[opendtv] Re: So Soon? Next-Gen Broadcast TV In Works | TVNewsCheck.com
- From: Bob Miller <robmxa@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 12:44:20 -0400
Truly amazing, in only two years they turn this around and start over.
Bob Miller
On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Mark A. Aitken <maitken@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> [image: TVNewsCheck - The Business of Broadcasting]
> <http://www.tvnewscheck.com/>
> TVNewsCheck Focus on Technology
> So Soon? Next-Gen Broadcast TV In Works
> By Harry A. Jessell
> TVNewsCheck, April 27, 2011 7:09 AM EDT
>
> It’s been less than two years since TV broadcasting switched off the last
> analog transmitter and went all digital. But the actual digital broadcast
> standard — ATSC DTV — is actually a lot older than that.
>
> In fact, it’s 15 years old if you start counting from when the FCC adopted
> it, 16 if you start counting from when the consortium of technology
> companies — the so-called Grand Alliance — put the system together and a few
> years older still if you go back to when the various components of the
> system were actually invented.
>
> That’s a long, long time ago given the lighting speed with which electronic
> media evolves these days. And that’s why far-sighted broadcasters and
> technologists, under the aegis of the Advanced Television Systems Committee,
> have begun work on the next-generation TV broadcasting standard.
>
> Even as some viewers still fiddle with DTV converter boxes, next-gen
> proponents say a new system is needed within the next several years so that
> TV stations can broadcast more programming, more reliably to more places and
> explore new business opportunities.
>
> “At some point, broadcasting, like everything else, has to move to the next
> stage of technology,” says Mark Richer, president of the ATSC, whose board
> is expected to take the next step toward a next-gen standard when it meets
> in Washington in two weeks.
>
> Jim Kutzner, chief engineer, Public Broadcasting Service, and chairman of
> ATSC’s next-gen planning committee, agrees that it’s time. “If you don’t
> start now, many years down the road you’ll be in the same place.”
>
> Kutzner also sees the effort as a hedge against the FCC’s proposal to take
> big swatches of spectrum from broadcasters and make it available to wireless
> broadband providers. The FCC is pushing the plan, despite stiffening
> opposition of
> broadcasters.<http://www.tvnewscheck.com/link/2011/04/27/50840/nab-study-rejects-spectrum-crisis-claim>
>
> “If the broadcasters are consolidated down into a smaller amount of
> spectrum, then we will have far less spectrum to transition from where we
> are today to where we want to be in the future,” he says.
>
> To be determined is the urgency. While some proponents would like to put it
> on the fast track and bring the standard home within five years, others are
> looking at five to 10 years.
>
> Whenever it comes, next-gen TV will not be backward compatible with DTV as
> color TV was with the original black-and-white TV in the 1950s. This will
> mean another traumatic transition similar to one leading up to the final
> June 2009 switch from analog to digital.
>
> “Sometimes to build a better mousetrap, you have to start over,” said
> Richer. “That’s what we are going to do.”
>
> The standards-setting work is still in its early stages, but already there
> seems to be a consensus that the third iteration of broadcasting — the first
> was 1941-vintage NTSC — should be far more efficient in its use of spectrum
> than today’s DTV system. Proponents talk of achieving it in a couple of
> different ways.
>
> First, the standard would feature improved compression of video, audio and
> other content. “Broadcasters could use far fewer bits to deliver the same
> program at the same quality or deliver higher quality using the same bits we
> use today,” PBS’s Kutzner says.
>
> And, second, it would allow stations to pump more bits through any given
> bandwidth. How many more Kutzner couldn’t say, but certainly, he says, “a
> substantial improvement” over the 19.4 mbps in 6 MHz now possible with DTV.
> “There are new techniques that approach Shannon’s Law, the theoretical limit
> of the ability to push bits through a channel,” he says.
>
> The standards setters would also look for a marked improvement in the
> transmitted signal so it could be received on small indoor antennas and on
> mobile devices.
>
> The current DTV transmission system — VSB — has been criticized for its
> poor propagation, especially in the VHF band. To receive it reliably,
> rooftop antennas are needed in most places.
>
> And for mobile service, ATSC had to come up with a supplementary standard
> that forces stations to use up precious bandwidth to transmit a second
> signal that is suitable for viewing only on small screens.
>
> “The ATSC is not tasked with figuring out how can we deliver broadcasting
> to a wider area, but they are thinking about, within the area that stations
> serve, how can we up the reliability in more diverse receiving configuration
> like indoor reception,” says Lynn Claudy, SVP, science and technology,
> National Association of Broadcasters, which is taking an active role in the
> next-gen push.
>
> One option already under consideration for the standard is a multi-carrier
> OFDM modulation scheme that was considered, but finally rejected, for DTV in
> the 1990s, and which is widely used in other parts of the world.
>
> ATSC may be feeling a little competitive heat to get going on a next-gen
> standard. NHK in Japan is developing a system, Richer says. And in Europe,
> some broadcasters are already on the air with a second-generation standard
> called DVB-T2.
