This year’s show, which runs Jan. 9-12, should be bigger than the 2023 edition. That show drew 117,000 attendees and 3,200 exhibitors and represented a significant bounce-back from the 45,000 attendees and 2,300 exhibitors that came in 2022, the first show after a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), which owns and produces CES and is celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2024, is projecting attendance to be 130,000 with more than 3,500 exhibitors.

“We are seeing huge momentum for CES 2024,” says Kinsey Fabrizio, CTA senior vice president of CES and membership.

A Bigger Footprint

As of early December, CTA had already booked 2.4 million net square feet of exhibit space, Fabrizio says, which is over a 10% jump from CES 2023. The CES 2024 exhibition and conference will be spread across the North, Central and West Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center as well as several Las Vegas hotels, including 1,000 startup companies exhibiting in “Eureka Park” at the Venetian. Over half of Fortune 500 companies will be in attendance, including Amazon, Google, Intel, Qualcomm, LG, Samsung and Sony.

AI’s Big Year

AI is the “hottest topic in the tech industry right now,” says John Kelley, VP and show director, CES. AI will be “pervasive” across the show floor and conference sessions, Kelley says, including a keynote from Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger discussing the critical role that chips and software play in making AI more accessible.

“What’s changed in the last year is generative AI has taken the world by storm, and every company is thinking about how to use it,” says CTA President-CEO Gary Shapiro. “And I know many, many, many companies are going to be talking about AI and introducing and showing products that take advantage of that.”

Another growth area for CES is automotive and mobility, Kelley says, with more than 300 companies exhibiting in an at-capacity West Hall including Honda, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Kia. The “C Space” Entertainment and Content conference at the Aria, which features brands like Amazon Ads, Netflix, NBC Universal, Roku and Snap, has also expanded with additional space in the Cosmopolitan hotel this year including new exhibitors Disney, NVIDIA, Paramount and Reddit.

Noteworthy “C Space” panels for broadcasters include “2024: The AI Inflection Point — Entertainment, Internet & Media” featuring Steve Canepa, GM, Global Industries, IBM and Richard Kerris, VP/GM, media and entertainment, NVIDIA; “Future of TV & Streaming: Cable, Internet TV & FAST Strategies,” with executives from Tubi, Disney, PBS and Nielsen; “Monetizing the TV/Streaming, Programming Platforms: The Strategies” with executives from Uber, Amazon Ads, Vizio, Disney and Estrella Media; and “Transforming An All-American Brand: Technology Inside The Weather Channel,” with Tom O’Brien, EVP, Allen Media Group; Nora Zimmett, president, news and original series, Allen Media Group; and Alexandra Wilson, meteorologist, The Weather Company.

‘A Good Way To Kick Off The Year’

With many top network and station group executives at CES, many media technology vendors will also be there, if not to exhibit but to simply meet with their customers and partners. One of them is IP transport provider Zixi, which has been experiencing big growth in its live event business due to the explosion in streaming sports coverage. Zixi won’t have a booth or suite at CES but is still sending a team of six, including members of its executive team as well as technical support personnel. That is double the number of people it sent in 2023.

“The number of companies that is going is starting to grow again,” says John Wastcoat, Zixi SVP business development and marketing. “We’re not going to be able to handle it with just a handful of people this year, so that’s why we’re doubling our team that’s going to go out and meet with everybody. And it’s an easy hop from L.A., so people can make a day trip if they need to … they’ll be in and have three or four meetings and be out, without a significant investment.”

Zixi has two motivations to attend CES that are interconnected.

“One is that our customers and our partners are looking for different ways to monetize their content,” Wastcoat says. “That could be sending it directly to a new smart TV, we do that with Bloomberg around the world. We have conversations with the automobile manufacturers about sending content directly to their screens as well. So, we’ve got that angle.

“And then our customers and partners are still looking at what’s going to be new and interesting for them over the next few years,” he adds. “So, we’re there to talk with them about what we need to do together in 2024, whether that aligns with anything that’s found at CES or not. But it’s a good way to kick off the year.”

While over time the overall focus at CES has shifted away from television sets and Blu-ray players to a range of different consumer technology products, Zixi is still very interested in how its IP transport technology integrates with TV sets to deliver programming to the living room.

