NEW ORLEANS—WVUE-TV, Gray Media’s Fox affiliate here, turned to Heartland Video Systems (HVS) to pre-configure and lab test custom StatMux and HDR configurations in advance of the Super Bowl for use during its broadcast of the game.
Gray Media asked HVS to develop a custom ATSC 3.0 StatMux that wouldn’t adversely affect any of the available ATSC 3.0 tuners in TVs or set top boxes. HVS pre-qualified and tested several StatMux combinations in its advanced ATSC 3.0 laboratory in Plymouth, Wisc. After successful lab testing, the new configuration was deployed by WVUE for the game, the company said.
For the New Orleans ATSC 3.0 market, HVS configured a Harmonic XOS encoding platform and a DigiCAP DigiCaster ATSC 3.0 air chain as a StatMux. Before configuring the StatMux, the ATSC 3.0 OTA signal was running an average of 4 Mb/s per program service.
“Harmonic and DigiCAP worked on the StatMux for a while. It is certainly exciting to see it come to fruition in the production system at WVUE. HVS has been an instrumental partner in developing, testing and proving the enablement of StatMux, and we will continue to work with Harmonic and HVS to enhance the operational ease of the StatMux.” said Sang Jin Yoon, senior vice president of business development at DigiCAP.
HVS equally rated all the program services, but the Fox program feed still received the most bitrate due to the complexity of the video. After the custom StatMux was set up and tested, it is estimated the average bitrate was closer to 6-7 Mb/s and would max out at around 10 Mb/s when needed. Other services had peak bit rates at around 7Mb/s, HVS said.
So, at times, even non-Super Bowl programs benefited more than they would have if they were running the older pre-HVS configuration. In addition to the StatMux configuration, HVS also helped WVUE enable Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as well as a Dolby Atmos upmix, it said.
“Gray Media is committed to providing the best-in-class audio and video quality to its viewers through its NextGen TV broadcasts. HVS’s innovative StatMux solution allowed WVUE to deliver the best possible viewer experience during the Big Game and other high profile programming on WVUE, including local broadcasts of New Orleans Pelicans games,” said Robert Folliard, Gray Media senior vice president of government relations and distribution.
More information is available on the company’s website.
