challenge by enabling standardized discovery of upcoming programming, including but not limited to live events.

It means that content owners can now share information with partners relating to schedules, expected ad breaks, and expected viewership. The Forecasting API represents Phase Two of the LEAP Initiative and is intended to support more effective planning, deal creation, and monetization of premium live and tune-in programming across the digital advertising ecosystem, the Lab said.

"Live events continue to be one of the most valuable and technically complex areas of digital advertising," said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. "This proposal moves the industry earlier in the process by making future live inventory visible and actionable. It is about giving buyers and sellers the tools they need to plan ahead with confidence and scale those workflows through shared standards."

The IAB Tech Lab noted that today’s programmatic systems generally lack consistent mechanisms for surfacing future inventory, limiting buyers’ ability to plan and reserve inventory in advance.

The Forecasting API is designed to address that gap by allowing broadcasters and content owners to publish structured metadata to exchanges and DSPs. This includes information such as event schedules, expected ad breaks, and viewership forecasts, using a shared schema aligned with existing OpenRTB and AdCOM standards.

The Forecasting API builds on the foundation established by the Concurrent Streams API, which helps buyers and ad tech platforms understand the scale of live opportunities in real time.

By moving upstream in the workflow, the Forecasting API enables earlier planning for live and tune-in programming, supports automated deal creation through integration with the Deals API, and helps participants take full advantage of highly engaged live audiences. Together, these components are intended to support a more scalable advance market for premium live content.

Several industry executives applauded the release.

“For years, Disney has been committed to modern and sophisticated forecasting capabilities to demonstrate the value of our premium Sports, Entertainment and News inventory,” said Alex Combs, vice president, ad product, Disney Entertainment & ESPN. “As programmatic growth accelerates, standardized interoperability is no longer optional; it is the foundational infrastructure required to eliminate friction in buying. This is especially true for live events and programming, where timing is crucial. Our active participation in the Forecasting and Concurrent Streams IAB Tech Lab initiative reflects our commitment to making automated buying as easy, efficient, and data driven as possible – delivering measurably better outcomes for our clients and creating an engaging experience for viewers.”

“As live and tentpole programming continues to grow across digital and streaming platforms, buyers and sellers need better ways to plan and coordinate around moments of peak viewer engagement,” added Daniel Perry-Zucker, senior product manager, The Trade Desk. “By standardizing how the industry communicates about upcoming inventory, the Forecasting API helps improve monetization and consumer experiences alike—bringing greater speed, predictability, and scale to live advertising across the ecosystem, and we’re excited to help put these standards into practice.”

The Forecasting API reflects the industry’s growing focus on standardization as live streaming continues to expand and evolve. By thinking beyond the bidstream and enabling shared approaches to forecasting and planning, the specification aims to reduce friction, improve efficiency, and support more effective monetization of live content across the ecosystem. In addition to the API specification, Implementation Guidance has also been provided.

To participate in the public comment process until March 20, 2026, please visit https://iabtechlab.com/standards/leap/

DURHAM, N.H.—New Hampshire PBS (NHPBS) has completed an air-chain system upgrade to prepare for future statewide ATSC 3.0 operations and converting its Stewartstown, N.H., site to begin broadcasting ATSC 3.0 with the assistance of Heartland Video Systems (HVS).

HVS provided the complete solution, including design and consulting services, all hardware and software, system pre-staging and configuration and remote support for equipment turn-on. NHPBS originates its over-the-air (OTA) signal from its studio facilities in Durham, N.H.

NHPBS operates a statewide OTA system with three full-power sites, including Durham, Keene and Littleton, N.H., and two LPTV sites in Hanover and Stewartstown, N.H.

The public broadcaster set out to achieve four main objectives, including: upgrading its existing 1.0 encoding to improve workflow; adding 3.0-compativle air-chain equipment for its five transmitter sites; providing regionalized EAS messaging capability across the star; and flash-cutting its LPTV site in Stewartstown from 1.0 to 3.0 OTA service.

The project began by replacing the broadcaster’s 1.0 encoders with new primary and backup XOS units from Harmonic. They were equipped with MPEG-2 5xHD program licenses, Dolby audio, EAS processing, PSIP fetch, Nielsen watermarking and audio loudness control, simplifying NHPBS’ workflow.

HVS installed a DTV Innovations TSACO-3000 redundancy switch at the output of the 1.0 encoder to facilitate automated switching of the main and backup encoders.

A separate pair of Harmonic XOS primary and backup encoders with HEVC-DASH outputs was installed for ATSC 3.0 signal processing. These encoders feed a redundant pair of Triveni Digital GuideBuilder XM ROUTE servers, which in turn feed five individual Triveni Digital Broadcast Gateways—one for each OTA transmitter site. The Broadcast Gateways provide the STLTP signals required to feed the 3.0 transmitters.

To enable regionalized EAS messaging in a 3.0 network, a Digital Alert Systems DASDEC-III EAS receiver with Multi-Station and Advanced Emergency Alert (AEA) software options was installed at the Durham studio, along with additional DASDEC-EXR units deployed at each of the five OTA transmitter sites. All DASDEC units are equipped with the company’s EAS-Net protocol for streamlined integration. This architecture allows each regional transmitter site to broadcast only the EAS messages specific to its coverage area.

Before the project, the entire state received the same EAS messages regardless of location. Given the state is 190 miles north to south with diverse terrain and weather conditions, the upgrade significantly improves the ability of NHPBS to serve viewers around the state. With this upgrade NHPBS today can transmit EAS messages specific to Stewartstown where it is on-air with 3.0 and in the future regionalize emergency messages when it begins 3.0 service from its remaining sites.

The Stewartstown LPTV site is situated in the far northern region of the state. The site has been upgraded via a flash cut to begin 3.0 broadcasting. An STLTP signal from the Durham studio feeds the site.

HVS provided a new Rohde & Schwarz TMU9evo air-cooled UHF solid-state transmitter operating on RF channel D34 for the Stewartstown site. The transmitter is capable of up to 1kW total power output (TPO) in either ATSC 1.0 or ATSC 3.0 operation. Features include dual-drive exciters licensed for ATSC 3.0, GPS-based time synchronization and ATSC 3.0 IP monitoring software. Transmitter installation and on-site proof-of-performance testing were subcontracted by NHPBS to a third-party provider.

To help NHPBS monitor the health and performance of its new on-air equipment, HVS supplied a Triveni Digital StreamScope XM analyzer for use at the studio. The StreamScope is configured to monitor IP, ASI and RF signal inputs and is fully equipped to provide performance metrics for ATSC 3.0 signals.