“We are seeing a tremendous increase in our business because of the reallocation of sports rights to digital-first platforms that didn’t have infrastructure for it before,” Wastcoat says. “We’re forecasting a million live sports events in 2024 that will use Zixi, and two years ago we probably would have said we’re not very interested in occasional use business like that, we’re looking for the 24/7 constant traffic. But it has become such a volume pay that it has got our attention. So, companies like Amazon Prime [Video] are coming to us and asking us for new features and functionality, like scheduling tools to be able to manage these thousands of events that they’re doing.”

Another broadcast vendor making the trip is robotic camera specialist Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC), which will be exhibiting in the booth of its parent company Nikon. MRMC will once again collaborate with virtual production specialist Vu Studios to deliver the “Unreal Ride.” For CES 2024 the Unreal Ride environment will take place in a virtual jungle, where participants will get to experience the thrill of riding through it in a futuristic Jeep and once again be able to take away a video of themselves travelling through the virtual world.

MRMC’s technology can also be seen elsewhere on the show floor as several companies rent MRMC’s robotic arms just to draw attention to their booths.

“One of them has a light wand on it, and it attracts people because they see it doing funny patterns,” says Paddy Taylor, MRMC head of broadcast.

While MRMC does makes some products that it is actively marketing at CES, such as automatic tracking software and low-cost sliders for PTZ cameras, Taylor doesn’t expect to get many new customers for the company’s high-end specialized robotics at CES.

“It’s more of a positioning exercise,” Taylor says.

One of the messages that MRMC is looking to get across is that Nikon is serious about video, as more broadcasters and other professional videographers start to use DSLR-style cameras for content capture.

“With the Z 9 Nikon probably has the best DSLR-style mirrorless camera for video, and Nikon’s starting to make a really big thing about that,” Taylor says. “And we’re doing some things to move that camera and make it do interesting things.”

The other message that Taylor wants to emphasize is that MRMC expects full-frame cameras like the Sony HDC-F5500, which use the same type of large sensors as digital cinema cameras, will start to be used en masse in broadcast production in 2024 to provide a different look for live sports and news. And MRMC sees an opportunity there for its robotic systems.

“We have a few customers using Sony Venice [digital cinema cameras] with our robotics, but in live current affairs and sports studios,” Taylor says. “And I think with the Olympics and a few other events next year you’ve got more full-frame system cameras coming onto the market. You’re going to see a marry-up, where people are trying to mix different types of full-frame cameras in different workflows for sporting events, festivals, concerts — anything with a creative edge people are trying to strive for.”

New Services For NextGen TV

Broadcasters will also use CES 2024 to promote the continued rollout of the ATSC 3.0, or NextGen TV, digital television standard through demonstrations put on by ATSC and the Pearl TV coalition of station groups.

“There’s going to be a focus on the consumer, both on the services side and device side,” says ATSC President Madeleine Noland. “You’re going to see a proliferation of devices, more set-top boxes, more television models and a few extras.”

NextGen launched in 12 more markets in 2023, including top 10 markets Philadelphia and New York, and CTA says that 10 million NextGen TV sets have been sold in the U.S. to date. With planned launches in Chicago, San Diego and Tucson coming next month, 3.0 signals should be lit up in 75 markets covering 75% of U.S. TV households by the end of January, Noland says. She notes that 3.0 is also making significant progress internationally, with Brazil having chosen 3.0 technology for most of its new mandated digital TV standard and a final decision on the physical, or RF transmission, layer due next year.

Big Four networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC are all sponsors of the ATSC booth in Central Hall, which will have 13 different TV models, four different set-tops and one prototype mobile phone. The booth will also feature various demonstrations of high dynamic range (HDR) and enhanced audio content, including an “immersive entertainment room” sponsored by Dolby and major-league sports programming. There will also be a mosaic of various interactive applications enabled by 3.0’s broadband backchannel including “Start Over” capability developed by E.W. Scripps; an interactive music service from Sinclair; and sports statistics, gaming and news applications.

“What you’ll see at CES are almost fully-baked services that will hit the consumer this year, the gaming applications, the sports interactivity, the Start Over application,” says Mark Aitken, president, ONE Media and SVP of advanced technology for Sinclair. “There are a number of broadcasters, beyond us, who are now beyond the planning phase of adding HDR to their programming. Some of these become more and more relevant in respect to sports coming back to local broadcasting.”

Another new capability that ATSC and Pearl TV will be demonstrating is “broadcast IP,” which is a way to deliver a local station’s enhanced 3.0 programming to a 3.0 TV set as a “virtual channel” over broadband. This is a capability that is particularly important given the current spectrum landscape for 3.0, where often there is not enough capacity for every station that wants to offer 3.0 to be supported in a market.

