SHANGHAI: The Advanced Television Systems Committee was among a global delegation calling for worldwide coordination of future broadcast TV standards. Members of ATSC signed the declaration at the Future of Broadcast TV Summit in this coastal Chinese city.
“It makes sense to work together--to conserve scarce resources, to speed new developments to the market and to take advantages of economies of scale wherever possible,” said ATSC President Mark Richer, co-chair of the summit, 11th from the left in the picture. Lynn Claudy of the National Association of Broadcasters is far right.
The declaration comprises three major initiatives: Defining the future of terrestrial broadcast systems; exploring “unified terrestrial broadcast standards;” and promoting global technology sharing.
“We need to explore new ways of cooperation, seek the progressive unification of standards, and realize technology sharing so that the efficiency and convenience enabled by digitization will be realized--not reduced by system fragmentation,” the document states. “The 21st Century is an era of integration of broadcasting, Internet, and communications, all of which have evolved in parallel. Consumers are calling for more convenient and user-friendly services. The development of digital technology opens the possibility of cooperation among all the different networks and transmission systems.”
Representatives from the Canadian Broadcast Corp., Communications Research Center, Digital Video Broadcast Project, European Broadcast Union, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Globo TV Network, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, NAB, National Engineering Research Center of Digital TV of China, NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories, Public Broadcasting Service and the Brazilian Society of Television Engineers signed.
The ATSC Board of Directors endorsed the joint declaration, “recognizing that the global initiative is consistent with the goals of ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standards development,” said Samsung Vice President John Godfrey, ATSC board chairman, who accompanied Richer and more than a dozen other ATSC members at the summit in China.
The developing ATSC 3.0 standards focus on improved audio and video compression systems, more-efficient transmission technologies and new applications. In the near-term, ATSC also is developing ATSC 2.0 backwards-compatible enhancements to the current U.S. digital TV transmission standard, including areas such as Internet-enhanced and 3D broadcasting.
The joint declaration calls for defining requirements for future terrestrial broadcast systems, considering unified terrestrial broadcast standards, and exploring global technology sharing.