HVS also supplied an Airwavz.tv TVXplorer, which uses a RedZone receiver and a customer-supplied laptop PC for on-the-go testing of the ATSC 3.0 station signal at the Stewartstown site.

WASHINGTON—The NextGen TV transition could be “stranded indefinitely in a regime of regulatory uncertainty and half-measures” without 3.0 tuner mandates, must carry provisions and a sunset date for 1.0 broadcasts, the NAB has told the Federal Communications Commission.

The reply comments by the NAB were made in an ongoing proceeding by the FCC to assess and develop a regulatory framework for the rollout of NextGen TV. That proceeding has produced wide ranging arguments about tuner mandates, must carry provisions, digital rights management and sunset dates for the current ATSC 1.0 broadcasts.

“The record developed here confirms that the Commission’s central task is no longer to debate whether NextGen TV is worth pursuing – stakeholders across the ecosystem recognize that it is – but to decide whether the transition will be allowed to succeed through an orderly, coordinated framework, or instead be stranded indefinitely in a regime of regulatory uncertainty and half-measures, all to the detriment of the viewing public,” the NAB said.

The creation of an “orderly, coordinated framework,” the group added, will require four “core actions” that the FCC needs to adopt if the transition is going to be successful and provide consumers with continued access to free, over-the-air broadcasting.

The four areas are: “(1) establish clear, date-certain sunsets for ATSC 1.0 that provide the focal point necessary for marketplace coordination; (2) modernize the receiver standard so consumers can continue to access broadcast service reliably and consistently as the transition proceeds; (3) ensure continued MVPD carriage of ATSC 3.0 signals and associated advanced features so viewers are not deprived of NextGen TV capabilities through distribution bottlenecks; and (4) protect broadcasters’ ability to deliver high-value programming in a video marketplace where content protection and modern technical capabilities are increasingly prerequisites to obtaining and sustaining premium content.”

The NAB also stressed that “the record also makes plain that the Commission has broad support for taking these steps now. Broadcasters, technology providers, and public-interest stakeholders converge on a simple reality: a voluntary framework has reached the limits of what it can accomplish, and further progress depends on regulatory certainty and coordinated action.”

“Against that record of support, opponents’ submissions are notable for what they do not provide: a workable alternative path to completing the transition,” the NAB added. “Instead, the principal opponents offer a familiar mix of classic delay advocacy: resisting receiver modernization, resisting regulatory certainty, resisting any step that would move the transition from pilot to scale, all while recasting the Further Notice as a forum for collateral disputes and speculative anxieties. In short, these opponents reject any modernization that would impose even minimal effort or adjustment on their part. That is not a serious transition plan. In reality, it is an effort to keep free, over-the-air broadcasting tethered to legacy constraints while other segments of the video marketplace move forward unencumbered and without having to worry about broadcasting as a viable competitor.”

“[T]he Commission should establish a firm sunset for ATSC 1.0, eliminate the regulatory constraints that indefinitely prolong simulcasting and “substantially similar” operation, and modernize the receiver framework so that consumers can continue to access free, over-the-air broadcasting reliably as the transition proceeds,” the NAB concluded. “The Commission should also reject efforts to derail this proceeding with collateral disputes and overstated legal theories that offer no workable alternative transition plan.”

The full filing is available here.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill.—Cobalt Digital Inc. has announced that multiple products across its portfolio have successfully completed the inaugural Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) Product Testing and Certification Event.

Cobalt Digital is a designer and manufacturer of video and audio conversion, processing, and distribution solutions, and a founder of openGear. The company has long been a pioneer in open standards and is a big proponent of tech interoperability as broadcast and Pro AV technologies continue to converge.

Cobalt Digital products that have achieved IPMX certification include multiple members of its TOPAZ family of processors, PACIFIC encoders/decoders, INDIGO ST 2110 gateways, SAPPHIRE mini convertors, UltraBlue MV-SW multiviewers, and the ARIA AUD-MON - the industry’s only IPMX-compliant audio monitor.

Developed by the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) in collaboration with the Video Services Forum (VSF), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), IPMX is a suite of open standards and specifications designed to extend ST 2110-based media transport and NMOS-based control into a wider range of markets, including Pro AV, live events, corporate media, and education.

The IPMX program is intended to ensure that certified products deliver reliable interoperability, predictable behavior and compliance with the published TR-10 series of specifications.

The IPMX Product Testing and Certification Event was held from January 19–23, 2026, at the EBU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, marking a major milestone as IPMX transitions from a developing specification to a certifiable and deployable technology.

The event provided manufacturers with the first opportunity to formally validate products built to the IPMX specifications for professional media over IP. Products that successfully passed the testing are now qualified to carry IPMX branding, signifying verified compliance with transport and interoperability requirements.

"Cobalt Digital is incredibly proud to be among the first companies to achieve IPMX product certification and to help lead this important initiative," said Suzana Brady, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. "IPMX is essential to enabling a truly interoperable and scalable IP media ecosystem, and our newly certified products demonstrate our readiness to deliver on that promise."

Cobalt Digital showcased its IPMX-enabled solutions at ISE 2026 in Barcelona where IPMX was a central theme as the industry accelerates toward converged IP media ecosystems.

BOTHELL, Wash.—The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), together with the Video Services Forum (VSF), the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA), and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), today announced that 48 products were officially certified to the Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX) standard at the recent IPMX Product Testing and Certification Event in Geneva, Switzerland. The IPMX-compliant solutions were revealed at a cocktail reception that took place at ISE 2026 in Barcelona on Wednesday, February 4, at 4:30 p.m. in booth 5K880.

The IPMX Product Testing and Certification Event represented the first opportunity for manufacturers to formally certify products against the IPMX set of open specifications for professional media over IP. Following rigorous testing, solutions from Bridge Technologies, Matrox, Adeas / Nextera, Panasonic, Cobalt, intoPIX, plexusAV, Megapixel, Novastar, and Evertz successfully passed certification. These products are now certified and will carry the IPMX branding, signaling verified compliance with published transport, control, and interoperability requirements.

“We couldn’t be more excited to be unveiling the first IPMX-compliant products at ISE 2026,” said Sam Recine, IPMX Pro AV Working Group Chair at AIMS. “The certification of these solutions represents a major milestone in IPMX’s transition from specification to a certifiable and deployable technology, validating years of collaborative technical work and confirming that IPMX is ready to move from development into active deployment.”