Pearl TV first tested broadcast IP in Phoenix several years ago, says Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle, working with set makers LG, Sony and Samsung, and successfully deployed it last spring for South Florida PBS’s stations in Miami.

The way that broadcast IP works is that a host 3.0 station transmits tiny bits of metadata within its over-the-air stream that can be picked up by a NextGen TV set and point to an internet server carrying the “virtual channel” of another station in the market that isn’t actually broadcasting in 3.0 due to capacity constraints. The virtual channel is displayed like a 3.0 channel in the over-the-air electronic program guide (EPG) on the NextGen TV set. When a viewer clicks on it that station’s 3.0 programming is then streamed to the set via the broadband connection.

However, the broadcast IP “virtual channel” shouldn’t be thought of as simply another FAST or streaming channel because it’s only available through the OTA guide, Schelle says. And it does require an agreement between two stations to enable transmission of the “tiny bits” of data necessary for the guide info.

“Our first goal was to bring up the PBS stations in South Florida to ensure that TVs can see it,” Schelle says. “It’s geofenced, you’re transmitting the URL in your stream, and it goes out and grabs the content from a server and puts it up in the OTA EPG. But you can only get it if you have antenna, you can’t get it otherwise.”

In Las Vegas, Sinclair is working with Gray Television and Fox to enable the broadcast IP transmission of KVVU, Gray’s Fox affiliate in the market, which couldn’t find traditional RF capacity for 3.0 programming.

“They want to offer their Fox station in 3.0 so they can enhance it with the same capabilities as if they were on-air in 3.0, to do 1080p and HDR, or even do 4K,” Schelle says. “They can also do [interactive] applications, the RUN3TV app works in the IP channel as well. They can basically do everything they can do in 3.0.”

The post For Broadcasters And Their Vendors, AI And IP Delivery Are Top Of Mind At CES appeared first on TV News Check.

Switching on the new transmission standard were CBS’s KYW (CBS) and WPSG (CW); ABC’s WPVI (ABC); NBC’s WCAU (NBC); Fox’s WTXF (Fox); and Univision’s WUVP (Univision)., channel 65).

A feature built into select new TV models manufactured by Hisense, Sony, LG Electronics and Samsung, NextGen TV is widely available to consumers at retail across more than 100 models, starting at $599. While features may vary by device and broadcaster as commercial service expands in local markets, NextGen TV is designed to be future proof, enabling a viewer’s television set to advance with technological improvements. The first NextGen TV certified upgrade accessory receiver from ADTH and powered with Tolka software will soon be available at retail, as a low-cost option for viewers across the country, including in Philadelphia.

NextGen TV, a free, over-the-air service, is the first major overhaul to the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s standard for receiving over-the-air signals in 25 years. Now broadcasting in more than 65 markets, NextGen TV is expected to reach 75% of U.S. television households in 2023.

LTN is enabling the video transport between the contributing Philadelphia stations. Using the LTN Network, a proprietary multicast IP transport network, it ensures that each station’s content is sent to the NextGen transmitter with the highest reliability and lowest latency.

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Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, said: “The addition of Zinwell to the stable of manufacturers producing certified receivers is terrific news, bringing to six the total number of companies now producing NextGen TV receivers for the home. We’re excited that Zinwell’s first receiver will be in the market for the holiday season, the second such upgrade accessory receiver available for consumers. Thousands of television sets with NextGen TV electronics inside are now being sold each day and we anticipate a robust market for affordable upgrade accessory receivers for existing displays in viewers’ homes. The TV industry is eager to promote the advantages of NextGen TV — including enhanced audio and video — and the addition of another NextGen TV certified manufacturer will expand options for consumers.”

By the end of 2023, Pearl TV expects U.S. consumers to have purchased more than 10 million certified NextGen TV television sets and anticipates strong interest in upgrade accessory receivers that could bring the advantages of NextGen TV broadcasts to any television with an HDMI connection.

The NextGen TV certification program was developed in concert with broadcasters to ensure that viewers are receiving and displaying the full capabilities of NextGen TV service from local stations. NextGen TV certification services and tools are provided by Resillion (formerly Eurofins Digital Testing) on behalf of the Consumer Technology Association and the National Association of Broadcasters, which joined forces in 2019 to launch the innovative logo program.

