New tech standard to bring broadcast TV to smartphones (but not in Canada)
By Lynn Greiner
TORONTO – For almost 25 years, the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) 1.0 standard has driven the transmission of digital TV around the world, and with the switch to all digital a decade or so ago (in 2011 in Canada, 2009 in the U.S.), it was adopted as the standard for broadcast television transmission here.
However, ATSC (the organization) is now promoting a new version, ATSC 3.0, that is brand new, will bring over-the-air-TV into the future and onto our smartphones, but is incompatible with what has been gracing our airwaves for more than a decade. The new spec has been in use in South Korea since 2017. Now branded as NEXTGEN TV, it will begin its rollout in the U.S. this year, focusing on the top 40 Nielsen markets. No Canadian broadcasters have signed on yet.
Twenty ATSC 3.0 enabled TV sets will hit the market this year; viewers with older sets will need a converter, and broadcasters will need to upgrade.
ATSC 3.0 promises a significant group of enhancements over its predecessor. It has to, in order to justify the expense of implementation, noted Michael McEwen, director-general of the North American Broadcaster’s Association (NABA). Speaking at The Road to ASTC 3.0, an industry seminar held last week at Humber College, he said, “It was thought that ATSC 3.0 would be incompatible with current broadcast systems, and it is, therefore it must provide improvements in performance, functionality, and efficiency significant enough to warrant implementation of a non-backwards compatible system.”
He went on, “Interoperability between broadcast systems and non-broadcast systems must be part of any standard. Television broadcasting is increasingly evolving into multimedia broadcasting, sending multiple signals simultaneously to a variety of devices. This change requires support for synchronous and non-synchronous relationships between disparate content elements, for metadata, for discovery and content, for image scaling, for spatial temporal resolution, for triggering interactivity between screens and devices. All of that is part of ATSC 3.0; it really is a remarkable achievement.”
The benefits touted for ATSC 3.0 have the potential to make many broadcasters and advertisers happy but may not thrill consumers whose old TVs can’t support it. The new standard boasts improved picture quality – up to 4K broadcasts – and immersive audio, seamless transition across devices from televisions to phones and tablets to suit today’s mobile society, enhanced emergency alerting, targeted advertising and new audience measurement (basically, the collection of a ton more data about what is being watched, and by whom, which may have privacy advocates cringing). With the latter two features, your friendly neighbourhood fast food joint will be able to advertise only to those in its catchment area who are watching the big game at the time, for example, and those customers could order straight from their TVs. (Kind of like an online app.)
Geo-targeting will also help emergency services provide information only to those who need it, for example by broadcasting maps of emergency escape routes or offering photos of suspects and vehicles during Amber Alerts. No longer will messages be limited to a block of text.
Broadcast TV is also more resistant to natural disasters than is cellular service, John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance pointed out, so it’s a better medium for alerts. AWARN (Advanced Warning and Response Network) is already delivering alerts over broadcast TV in Korea, powered by ATSC 3.0.
Since ATSC 3.0 is IP (Internet Protocol)-based, broadcasters will be able to target everything from cell phones and tablets to big-screen TVs. “Broadcast abandoned mobile TV to cellular companies 20 years ago,” said Jerald Fritz, EVP strategic and legal affairs, Sinclair Broadcast Group ONE Media at the Humber event. “Now we get it back.”
Customers will be able to expect deep building signal penetration, he said, as well as more efficient use of bandwidth. Instead one-to-one Internet videos enabled by cell connections, broadcast technology can offer one to many. This could be used for over the air transmission of software updates, say, for example, to upgrade the software in an entire fleet of cars, while also delivering multicast broadcast TV signals.
“This is the system for video and data distribution, it’s not just over-the-air broadcasting.” – Jerald Fritz, Sinclair Broadcast
“The fundamental nature of our business has dramatically changed,” he said. “This is the system for video and data distribution, it’s not just over the air broadcasting. We got cable, we got satellite, and then we got OTT. We have Netflix and Hulu and Sling and Apple TV. And then we have YouTube TV and Google and Facebook and Disney+ and Amazon Prime video and CBS All Access and next month, we’re going to get Peacock.
“This is a dramatic change to the ecosystem of over the air broadcasting where we used to be the dominant gorilla in the room. The viewership for over the air broadcast and your little rabbit ears that I certainly grew up with has dramatically fragmented. We as an industry have to figure out new uses of our spectrum in order to remain viable, and that means to stay in existence. ATSC 3.0 is an existential standard for over the air broadcasters.”
Fritz suggested that ATSC 3.0 could be used for data distribution, citing the example of watching instant replays in a crowded football stadium. Over cellular, he said, “you would melt the Internet” with the one to one transmissions, as well as incurring huge costs for data. With an ATSC 3.0 broadcast, one transmission could serve many devices at considerably lower cost. Currently, he pointed out, when selling a digital sub-channel the charge is about $0.001 per GB. Telcos get $2 per GB, he said.
“Why use 5G? Why use the Internet that is so overcrowded when you can rent bits from broadcasters?” he asked. “That’s what ATSC 3.0 brings: a broadcasting industry of fundamental transformation so that you’re no longer televisioners, but you’re data distributors.”
Now that ATSC 3.0 has been approved by the International Telecommunications Union as the world’s fourth digital standard, the only IP-based standard in the world, he believes it could also be used as a 5G offload.
“ATSC 3.0 is the savior of broadcasting,” he concluded.
We at Cartt.ca are unaware of any Canadian broadcaster moving towards ATSC 3.0. If you are going in that direction, or thinking of it, or experimenting with it, please let us know at editorial@cartt.ca.