>
> “It’s indicative that all the countries throughout the world that adopted a
> mid-1990 technology for digital transmission are looking at new systems that
> do better and transition scenarios that allow them to migrate either quickly
> or over the long term to that new system,” says NAB’s Claudy.
>
> Some believe that DVB-T2, based on multi-carrier OFDM modulation scheme,
> would be a quick next-gen solution for the U.S.
>
> Claudy is not endorsing any system at this point, but says that DVB-T2
> could be a smart play if it becomes popular in Europe. “You would already
> have economies of scale and manufacturing capabilities built up and that
> might lead to an easier transition scenario than starting from scratch in
> the U.S.,” he says.
>
> “On the other hand, we are such a big market that you don’t really need the
> economies of scale from global manufacturing to have a cost-reduced and
> ubiquitous mass market.”
>
> Some next-gen proponents would also like to see more flexibility built into
> the standard so that broadcasters would not be confined to 6 MHz all of the
> time and so that they could “broadcast” content for wireless mobile
> providers.
>
> Among the drivers of the next-gen standard on the broadcasting side is Mark
> Aitken, director of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group. He
> wants the new standard within five years, arguing that the current standard
> is no longer up to the job.
>
> “It’s no secret [the DTV standard] has never been what it was cracked up to
> be,” he says. “We need more bit capacity, we need more reliable service and
> we need the ability to seamlessly stitch together markets with a quality
> service that would support virtually any business model.”
>
> Aitken’s big idea, shared at an ATSC planning committee symposia, is to
> adopt an OFDM system that would complement the new 3GPP LTE standard that
> the wireless mobile operators intend to use to “multicast” linear video in a
> broadcast-like one-to-many service.
>
> With compatible or “converged” systems, broadcasters and wireless carriers
> could work together, Aitken says. Broadcasters could deliver their own local
> programming services and emergency alerts to phones and step in to deliver
> multicast video for the carriers whenever demand threatens to overwhelm
> their networks.
>
> “You could imagine a 4G telephone that could tune to a specific UHF
> frequency and receive LTE content being emitted by a broadcaster,” he says.
>
> Aitken also believes that the move to the next-gen standard should be
> accompanied by a move to distributed networks of many transmitters that
> would provide better coverage of a market than the single transmitter with
> tall tower now employed in broadcasting.
>
> “The ATSC should give serious consideration to new broadband-broadcast
> system architectures and not focus only on the component technologies…,” he
> says in his ATSC paper, which was co-authored by Mike Simon, of Rohde &
> Schwarz.
>
> Aitken’s proposal dovetails with that of Capitol Broadcasting, a station
> group whose flagship is WRAL Raleigh, N.C. In an FCC filing, Capital has
> proposed adopting a next-generation OFDM system that would allow stations to
> handle the video multicasts of the wireless carriers for a fee.
>
> “The idea is that if they get real high demand for certain video, then they
> switch it from wireless Internet to broadcast,” says CEO Jim Goodmon.
> “Broadcast takes a good bit of the video load off the wireless broadband
> system. What this means is, you have all these devices — cell phones.
> They’ve also got wireless Internet, and they also have a broadcast chip.”
>
> ATSC’s next-gen initiative is already a year old. It began last May with
> the formation of Kutzner’s planning committee and over the past year it has
> held two day-long symposia during which broadcasters and technology
> companies presented papers on what the next-gen system should be and could
> be.
>
> The planning committee is scheduled to report its findings and
> recommendations on May 12 to the ATSC board, which is expected to endorse
> them and pass them along for further discussion during strategy sessions
> this summer.
>
> Out of those sessions should come a vote in July or September to assign
> next-gen to a technology group, which will begin the formal
> standards-setting work.
>
> The group’s first order of business will be to define precisely what the
> requirements and the attributes of the new system should be and set a time
> frame for the work, Richer says. “Before you specify any technology, you
> need to know what you are trying to do,” he says.
>
> Richer stresses that the work on next-gen broadcasting will not slow
> parallel work on standards to improve and enhance today’s DTV system.
> “That’s where we are focused and that’s where will we stay focused for the
> coming few years.”
>
> To date, the most concrete manifestation of that commitment has been the
> mobile DTV standard, which broadcasters are still hoping to bring to market
> this year.
>
> Other DTV efforts involved developing standards for broadcasting 3D and
> non-real-time programming.
>
> Although some next-gen proponents have definite ideas, Richer cautions
> against trying to divine what the new standard will look like at this early
> stage. “There will be people coming out of the woodwork with technologies,”
> he says. “There will be things we know and things we have never heard about.
> The way we are going to approach it will be with open arms and trying to get
> as many organizations involved as possible.”
> Copyright 2011 NewsCheckMedia LLC. All rights reserved. This article can
> be found online at:
> http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/2011/04/27/50839/so-soon-nextgen-broadcast-tv-in-works.
>
>
> --
>
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