“AIMS extends its sincere thanks to Packetstorm and Meinberg for their critical technical contributions, test infrastructure, and timing and network expertise that were essential to the success of IPMX interoperability and certification efforts,” added Recine. “We also recognize the EBU for hosting the event and for providing independent administration of the test process, ensuring a rigorous and neutral certification environment.”

IPMX is a set of open standards and specifications designed to extend SMPTE ST 2110–based media transport and AMWA NMOS–based control into a broader range of markets, including professional AV, live events, corporate media, education, and beyond.

In addition to uncompressed workflows, IPMX introduces support for compressed video, simplified system timing, HDCP, and defined system profiles to make deployment more practical, scalable, and cost-effective for Pro AV environments. The certification program is designed to ensure predictable behavior, reliable interoperability, and adherence to the published IPMX test plans and specifications.

Further technical information on IPMX is available at ipmx.io/technical-information, while the published IPMX test plan can be found at vsf.tv/technical-recommendations. More information about AIMS and its work is available at www.aimsalliance.org.

BEAVERTON, Ore.—HDR10+ Technologies, a multi-industry association that encompasses more than 170 adopters and nearly 20,000 certified devices, is reporting that the France 2 UHD TV channel will be broadcasting the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in 4K Ultra HD which utilizes HDR10+ metadata technology to optimize video image quality on a scene-by-scene basis.

The broadcasts, which will run February 6 to 22, are just the latest example of how HDR10+ is being used for a variety of applications in the entertainment industry, the group said.

In addition to providing superior video quality, France 2 UHD will be offering three different immersive audio mixing options on compatible televisions: a traditional mix balancing commentary and ambient sounds; a mix where the commentary volume is increased by 6 dB for greater voice intelligibility; and a mix that contains ambient sounds only, without any commentary.

According to Bill Mandel, co-manager of HDR10+ Technologies, LLC “We are pleased to work with France Télévisions Group to utilize HDR10+ to help the Olympic Games enthusiasts to enjoy the highest quality video and audio possible”.

Jacques Donat-Bouillud, director of distribution, France Télévisions Group added that “France 2 UHD is proud to deliver the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in native UHD. This exceptional image quality and more immersive sound will enable our viewers to experience these Olympic Games as if they were on the slopes or ice rink.”

For more information on HDR10+ please contact info@hdr10plus.org

Consumer Technology Association President and CEO Gary Shapiro and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s wide-ranging conversation Jan. 8 at CES in Las Vegas gave broadcasters a lot to think about when it comes to their future. It also prompted a couple of my own thoughts.

(If you missed it, C-SPAN carried the conversation, which is available here.)

The future of local TV, general support for ATSC 3.0 at the commission, possible readjustment of the network-affiliate relationship and spectrum use and policy were among the highlights. Here, let’s focus on another: the public-interest obligation of broadcasters.

Setting the stage for discussing the public-interest obligation, Carr reminded the audience of the privilege of having a broadcast license and what that means to broadcasters when it comes to retransmission consent and ultimately must-carry dollars.

“[Broadcasting is] a very, very unique distribution medium…because the government is picking a winner and loser,” he said. “You get a license; you get this microphone; you get to speak; you don’t necessarily get to conduct yourself the same way you would if you run a podcast or a soapbox or a cable channel.”

For broadcasters who don’t like that obligation, Carr offered a couple of solutions: turn in your license and transition to a cable channel, start a podcast, become a YouTube channel or bid on your spectrum in an auction, “maybe let[ting] everyone have a fair and free shot at purchasing that spectrum without the public-interest obligation,” he said.

However, at the risk of revealing my naiveté, how many local TV broadcasters truly are clamoring to shed their public-interest obligation? On the whole, when have local TV stations not lived up to this obligation? Certainly not during tornadoes, hurricanes, incoming missile attacks (remember the Hawaii false alarm?), earthquakes and other emergencies.

On the contrary, unprompted by regulators. the TV industry has attempted to up its game in these situations with Advanced Emergency Alerting & Information (AEI&A), a built-in feature of the ATSC 3.0 standard. However, AEI&A—just like other 3.0 enhancements—can’t fully come to fruition until the industry can move forward on sunsetting 1.0.

Nor have they failed to serve the interests of the public each morning, noon and night when it comes to local news. Carr himself acknowledged in his comments that, given the decline of daily newspapers, local newscasts offer “the last of the real ‘gumshoe reporting.’”

My second observation is the 1934 Communications Act didn’t simply mandate
a public interest obligation. There’s also the “convenience and necessity” portion of the phrase.

It seems to me to be counter to the spirit of TV broadcasters’ obligation to serve the “public interest, convenience and necessity” if the TV sets that the public watches are unable to provide the greatest convenience (think personalization and interactivity) and necessity (think AEI&A evacuation maps in flooding) that local TV broadcasters can deliver.

As the broadcast industry moves further into the IP/cloud and software-based environment, the need for interoperability and scalability has increased. In response, many vendors are coalescing around the Media eXchange Layer, (aka MXL) to solve such issues and give customers more flexible solutions.

This was the topic of discussion for TV Tech’s most recent webinar, "MXL in Action: Real-World Interoperability for the Software-Defined Era," the second part of a two part series produced in conjunction for TV Tech sister brand TVBEurope (Click here for Part 1).

Launched by the EBU, the North American Broadcasters Association and the Linux Foundation, MXL is an open-sourced initiative designed to work within the IP environment to allow software-defined processes from competing vendors to work together, allowing broadcasters to choose best of breed applications.

It uses shared compute memory to enable the processing of video and audio streams to enable faster and more efficient transport within a live production. This “Open Source Initiative,” part of the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) architecture and implemented via an SDK, is currently in the candidate stage, but development of an SDK is moving quickly.

Broadcasters that have taken the lead on the project include CBC-Radio Canada, BBC and France TV.

TV Globo
The webinar started off with a keynote from Helio Eufrauzino, media solution specialist at TV Globo, who discussed how Brazil’s largest broadcaster is approaching the type of software-defined production MXL promotes.

Although MXL is not yet fully developed, Eufrazino explained how TV Globo ran a proof of concept (PoC) in AWS at the broadcaster’s hub in São Paulo, using SRT to move signals to and from the cloud and an asynchronous media framework inside the cloud with multiple vendors’ tools.

For the project, TV Globo used Matrox Origin/AWS as the media-transport layer in the cloud. The results?

• A clear signal with good visual quality and no stuttering;
• Studio-level objective metrics: PSNR and MSE comparable to broadcast studio production;
• Low internal latency: Even though SRT adds some latency to/from cloud, the Matrox internal processing introduced no noticeable latency during switching or operations, and
• Consistent timing: Input and output latency matched across the system.

