LEAWOOD, KAN.—From the self-driving bus receiving ATSC 3.0 signals as it circled between the Central and South Halls at the Las Vegas Convention Center and various demos of scalable HEVC (SHVC) to the Road to ATSC 3.0 pavilion and AWARN and personalization and interactivity implementation teams showing off their latest advancements, Next Gen TV demonstrated success after success at the 2018 NAB Show.
That was especially true at the pavilion where the main focus was on the numerous 3.0 trials, including Dallas, Phoenix, Baltimore-Washington, D.C., Portland, Ore., Cleveland and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and the world’s first nationwide deployment in South Korea, where the Winter Olympics from PyeongChang were telecast in 4K over the air via 3.0.
As Mark Richer, president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee told me at the pavilion: “Last year they [broadcast executives] got it—they really got it. And this year, they are thinking ‘We really have to do this. This is great.’”
Of course, as the number of U.S. 3.0 trials grow, broadcasters will begin to identify the standard’s strengths—both from a technical and business point of view—and where improvements are needed. That’s actually a remarkable statement for anyone who’s long toiled creating the standard. “This is fun for me,” said Richer, “because I have been involved in the standards, but when you see deployments, you think, ‘Wow, we really did it.’”
[Read: Phoenix Model Market Launches Next Gen TV Broadcasts]
Not only should TV broadcasters be pleased that 3.0 is standardized, authorized and being trialed to see how it can best be monetized, but they should also be happy that many of the individuals behind its inner workings continue to anticipate and address potential problems and are finding solutions.
For example, Yiyan Wu, Ph.D, principal research scientist and CTO, Communications Research Center Canada, and his colleague Liang Zhang, presented at the NAB Show on a strategy to mitigate strong co-channel interference in 3.0.
There’s not enough space here to elaborate on their presentation, but it is reassuring to know that strategies already are being developed to address possible Next-Gen TV challenges so that when 3.0 is deployed around the country both broadcasters and the public can begin reaping its benefits without hiccups getting in the way.
For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.