Paul Wu, Zinwell VP of sales and marketing, said: “We greatly appreciate the efforts made by Pearl TV, the Consumer Technology Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, and Resillion in promoting the NextGen TV standard nationwide. I am proud of our team and our close collaboration with Pearl TV in obtaining NextGen TV certification. We have a robust internal research and development team dedicated to the development of ATSC 3.0 products. We offer a diverse range of ATSC 3.0 products catering to different market segments, including entry-level and high-end versions.

“Our products will be available in the market in the fourth quarter of this year. In addition to ATSC 3.0 set-top boxes, our ZAT series also features remote education functionality and emergency alert systems, making it more powerful than the most advanced ATSC 3.0 set-top boxes. Its versatile applications extend from home use to schools, institutions, and public service environments.

“In addition to its product development capabilities, Zinwell provides excellent quality and cost-effective solutions through its advanced and highly automated manufacturing facilities located in multiple locations. Established in 1981, Zinwell is committed to the research and manufacturing of consumer electronic products and has always been a trusted long-term OEM/ODM partner, dedicated to growing together with customers in the new era of ATSC 3.0,” Wu said.

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Working in collaboration with Pearl TV’s FastTrack program, Tolka Telecommunications Corp. ensured that the ADTH NextGen TV Box met the requirements of the Consumer Technology Association NextGen TV logo program and the expectations of ATSC 3.0 TV broadcasters. Designed for use with household TV receivers, set-top boxes, in-car receivers, mobile phones, tablets or computers, the Tolka ATSC 3 Stack enables television viewers to experience NextGen TV free-to-air television programs on Android and Linux platforms.

Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV consortium, said: “On behalf of the nation’s broadcasters who are spearheading the introduction of NextGen TV channels throughout the country, we delighted to recognize Tolka for its expertise in developing a software stack that can power the ADTH upgrade accessory receiver comments. The TV industry is eager to promote the advantages of NextGen TV — including enhanced audio and video — and the addition of an affordable set-top device with the official NextGen TV certification opens new avenues for broadcasters and for the millions of viewers looking for an easy upgrade solution. It’s as simple as connecting the power, an antenna and an HDMI cord with the new ADTH device. And this is just the first of several products that are coming for viewers who are hoping upgrade to enjoy the enhanced NextGen TV experience.”

NextGen TV certification services and tools are provided by Resillion (formerly Eurofins Digital Testing) on behalf of the CTA and the NAB which joined forces in 2019 to launch the logo program. “We congratulate ADTH and Tolka for being the first accessory device to be certified NextGen TV,” says Dr. Bob Campbell, Resillion director of engineering. “The NextGen TV logo is essential to maximize device sales, demonstrating compliance to the standards and giving consumers confidence in a product, and we hope to support many more to carry the mark in the coming months.”

“We would like to thank Pearl TV, the Consumer Technology Association, the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters and Resillion for their efforts in promoting NextGen TV as a major step in the advancement of broadcast television standards across the USA,” said Alex Day, Tolka Telecommunications’ vice president of business development. “NextGen TV offers a major advance in terms of viewer experience including 2160p 4K video resolution, 120 Hz frame rate, high dynamic range, wide color gamut and cinema-quality audio. It is already accessible in 60 percent of homes across the U.S.A. and expected to reach 75% of American viewers by December of this year.”

The ADTH NextGen TV Box allows ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV and ATSC 1.0 free-to-air television programs to be viewed on any IP-compatible TV display. Housed in a compact unit designed to fit beneath or alongside the display, the ADTH NextGen TV Box comes with ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1.0 support, ethernet, Dual-band Wi-Fi, HDMI, S/PDIF digital audio and RCA connectors. A wide range of features are supported including an electronic program guide and parental controls. Dolby AC-4 Dialogue Enhancement, audio description, and closed captions can be activated to support viewers with impaired hearing.

The ADTH NextGen TV Box is scheduled to ship in July and is available now for pre-order on ADTH’s website. The manufacturer’s suggested retail price  for the NextGen TV receiver is $119.99 and it is available for pre-order at the discounted price of $79.99 for a limited time.

The post ADTH And Tolka Awarded First Certification As NextGen TV Upgrade Accessory Receiver appeared first on TV News Check.