The outcome showed that asynchronous media frameworks—similar in concept to MXL—can reliably distribute live media inside the cloud with quality and latency comparable to hardware-based workflows. However, more work still needs to be done on designing cloud-native applications, containerization and orchestration, improved security and the development of operational and support models customized to software systems, he said.

The best result, Eufrazino stresses, should be a hybrid ecosystem where hardware-centric and software-centric production coexists.

Eufrazino said that the results were promising enough for further research with plans to go live soon.

“At the end of the year, we hope to have a prototype capable of covering a live production, maybe a news program, soccer game, something that we can have to prove that we can cover a certain time and type of event,” he said.

Bringing Broadcasting into Compute
During the panel discussion, Adam Marshall, chief product officer with Grass Valley, explained how MXL will allow live production to operate in a more compute-centric environment.

“As we move into a more software-defined world, having multiple applications from multiple vendors all running on the same same block of compute—especially if we had to use those linear standards—is just not sufficient," he said. “It adds encapsulation delay, it doesn't work in a way that computers work.”

Marshall added the importance and effectiveness of developing MXL as an open source protocol and pointing to GV AMPP as the company’s approach to visual computing.

“MXL is effectively the evolution, or the next step, of what we have in our memory share technology with frame cache,” he said, adding that “we're working together collaboratively with other vendors on co-developing that as an open SDK, so that it makes interop much easier between vendors, and ultimately makes it easier for customers.”

Mike Cronk, vice president of strategy for TVU Networks said the company has been doing shared, memory-efficient transfer of uncompressed video between computers for about a decade, using Linux tmpfs, (a type of technology that's fairly standard in the IT industry), but says he’s optimistic about the prospects MXL could promise.

“The exciting thing about MXL and the Open Source Initiative is everybody's going to have a common way of doing it,” he said. “Interoperability promotes a ‘rising tide that lifts all boats.’ And you get the benefits of compute efficiency.”

Cronk added that MXL brings media production architectures more in line with how computers traditionally work.

“When you think about software-based live production, you're paying for the software, but how many compute cores do you need?” Cronk mused. “How much storage do you need? That's where the price tag goes up, and because it [MXL] is so much more efficient than doing all this effectively needless work in terms of packetizing the bits that MXL is really going back to the first principles of video and computers and how they work together.”

Russell Trafford Jones, industry engagement manager at Techex, commented on how current workflows will become more efficient under MXL.

“Time and time again, we're seeing people making compromises, and they don't want to make those compromises, but fundamentally, there are some times when you have to do that,” he said. “One of those is the lack of MXL, so for us, we're really interested in making sure that we've got a solid foundation MXL-wise to build not only tomorrow's workflows, but literally the ones that we're already operating today, using other technologies, pushing things together.”

Drew Martin, head of video product management for Riedel Communications, sees MXL as the next step in bringing more leverage for operations relying on COTS servers.

“After going IP, people started using COTS servers, and they wanted to get more efficiency out of them,” he said. “So having vendors work together to make an SDK and on a standard so that other people can integrate with it without having to go through all the hoops and jumps that you have to do when it comes down to other protocols… I think it's very important for Reidel to be a part of this and for our future products to be handling it natively.”

Moving Forward
Marshall commented on how fast the process has moved from what was initially discussed during the 2024 IBC Show to where it is now.

“The CBC Radio Canada team was instigating the discussion, saying ‘look, guys, let's get together on this,’” he said. “It took just over 12-13 months, effectively, to where a release candidate was announced on Christmas day [2025]. And the really amazing thing there was, it actually worked the first time. There wasn't a long drawn out process.”

The cost savings realized by MXL could be significant, Cronk adds.

“People want to provide more content to generate more revenue and do it more efficiently, and there's cost precedence, with rights deals going up and up and those types of things,” he said.

Cronk says the current ability for broadcasters using software and elastic compute could has some "room for improvement" and pointed to research TVU had done on the potential for savings. “We did a study… a 20-camera soccer match with standard pricing on AWS EC2 [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud], for 90 minutes. It was less than $15, which is just mind boggling.”

Cronk stressed though, that the same standards that have driven broadcasters for decades still apply.

“So there's this tremendous, potential economic promise, but you have to have the right quality, you have to have the right latency.”

With MXL allowing broadcasters to pick and choose which applications they want to use and when to use them, Martin says this will help lower costs as well.

“Allowing us to have the ‘best of breed,’ hopefully running on the same VM or interconnected and not having to use all the compute to compress, decompress, encapsulate, decapsulate, and being able to do that will one make cloud productions much more feasible when it comes down to pricing,” he said.

Trafford-Jones likes the idea of an a la carte economic model.

“Sometimes it just doesn't make sense to have a feature, but you need that, right? So maybe you need to plug in the gaps, or you're able to then flexibly say, ‘well, this part of my workflow is working well, but I heard that this one's going to be better. It's got a better flexibility of a pricing model,” he said.

Eufrazino says one of the biggest challenges facing the adoption of MXL is getting more participation.

“We need to have more vendors involved, because to have the best solution for each part—the best solution for the production switcher, the best solution for the audio—the best approach is the multivendor scenario.”

Both webinars are now available on demand:

MXL Architecture and Its Capabilities: Unlocking the Future of Live Production

MXL in Action: Real-World Interoperability for the Software-Defined Era

NEW YORK—The Media Rating Council (MRC) has issued a final document outlining requirements, guidance, and best practices for Digital Advertising Auction Transparency.

As part of its ongoing effort to develop standards for media measurement, the document represents MRC’s effort to set standards for transparency, disclosure and reporting of various aspects and results for digital advertising auctions, including but not limited to display, text, video and audio formats within digital, search, social, retail media, streaming CTV and addressable TV channels.

Despite the growth and diversity of ad auctions in media, there were previously no standards for "Ad Auctioneer conduct regarding disclosure and reporting of auction rules or transparency into auction processes and outcomes,” said Ron Pinelli, senior vice president of digital research and standards for MRC. “It is the objective of these Standards to promote transparency around auction rules and scoring along with reporting and standardization where possible and appropriate, to ensure that auction rules and outcomes are understood for all parties.”

The Standards originated from a project initiated by Omnicom Media and led by the MRC, with sponsorship from the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) as well as Omnicom.

The MRC reported that they were developed with the participation of a large group of media content providers, advertising agencies, advertisers, vendors/consultants, ad auctioneers, measurement organizations and other interested organizations. The final document was subject to a 30-day public comment period in September 2025.

