LAS VEGAS—LG is reporting that KHMP-LD is live broadcasting 4K Ultra HDTV with high dynamic range using the new ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standard at CES 2016.
According to LG, the broadcast, from Las Vegas station KHMP-LD’s transmitter on Nevada’s Black Mountain, is delivering clear 4K HDR content, received for the first time on LG’s new ATSC 3.0-enabled receivers at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The signal has four times the resolution of HDTV and offers enhanced contrast, brightness and shadow detail.
KHMP operates on Ch. 18 and is owned and operated by DNV Spectrum Holdings, a broadcast group that also owns other stations in the United States, is broadcasting in Las Vegas using the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Candidate Standard under an experimental broadcast license from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Core technologies developed by LG are included in the majority of the Physical Layer Candidate Standard, the company said.
The transmission field trial during CES demonstrates the robust transmission and high bandwidth for 4K made possible for the first time using the ATSC 3.0 next-generation standard developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee.
Among LG’s contributions to ATSC 3.0, the company’s technologies are included in the Physical Layer Candidate Standard’s scrambler, forward error correction, bit-interleaver, mapper, MIMO, time-interleaver, OFDM framer, frequency-interleaver, pilot and tone reserve, and guard interval.
The ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard provides higher capacity to deliver 4K UHD services, robust reception on mobile devices and improved spectrum efficiency. The increased payload capacity of the physical layer combined with HEVC encoding will allow broadcasters many more options when planning their broadcast service offerings.
“ATSC 3.0 is a collaborative effort among many broadcast technology experts, and LG technology is part of at least 10 of the 15 building blocks of the new Candidate Standard,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, president and chief technology officer for LG Electronics.
Ahn noted that this week’s Las Vegas broadcast comes on the heels of other broadcast field trials conducted in the United States and South Korea over the past 18 months by LG Electronics, its U.S. R&D Lab Zenith, and broadcast transmission equipment provider, GatesAir.
Those real-world field tests in Seoul, Cleveland, Ohio, and Madison, Wis., represented key mileposts in LG’s developments of core technologies within ATSC 3.0 Standard, he said. “The Las Vegas CES broadcast, with the approved ATSC Candidate Standard transmission system, again shows how we are partnering with broadcasters around the world to drive adoption of next-generation broadcasting technology.” (See “Inside the Cleveland Futurecast ATSC 3.0 Transmission Tests, ” July 13, 2015; and “Futurecast Demo Shows Simultaneous 4K, HD and Mobile Reception,” Oct. 22, 2014.)
Development of ATSC 3.0 technologies represents the latest collaboration among LG, Zenith and GatesAir, co-inventors of the technology behind the ATSC A/153 mobile DTV standard, adopted in 2009. Zenith also submitted the core transmission system in the current DTV standard.
(Editor’s note: This article originally had a -TV designation after KHMP as stated in the information provided by LG. KHMP is actually a low-power TV station licensed to operate at 7.5 kW ERP, according to FCC database query results.)
See our ATSC 3.o silo for more.