Using the new decryption functionality on StreamScope XM, broadcasters can transmit encrypted content in the ATSC 3.0 environment to better understand who their subscribers are and monetize NextGen TV services, while ensuring outstanding content integrity. The effort is part of Pearl’s FastTrack to NextGen TV program, to accelerate and streamline the path for adoption of NextGen TV technology. In addition, Triveni Digital and the A3SA security authority have agreed to a multi-year deal to enable the use of Triveni Digital’s GuideBuilder XM broadcast chain and StreamScope XM products in their testing and certification services.

“Encryption is a key requirement for delivering ATSC 3.0 services,” said Mark Simpson, Triveni Digital, president-CEO. “After a long collaboration with the A3SA security authority and under Pearl’s FastTrack umbrella, we are excited to bring this important capability to the broadcast television market. Triveni Digital is a leader in the development and deployment of NextGen TV technology, and adding broadcast decryption to our industry-leading StreamScope XM product line will help to accelerate the monetization of ATSC 3.0 services. We appreciate the opportunity to collaborate with Pearl TV to develop leading-edge NextGen TV technology for broadcasters.”

Triveni Digital’s StreamScope XM offers a suite of products for monitoring, analysis and troubleshooting complex DTV content, now with broadcast decryption and continuous transport stream recording capabilities available. Triveni’s GuideBuilder XM and Broadcast Gateway broadcast chain products are powering many NextGen TV deployments in the US and internationally.

Pearl has helped to create the security authority to develop protocols for securing ATSC 3.0 broadcast services leveraging the same tools that web-based content services use (i.e., IP-based encryption protocols, device certificates, and rights management technology) in conformance with the ATSC Security Standard for NextGen TV.

“As NextGen TV deployments grow in the U.S., protecting high-value television content is essential,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “We’re excited to join forces with Triveni Digital and help to ensure that ATSC 3.0 content, services, and information is well protected and secure.”

Triveni Digital will demonstrate its StreamScope XM Analyzer and Monitor at the NAB Show, April 16-19 in Las Vegas at Booth W3251.

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Schelle, the managing director of the Pearl TV consortium, has promoted the new voluntary ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard that broadcasters, manufacturers and consumers are embracing. On April 18 at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, TVNewsCheck will recognize her for this effort with the Women in Technology Leadership Award.

Bringing all those disparate groups to the table required serious consensus building and perseverance.

Schelle says she helps those with different points of view find common areas of agreement. This was critical, she says, as she helped the industry build a new transmission standard that had to be adopted by the FCC, adopted by broadcasters, supported by manufacturers and accepted by consumers.

“I’m good at bringing together coalitions to make decisions,” she says.

Part of it is the fact that she understands the technology and its value and is able to articulate that in a simple way. “Whether it’s a broadcaster or a TV manufacturer or a regulator, what’s in it for them?” Schelle says. “I think about it as a value proposition that at the end of the day benefits the consumer.”

She says she has been fortunate to learn about technologies from the Pearl members who are “a bunch of Navy SEALs” with strong technology specialties.

“They know so much about a technology that I’ll never know. I’m curious and they teach me. They lead,” she says.

Schelle at the 2019 NAB Show announcing the launch of NextGen TV.

Working on the NextGen TV wasn’t the first time she’s used her consensus-building muscles. She’s previously brought groups together in digital wireless as well as with the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC).

John I. Taylor, SVP for public affairs and communications at LG Electronics USA, says he first saw Schelle’s ability to bring stakeholders together to advance a cause with the OMVC and later through Pearl TV and the NextGen effort.

“She’s a tireless advocate for the new standard and the benefits it’s going to bring” to broadcasters, equipment manufacturers and viewers, Taylor says. “NextGen TV wouldn’t be where it is today without her vision, without the creation of the Pearl TV group and advancing the cause of reaching across the industry to bring everyone together.”

Schelle, Taylor says, is not the kind of leader who only operates from the 90,000-foot level. “She has a vision as a leader at that level, but she is also really in the weeds. She knows the technology, she knows the business, and she is very adept at working with both engineers and corporate executives in making a compelling case for NextGen TV.”

Catherine Badalamente, president-CEO of Graham Media Group, says Schelle “gets the technology probably better than anybody else that I know” and understands how to have the “difficult technology conversations.”

In addition to understanding the technology, she says, Schelle understands how it can benefit the future of broadcast, mapping out a way forward for broadcasters through the NextGen effort.

“She’s figured out that world for us and allowed us to stay relevant in the game,” Badalamente says. “She sees the path forward better than anybody, and she’s relentless to make sure we stay on that path.”