“Digital advertising runs on auctions, but buyers still can’t typically see the rules of the game,” said Ben Hovaness, Global Chief Media Officer for Omnicom Media agency OMD. “The MRC standards create a baseline for disclosure and reporting—how an auction scores, sets prices, uses reserves, and changes over time—so advertisers can validate outcomes, improve their bid strategies, and reduce waste that never reaches working media."

This effort is not aimed at any one platform, ad auctioneer, or auction type; nor is the intention to to replace or alter existing industry protocols such as OpenRTB to communicate auction information, but to supplement them with guidance regarding methods disclosures and outcome reporting, the MRC stressed.

The MRC also said that it does not intend to stipulate or standardize the design of any auction type, as auctioneer companies can and should design auction systems to best suit the particular characteristics of a given media form.

Summarizing the desired outcome, Pinelli said, “The goal is to define the requisites for transparency and to provide guidance to auctioneers in explaining to advertisers how their auctions determine pricing and allocation and providing accountability through reporting.”

The Standards include requirements and guidelines related to disclosures and reporting in the following areas:

• Type(s) of auction system(s) used.
• How winners of auctions are determined.
• After the winners of an auction have been determined, how prices that winners must pay are set.
• Use of reserve prices and methods to update them over time.
• Use of advance information about bids and budgets to adjust the functioning of the auction process and how this is updated over time.
• How often rules of the auction system are updated and disclosed to users?
• What information is disclosed or reported about the auction system and the outcome of auction.

The document is available here.

Questions on this document can be submitted via email to MRC at: rpinelli@mediaratingcouncil.org.

WASHINGTON—The Board of Directors of ATSC, the Broadcast Standards Association™, has elected its 2026 Chair and Vice Chairs, welcomed new directors and appointed 2026 officers.

At the Board’s January meeting, John I. Taylor of LG Electronics USA was re-elected Chairman, while representatives of two ATSC founding member organizations – Lynn Claudy of the National Association of Broadcasters and Brian Markwalter of the Consumer Technology Association – were re-elected Vice Chairmen.

“ATSC and our members are fortunate to have a strong and engaged Board of Directors driving our strategy at this critical time for next-generation broadcasting in the United States and around the world,” said ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

Rounding out the 2026 Board leadership team, Dr. Rikin Thakker of NCTA , the Television & Internet Association, has been named to the ATSC Executive Committee, succeeding Richard Friedel, whose term with the ATSC Board of Directors ended in December 2025.

The Board also welcomed new directors. The Chief Technology Officer of Brazil’s largest TV network, Raymundo Barros of Globo, was appointed to the ATSC Board, while Javier Ruano, President & General Manager at Televes USA, participated in his first ATSC Board meeting as a director.

ATSC’s 2026 officers appointed by the Board are President Madeleine Noland, Vice President Luiz Fausto, Secretary Anh Ngo and Treasurer Lynn Claudy.

Taylor, longtime ATSC board member and communications chair who was first elected Board Chairman a year ago, brings a high level of creativity and energy to his role as Chairman, according to Noland. “John’s future-focused vision, unique perspectives and extensive experience with broadcast and consumer technology issues make him well qualified to spearhead the Broadcast Standards Association’s strategic direction at this milestone moment for multimedia broadcasting,” she said.

In his current position as a Senior Vice President at LG Electronics USA, Taylor serves as LG’s most senior U.S. government affairs, corporate communications and industry relations executive. He has been an influential figure in shaping the digital television landscape in the U.S. for decades. “I am honored to serve as ATSC Board Chairman for 2026, and I look forward to working closely with President Noland, our Board, members and industry stakeholders to continue our momentum in advancing the development and deployment of ATSC 3.0 standards in U.S. and around the world, while continuing to assure ATSC’s key role in the rapidly evolving media and technology landscape,” said Taylor.

Members of the 2026 ATSC Board of Directors are:

• Mark Aitken, SVP, Advanced Technology, Sinclair
• Raymundo Barros, CTO, Globo
• Zandra Clarke, Broadcast Content Transmission Specialist, WarnerBros. Discovery / SMPTE
• Lynn Claudy, SVP, Technology, NAB
• Dr. Ed Czarnecki, VP, International & Government Affairs, Digital Alert Systems
• Fred Engel, Principal, Fred Engel Technology Consulting, LLC
• Adam Goldberg, Director, Technical Standards, Sony Electronics
• Dr. Paul Hearty, Chief Standards Strategist, Samsung Research America
• Brian Markwalter, SVP, Research and Standards, CTA
• Kerry Oslund, VP, AI Strategy, E. W. Scripps Company
• Javier Ruano, President & General Manager, Televes USA, LLC
• Anne Schelle, Managing Director, Pearl TV
• Ling Ling Sun, VP, Technology, Maryland Public Television
• John Taylor, SVP, Public Affairs & Communications, LG Electronics USA
• Dr. Rikin Thakker, CTO & SVP, Technology, NCTA
• Dr. Yiyan Wu, Research Professor, Western University / IEEE

WASHINGTON—The National Association of Broadcasters in December realigned its technology-focused leadership to advance development and deployment of the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS), which can complement and backup the Global Positioning System that is increasingly recognized as a potential single point of failure for delivery of precise timing and positioning data critical to national security.

NAB shifted Sam Matheny, former executive vice president for technology and chief technology officer, to his new role as executive vice president for BPS. At the same time, it transitioned Tariq Mondal from his role as vice president of advanced technology to vice president of BPS. Clearly, BPS is a major thrust for NAB and the industry alike.

In this Q&A, Matheny discusses the strategic personnel realignment, U.S. Transportation Department-funded BPS testing, whether BPS may turn out to be the killer app for ATSC 3.0 and other BPS-related issues.

(An edited transcript.)

TV Tech: Last month, NAB announced a strategic realignment of senior technology leadership focused on BPS. Why has NAB made this move?

Sam Matheny: NAB made this move to accelerate development of the Broadcast Positioning System (BPS) and to put dedicated senior leadership behind an initiative that has clear public safety, critical infrastructure and national security implications. BPS has progressed from concept and early demonstrations into a phase where sustained focus, coordination and execution matter. This realignment allows NAB to concentrate technical leadership on advancing BPS while continuing to support broadcasters as they deploy and invest in NextGen TV infrastructure.

TVT: Last year, the Department of Transportation awarded a $744,000 contract to NAB to move forward with BPS field testing. How has that factored in?

