ATSC 3.0 breaking news

[Robert Zohn]

I just finished my full two days at NAB's NY show at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. It was fun connecting and catching up with my many friends as I spent 25+ years at a TV Broadcast System Engineer before starting Value Electronics in 1998.

Other than visiting the exhibitors and learning about all of the new products and technologies I attending many of the educational seminars. The three most important seminars that I want to discuss are:

Day one, Wednesday, October 17, 2019

The State of UHD and HDR: Five Things Everyone Should Know, by Thomas Bause Mason, SMPTE, Director of Standards Development.

Tom discussed all of the SMPTE and many of the ITU standards for UHD/HDR and all of its related technology advancements. Near the end of his presentation Tom said the broadcasters will be sending 1080 resolution and some content with some sort of HDR, but only 8bit and unlikely any WCG or EOTF.

So at the end of his presentation I spoke privately with Tom and said I believe we'll see UHD/HDR w/10bit and P3. Tom replied, no 4K HDR, as the broadcasters do not have the bandwidth on the OTA carrier or IP.

Thoroughly enjoyed my time with Tom, it was a privilege to attend his class and then to be one on one with him, but as the conversation came to a close I left confused as to how and why can we have a standard that can't be delivered so I was deeply disappointed. ATSC 3.0 was what I was waiting for so we can have all of the beautiful and creative nighttime programming in glorious UHD/HDR and all that comes with the 10bit, WCG and EOTF.

Day two, Thursday, October 18, 2018

ATSC 3.0 Update - What, Where and Especially WHEN?

Great session discussing all of the many new features and abilities of ATSC 3.0, e.g. user feed back (2-way communications), second screen and of course, UHD/HDR. Near the end of the presentation, Pearl TV Managing Director, Anne Schelle announced that broadcasters will send 1080 SDR and sometimes, if the 1080 source permits we'll also include some kind of HDR (not sure if that's HLG or HDR10). This confirmed what I learned at yesterday's SMPTE session.

That's when my hand went up to comment and you can read about our interaction on the next post.

Accelerating to the Road of ATSC 3.0

Much of the same from the earlier ATSC 3.0 session. I loved Prabu David, Dean, College of Communication Arts and Sciences Michigan State University. Prabu spoke about his use of ATSC 3.0 in the Beta testing where the PBS station had a kids program on bullying and used ATSC 3.)'s sub carrier to deliver a second scree to the parents cell phone or tablet informing them that the kids were watching and giving parent tips on how to discuss this subject with children and more. The 2-way communications is cool too and has some creative potential uses. But UHD w/PQ HDR is what I'm after and the broadcasters have most of the Sports and some very good night time series that would attract a very nice additional market of story telling and sports lovers.

Near the end of the speakers talk they confirmed the use of 1080 SDR content over ATSC 3.0 and saying the reason is that the FCC will not sell the broadcasters any more bandwidth. They also said that in many regions the O&O stations and Affiliates got together and formed an alliance to support each-other's need for more bandwidth when they had a worthy or important program to broadcast so one at a time they can schedule ATSC 3.0.

I love the idea for competitors in the same market banding together to deliver ATSC 3.0 on an as needed basis. This does not serve the long term problem of not enough bandwidth, but it's a creative and very admirable solution to a very serious problem. It also does not serve to help with the lack of UHD/HDR 10bit content that we were all so keenly looking forward to.

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but wanted to let everyone know and ask for support from all who read this and care by writing to your local broadcasters telling them we want UHD/HDR 10 bit content from them and was hoping ATSC 3.0 had held the promise of better picture and audio performance that our 4K TVs and multi channel audio systems already support.

It's interesting that in South Korea they employed ATSC 3.0 to the public and the only feature they are using is 4K HDR, not second screen or 2-way feedback.