There’s a lot to be said for clarity—not just on screen but also in messaging.
Sometimes when reporting, certain gems unearthed during interviews simply don’t fit with the subject of the story and get left in the dust.
One such jewel was an observation Advanced Television Systems Committee President Madeleine Noland made during our interview for a story looking at industry reaction to the “Future of Television Initiative” report. But it is far too important to let go by the wayside.
Referring to the South Koreans, who launched ATSC 3.0 in 2017 to have 4K television transmitted over the air for the 2018 Winter Olympics, she said: “They didn’t even need to give it a name. They just went out with UHD because 4K is better than 2K. So easy, so simple. 4K over the air—done.”
Why was the move so easy, so simple and done? “They got new spectrum to do it [to put 3.0 on air]. They didn’t have to worry about this simulcast and this channel-sharing stuff,” she said.
That statement was a real eye-opener. I have always reported on the transition from the point of view of tech. What are the technical consequences of channel-sharing? What can broadcasters do? What can’t they do, and what will they be able to do someday when it goes away?
Noland, who leads the organization responsible for the technical standard, however, set all of that aside and focused her comment on what’s really important: the TV viewer.
South Korea’s 3.0 marketing message was simple to viewers. What’s better? A or B? 2K or 4K? No need to get into the weeds. No need to promote the finer points, such as HDR, immersive audio, start-over, games or advanced alerts.
Here, however, there were no separate channel assignments for 3.0, just channel-sharing and a strict limit on the number of bits that can be allocated to NextGen TV.
Right now, some readers are saying to themselves something like: “Most viewers can’t even tell the difference between 2K and 4K,” or “HDR is the big thing, not 4K,” or “We’ll transmit 1080p HDR and let the set upscale to 4K—no big deal.”
True, true and true, but that’s not the point. Clarity in messaging, not the video image, is the point. Simple and easy for the consumer to understand and done for the broadcaster.
What U.S. broadcasters are left with is what Robert Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution at Gray Media, calls a “worst of all worlds” situation where broadcasters can neither maximize the use of their channel assignments for 1.0 or 3.0.
Even worse, the level tech playing field broadcasters were hoping to play on with competitors may be passing them by. Consider the Super Bowl. Fox Sports produced the game in 1080p HDR, and Fox’s streaming service Tubi as well as some distribution partners like Charter Spectrum TV distributed in it 4K.
But what about Gray Media, which along with some other OTA broadcasters, is actively promoting the benefit of watching NextGen TV for the enhancement HDR brings to the viewing experience?
Basically, it’s doing the best it can do. For the Super Bowl, WVUE, Gray Media’s Fox affiliate in New Orleans, worked with its 3.0-channel sharing partners to enable its 3.0 stat mux to allocate more bits to the high-motion presentation of the game to NextGen TV viewers.
Before that step, however, Gray took the Fox 720p distribution feed, up-mapped it to 1080p and converted it to 1080p HDR. “We would have gladly taken the 1080p native HDR feed, and we have the capability to handle that,” Folliard said in response to an email inquiry following the game. “For now, however, it is still up-mapping.”
That’s a tiny example of why some, including yours truly, were so disappointed with the long-awaited Future of Television Initiative report.
We were promised “a road map for a transition to ATSC 3.0” by former FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel. What we got instead looked more like a Festivus airing of grievances that laid out no easy, simple path to being done.