SM: The DOT award in August was another validation that BPS is aligned with broader federal efforts to strengthen resilience for position, navigation and timing services. It signaled the continued shift from discussion to real-world evaluation, but importantly, it was part of a larger series of events. In January of 2025, BPS’s time transfer stability was declared “comparable to or better than GNSS [Global Navigation Satellite System]” and a “viable complementary PNT [Positioning, Navigation and Timing] solution” by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in a peer-reviewed paper presented at the Institute of Navigation (ION) International Technical Meeting. These events, coupled with other indicators, helped drive NAB’s decision to align leadership around BPS so the organization can support field testing, data collection and engagement with government and industry partners in a more focused and sustained way.

TVT: For readers who aren’t familiar with BPS, briefly bring them up to speed.

SM: BPS, a technology invented and developed by NAB, uses NextGen TV broadcast signals to deliver resilient, terrestrial-based timing and location services. One can think of BPS as the terrestrial equivalent of GPS. It is designed to complement GPS. It can provide a backup when satellite signals are disrupted, jammed or spoofed, but it can also be integrated to work with GPS as a hybrid solution. Because BPS leverages high-power broadcast infrastructure that already exists across the country, it has the potential to scale nationally and provide a reliable layer of resilience for public safety, critical infrastructure and other essential services. Other nations that are deploying ATSC 3.0 have also expressed interest in BPS.

TVT: Tell us about the new testing funded by the DOT contract. What will you be looking at?

SM: The field trial supported by the DOT contract is focused on evaluating BPS performance in real-world environments rather than controlled demonstrations. The work is intended to assess how BPS can support critical infrastructure operations when GPS is unavailable or degraded, as well as how the system performs in terms of reliability, coverage and operational integration. NAB has partnered with Dominion Energy with a focus on energy grid resiliency. This testing is a key step in understanding how BPS could function at scale.

TVT: Can you tell us a little more about partnering with Dominion Energy and the broader role of BPS for U.S. industry?

SM: Electric utilities rely heavily on precise timing to operate safely, manage load and maintain grid stability. Power enters the grid from multiple sources and has to be time-aligned for effective distribution. Precision time also plays a huge role in fault detection and helps grid operators identify and fix problems quickly should they occur. Partnering with Dominion Energy allows NAB to evaluate how BPS could help sustain timing and synchronization for electric grid operations during GPS disruptions. More broadly, BPS is being evaluated as a terrestrial complement to GPS that could support a wide range of industries that depend on precise timing, including energy, cellular communications, data centers, financial systems and transportation, where even short disruptions can have significant consequences.

TVT: Is BPS the killer app for ATSC 3.0 that could accelerate deployment by giving the federal government a national security incentive?

SM: BPS is a strong example of how NextGen TV infrastructure can enable services that go well beyond video and entertainment. While ATSC 3.0 supports many new consumer and business applications, the ability to deliver GPS-level resilient timing and positioning highlights its potential role in public safety and national resilience. That broader value proposition reinforces the importance of completing the transition to NextGen TV and ensuring the underlying broadcast infrastructure is fully deployed nationwide.

TVT: Is precise timing or precise positioning the initial priority for BPS? Why?

SM: The near-term priority is accurate, traceable time delivery. Many critical infrastructure systems depend on accurate timing to function properly, and timing disruptions can cascade quickly across networks and services. A 2019 study by NIST estimated the economic impact of a loss of GPS at $1 billion per day. BPS is designed to provide resilient timing as a foundational capability, while positioning and additional services will continue to be developed and refined over time.

TVT: Some in the industry have expressed concerns about the geographic distance between towers affecting positioning. What are your views?

SM: A minimum of three geographically diverse transmissions is needed to perform the multilateration required to determine location, with more towers being better and providing greater accuracy. Our analysis estimates that a typical (median) location in the contiguous U.S., BPS signals from 17 NextGen TV stations might be received at 1.5-meter antenna height. This analysis excluded stations within a kilometer of one another and used only the highest power station from each cluster of stations. So we believe that BPS can provide a useful service for position and navigation. We’re also excited that professors and graduate students at the University of Alabama have begun studying the position and navigation possibilities of BPS and will present early findings at the Workshop on Synchronization and Timing in May.

TVT: At the 2025 NAB Show, there were presentations on the leader-follower architecture and clock configurations for BPS. Can you tell us a bit about what’s being considered?

SM: BPS is designed to be an independent self-synchronizing network that doesn’t rely on the Internet, cellular networks or other connectivity. We’ve designed it as a mesh network where stations listen to one another in a leader-follower configuration. This design is similar to how EAS works. A leader station has a direct connection to UTC traceable time and is equipped with a cesium clock for long holdover, so system integrity can be maintained for months even if there is a total loss of connectivity to traceable time. Follower stations receive time from leader stations and have less expensive rubidium clocks that offer some holdover protection. The result is a network where each station is listening to multiple other stations, and we can monitor individual station health at our network operations center (NOC). A “health bit” is part of the system and can be transmitted if a station is known or suspected to be impaired for maintenance or other reasons, so that it will be ignored until it is healthy again.

TVT: Transmitting BPS addresses the vulnerability of relying solely on GPS, but what is happening on the receiver side?

SM: Reliance on a single timing solution, GPS, is why our nation is at so much risk. GPS has become an invisible utility that has evolved into a single point of failure for critical infrastructure and day-to-day consumer applications. BPS is the terrestrial equivalent of GPS and has been declared to be a “viable complementary PNT solution” by scientists at NIST. We are working with timing solution vendors that want to integrate BPS into their products to offer multiple sources of reliable time in a single product. This lays the foundation for hybrid solutions where BPS and GPS can be used together, not just BPS as a backup. A hybrid approach also offers the ability to use BPS to monitor the health of GPS and detect if there is jamming or spoofing taking place.

TVT: Is there anything else you would like to add?

SM: BPS demonstrates how broadcasters are using their existing infrastructure to support national resilience in new and meaningful ways. This work reflects a broader shift toward viewing broadcast networks as critical infrastructure. NAB is focused on validating that role through real-world testing, partnerships and collaboration with government and industry.

WASHINGTON—In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, The Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance has come out in favor of the FCC setting a firm date to end current ATSC broadcasts.

In its Jan. 20 filing, the group, which is made up of commercial and public broadcasters, national trade associations, and technology manufacturers backing the advanced alerting capabilities of ATSC 3.0, also backed some of the security features built into the ATSC 3.0 standard and highlighted improved emergency alerting capabilities of NextGen TV that broadcasters will be able to use to keep local communities safe.

“As the Commission has previously noted, Next Generation broadcasting will permit new ways for broadcasters to connect with and inform their audiences, including more targeted, specific, and helpful alerts and information that can be transmitted from TV stations to viewers within reach of broadcast signals,” the filing said, adding that “the AWARN Alliance emphasizes that the full capabilities of the standard are best implemented once the availability of ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals is ubiquitous across the country. This will allow broadcasters to enhance connections with the public safety community and deliver new alerting tools and capabilities that will save lives and property during emergencies.”

“The introduction and widespread adoption of voluntary Advanced Emergency Information that is possible with the ATSC 3.0 standard requires certainty from the FCC about the likely sunset of ATSC 1.0 signals, so that newsroom and production investments can be made to take advantage of the advanced features of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard,” AWARN Alliance, executive director David H. Arland wrote in a letter to the FCC.

The filing did not advance a specific date for that sunset. The NAB has proposed that the signals be ended in larger markets in 2028 and the whole country by 2030.

The filing also defended some of the features of the 3.0 standard that are designed to protect content and broadcast signals from piracy.

“Content security has become a common requirement for high-value content, which also means that receiving devices must be fully security verified to tune to most broadcast ATSC 3.0 content today,” Arland wrote. “Without proper security credentials, a consumer cannot view ATSC 3.0 signals from broadcasters that have enabled content security. For more than 18,000,0000 potential viewers who have purchased a TV receiver equipped with NextGen TV electronics, this is not an issue, as the NextGen TV sets are security verified, enabling audiences to access all NextGen TV content, whether encrypted or not, without needing an internet connection or subscription. It is a seamless experience.”

In addition, Arland stressed that “Many of the set-top receivers are also security verified, also delivering seamless access to all content” and that only one product has “not yet resolved security issues, and those customers are able to tune to ATSC 1.0 broadcasts and related EAS messages from local stations.”

“The use of content security does not in any way impede the delivery of EAS messages or Advanced Emergency Information; emergency alerts and related public safety information are delivered as part of the ATSC 3.0 service and are available whenever the underlying channel is receivable,” Arland concluded. “Since the content security system is agnostic to the content being delivered, the Commission should expect that programming content that includes emergency messages would be transmitted in the same secure manner. Properly implemented, all content is equally secure and accessible.”

The filing also urged the FCC to establish policies so that “local viewers should not have their channel choices hijacked by MVPDs during emergencies, as has previously been the case with some cable operators. Rather, cable operators should let local broadcasters inform local audiences with appropriate EAS warnings and information, since local TV stations are typically staffed to provide more information than a pass-through multichannel provider.”

“Local stations are the best option for keeping local audiences informed during specific emergencies, including providing geolocation targeted information, maps, multilingual and sign language services, and other capabilities that are anticipated in the ATSC 3.0 standard,” the AWARN Alliance argued, adding that “news and weather departments at stations staffed with newsrooms will have these new tools available to keep their viewers informed, including those who are referred to local broadcast TV stations by WEA wireless telephone alerts. The Advanced Emergency Information capability of the ATSC 3.0 standard can also be utilized to supplement brief emergency alerts, including potentially the delivery of rich-media content such as maps, video clips, and other advisories…In summary, advanced emergency information and alerts enabled by ATSC 3.0 – and by FCC rules, requirements and policies that foster innovation – further enhance broadcasters’ capabilities to serve their communities.”

The full filing is available here.

WASHINGTON—In a joint filing with the Federal Communications Commission, America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) and PBS highlighted the importance of NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 for the future of public broadcasting but asked the regulator not to set a firm date for cutting off ATSC 1.0 broadcasts.

The NAB, Pearl TV, state broadcast associations and large commercial broadcasters have been pushing for a firm sunset to ATSC 1.0 signals.

In a separate filing with the FCC, Pearl TV, which is backed by major commercial station groups, argued that "a clear deadline is the only way to align incentives across broadcasters, manufacturers, and retailers. Threshold-based approaches would replicate the early confusion of the DTV transition and prolong uncertainty. A firm date provides the predictability necessary for investment and consumer clarity."

APTS and PBS, who referred to themselves as PTV in the filing, said PTV “supports the Commission’s proposal to facilitate and accelerate the ongoing voluntary transition to NextGen TV by removing regulatory hurdles and providing broadcasters with maximum flexibility for the transition. These proposed changes will empower all local stations, including local public television stations, to deploy ATSC 3.0 at their discretion and at the appropriate pace to best serve the unique needs of their local communities and local audiences.”

The filing stressed that PTV supports enabling local stations to best meet viewers’ needs by eliminating regulatory barriers and providing maximum flexibility for local station decision-making.

“PTV agrees with the Commission that the continued permissive, flexible deployment of ATSC 3.0 by local broadcasters will best serve the public interest," the Jan. 20 filing noted. "The FCC can best support television stations, and the viewers they serve, with the transition to ATSC 3.0 by providing local stations with maximum flexibility to make their own decisions about ATSC 3.0 deployment” and by adopting “a flexible (and local) grassroots approach (rather than a top-down regulatory approach)”

As part of that the PTV filing supports the FCC proposals to eliminate the substantially similar and simulcast regulations.

But the filing also opposed a hard cutoff date. “PTV believes it is premature for the FCC to establish either a date certain or specific market conditions for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 service at this time; rather, any sunsetting of ATSC 1.0 service should be market-led for now (as with the rest of the transition), so that local stations continue to have maximum flexibility to serve their communities.”

The full filing can be found here.

[This article is part TV Tech’s ongoing coverage of the FCC and NextGen TV; articles about comments and filings from other companies and associations with different perspectives on these issues can be found here and here.]

WASHINGTON—Associations backed by the pay TV industry have voiced significant opposition to the NAB’s proposals for speeding up the transition to NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0.

In filing with the Federal Communications Commission, which has launched an inquiry into rules impacting the rollout of ATSC 3.0 broadcasts [FCC GN Docket No. 16-142 Authorizing Permissive Use of the “Next Generation” Broadcast Television Standard], the NCTA, the American Television Alliance (ATVA) and others have criticized NAB proposals that the FCC should set a firm cutoff date for ATSC 1.0 broadcasts and eliminate requirements to simulcast 1.0 content on the newer 3.0 broadcasts.

In its Jan. 20 filing, the NCTA. which represents major cable providers told the FCC that the transition “to ATSC 3.0 should remain market based, and the Commission should reject broadcasters’ requests for government intervention. Instead, the government should continue to prioritize protecting consumers from any harmful impacts.”

More specifically, the NCTA comments argued that “the simulcasting requirements in the Commission’s rules remain essential at this point in the transition given the broadcast industry’s decision to use a non-backwards compatible technology. The Commission should not foist the substantial costs of a premature conversion to ATSC 3.0 on consumers and MVPDs by abandoning the simulcasting and substantially similar protections at this time.”

Filings by the NAB, Pearl TV and other broadcasters have pushed for the end of simulcasting rules because it would free-up spectrum and allow them to better showcase the benefits of the new 3.0 broadcast standard.

The NCTA also argued that the FCC “should also reject any calls to grant must-carry rights to 3.0 signals. In today’s video marketplace, must carry requirements are no longer supportable under the First and Fifth Amendments. Extending must carry requirements to 3.0 signals would only exacerbate these constitutional infirmities.”

The filing argued that “MVPD distribution of ATSC 3.0 signals also presents numerous technical challenges, including issues that implicate the Commission’s existing rules regarding broadcast must carry and retransmission consent. The Commission should remain mindful of these challenges as the transition progresses.”

In terms of must-carry for 3.0 broadcasts, the NCTA argued that “requiring cable operators to incur additional substantial costs to upgrade their equipment to meet new carriage obligations would have significant economic impacts on regulated cable operators and interfere with their investment-backed expectations. In today’s highly competitive marketplace for video, these burdens are more severe and represent a far greater economic impact on cable providers than was the case when courts have considered these issues in the past.”

The NCTA also contended that “The Commission should also ensure that broadcasters’ use of spectrum serves the public interest and meets statutory requirements concerning ancillary and supplementary services, and it should take steps to contain any anti-competitive effects stemming from broadcast stations’ transition to ATSC 3.0.”

The NCTA warned that implementation of the broadcast standard posed a number of anti-competitive threats to the video market and argued that the FCC should adopt policies that would avoid those problems.

“If the Commission decides to permit stations to flash cut to ATSC 3.0 despite the early state of the transition and lack of demand from consumers, it should take additional steps to limit and contain the inevitable anti-competitive effects and harm to MVPDs and consumers,” the NCTA argued.

“The Commission should affirmatively require that patents relevant to the ATSC 3.0 standard be licensed on a reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) basis,” the NCTA urged. “Of significant concern, there has already been patent infringement litigation involving alleged ATSC 3.0 functionality where the jury awarded the patentee an ongoing royalty of $6.75 per television for four patents, exorbitantly higher than the rates for the two existing patent pools for ATSC 3.0 patents.

"Specifically, a pool comprising over 11,000 patents operated by Avanci charges $2-$3 per unit, and a pool of 50+ patents administered by Via Licensing Alliance similarly charges under $3 per unit. Constellation’s excessive royalty award prompted LG to suspend inclusion of ATSC 3.0-compatibility in its TVs for the U.S. market. This type of `patent ambush’ is particularly worrying given that many patents in the field claim patent-ineligible subject matter (as LG is arguing in the pending litigation), but it can take years of litigation to invalidate such patents.”

In its filings, the American Television Alliance also argued that the transition posed significant technical issues for pay TV operators and that they should not be required to invest significant amounts of money to comply with Must carry rules.

The ATVA said it “continues to be open to `voluntary and market-driven’ adoption of ATSC 3.0” and said the FCC should continue its “voluntary and market-driven” approach.

“From the MVPD perspective, the most significant concern about ATSC 3.0 is that the format is not backwards compatible with MVPDs’ existing distribution architecture, and many current set-top-boxes and consumer devices cannot support ATSC 3.0 streams and related features,” it stressed. “Developing ATSC 3.0 compatibility would require MVPDs to incur substantial costs for new equipment and system changes to receive and process ATSC 3.0 signals. Even then, most MVPDs could not deliver ATSC 3.0 signals to consumers. In other words, whatever improvements broadcasters might make to their signals using ATSC 3.0 are highly unlikely ever to accrue to MVPD subscribers and thus MVPD expenditures to accommodate ATSC 3.0 would be a dead weight loss.”

“We, therefore, urge the Commission to maintain the simulcasting requirement (and the substantially similar requirement),” the group concluded. “If the Commission were to decide otherwise, however, it should at a minimum require broadcasters—whether electing retransmission consent or must-carry—to deliver signals to MVPDs in a 1.0-compatible format at their cost. Otherwise, the Commission would be asking MVPDs (and their subscribers) to incur substantial costs to downconvert broadcast signals without any benefit to those subscribers. This would be arbitrary and capricious.”

The group also contended that “the primary benefits of the ATSC 3.0 transition appear not to be improvements to broadcast television, but rather the ability of broadcasters to use ATSC 3.0 signals for unrelated services like datacasting. This real possibility that broadcasters could use the vast majority of their spectrum for services other than free, over-the-air television raises significant legal questions, including under the Communications Act, FCC rules, and the Administrative Procedure Act—especially if MVPDs and their subscribers are expected to pick up the tab for such services.”

The full filing by the NCTA is available here.

The full filing by the ATVA is available here.

[This article is part TV Tech’s ongoing coverage of the FCC and NextGen TV; articles about the comments and filings from other companies and associations with different perspectives on these issues can be found here and here.]

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.—SMPTE has announced that Steve LLamb, vice president of technology standards and solutions for cinema worldwide at Deluxe, will chair the ISO/TC 36 Cinematography. He will be taking over the role from previous chair, Andy Maltz.

"It was an honor to collaborate with ISO/TC 36 members to maintain and advance the international technical standards that underpin the cinema industry,” said Maltz. “As an experienced ISO/TC 36 working group chair, Steve LLamb's background and commitment to standards positions him for success in his new role."

ISO/TC 36 works to ensure interoperability across the worldwide motion picture industry. A due process organization with a membership of 175 countries, ISO develops international standards in a broad range of topics. ISO/TC 36 has published 114 international standards and has 12 more under development. Current work includes standardization of cinema LED display technical parameters and streamlining digital cinema standards revisions.

“As Andy transitions from the role of Chair, I would like to take a moment to thank him for his leadership and dedication to ISO/TC 36 over the past several years,” said LLamb. “I am honored to step into the role of Chair and to serve alongside such a committed and knowledgeable group of experts. ISO/TC 36 occupies a unique and important place in the standards ecosystem, providing long-term stability and international alignment for cinematography standards that must endure across technologies, workflows, and generations.”

"Since 1952, SMPTE has served as the secretariat for ISO/TC 36 ‘Cinematography,’ with a commitment to ensuring the seamless operation of the TC,” said SMPTE standards director Thomas Bause Mason. “As Andy Maltz completes his tenure as TC chair after a productive seven-year term, and Steve LLamb takes over the role, we are confident that this transition will uphold our tradition of consistency and stability."

Further information on SMPTE Standards is online at Standards Overview | Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers. Further information about SMPTE is online at smpte.org.