And it hasn’t been easy, Badalamente adds. “I see her worry, just like I do. We need [NextGen TV] to be able to compete today so that we’re even in the game. And that has been her mission.”

Schelle at CES 2023 following a Pearl TV demonstration to FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington (center) and ATSC Board Chair Richard Friedel.

Pat LaPlatney, co-CEO-president of Gray Television, says Schelle’s perseverance has helped push NextGen through a long process. “Early on, she saw that a this was going to be a long road,” he says. “She persevered. She found a way to get all the many different constituencies involved and invested. And when we had a setback, she never lost sight of the broader goal. For that reason, we’ve come a really long way in 10 years.”

And staying with a project that has taken so long could prompt some with lesser staying power to opt out, he notes. “It would be easy to say, ‘I’m done with it.’ But she’s got a ton of juice” and has brought energy and excitement to the journey. “She’s never lost an ounce of that over the years from what I can tell.”

And she also brought the right skills — including big-picture thinking — to the job, he says.

“She’s a wonderful blend of technologist, government relations person, with a really solid understanding of the media business,” LaPlatney says. “She’s not an engineer, but she absolutely understands the engineering, and she understands how the government works, and she understands the media business. There aren’t a lot of folks who really understand all three of those distinct areas and you really have to, to be effective in what she’s doing.”

As Schelle puts it, she’s worn a lot of hats to push NextGen and ATSC 3.0 from concept to reality and get buy-in from the various groups. “We did tests together, and we all tripped over the truth together. Each partner sees the benefit when you see the benefit.”

Currently, NextGen TV is at the rollout phase, which she calls the hardest phase and requires “delighting the consumer” with services being introduced. The marketplace started teasing NextGen TV technology to consumers during the 2020 CES (Consumer Electronic Show) with a number of TV models on offer.

“It wasn’t just one TV, it was 20 models from three manufacturers” that kicked off the marketplace, says Schelle, who enjoys hanging out with her daughters and taking family trips when she’s not consensus building for NextGen TV, and is on the board of noncommercial WYPR-FM Baltimore.

In 2021, Phoenix marked the first market to have a commercial NextGen station on air. “In Phoenix, we brought in an entire ecosystem. Ecosystems don’t happen overnight. It happens through collaboration,” she says.

The Phoenix rollout tested the reception of NextGen technology with consumers.

“Those two moments were validation of our ideas,” she says. “Innovation and progress can be complex, but this process we put in place worked, and it culminated in a real device that was being sold at retail to consumers.”

The whole project has been a big lift for broadcast, Schelle says, because NextGen is not backward compatible.

“It requires investment from broadcasters, it requires belief from the regulators to do it, it requires consumers to want it,” she says. “It’s completely voluntary. It’s voluntary for broadcasters to do it, voluntary for consumers to buy it, voluntary for manufacturers to make these devices.”

Schelle during an ATSC board visit to Jeju Island, South Korea, in 2018.

And while Schelle has had successes in her past, she’s also had some failure. She co-founded XDSL Networks and raised a lot of money, but when the market went sideways in 2001, she says, it imploded.

“We believed in the technology so much, but we didn’t see the marketplace. That was a real lesson for me,” she says. “It didn’t change the way I look at things, but I just got smarter.”

In order to win, she adds, “You’ve got to place bets. There are going to be some things that don’t work. That’s part of it.”

And, she says, for those entering the world of technology, it’s important to know that “if you haven’t failed at something, you’re going to fail at something.”

Those failures, Schelle says, can make you “a better businessperson, a better technologist.”

All through the long NextGen journey, Schelle says she has maintained a belief in the technology itself.

“I have a strong belief in the curiosity around technology and the passion for how it can transform consumer’s lives, and the good it can bring,” she says.

Read more about this year’s Women in Technology Awards here.

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But after the initial rush to get early “lighthouse” stations on air, NextGen TV’s momentum has slowed as broadcasters have run into delays launching in the biggest markets. There are still only four consumer electronics manufacturers making compatible TV sets — Sony, LG, Samsung and Hisense — and no accessory devices have yet been officially certified to receive NextGen TV signals. And some early set-top boxes with 3.0 tuners that did come to market have lost functionality as stations have begun encrypting their signals to provide copy protection for high-value content.

Task Force Sought

NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt and top station group executives including Nexstar CEO Perry Sook and Graham Media CEO Catherine Badalamente visited the FCC late last month to formally air their concerns about the rollout. An accompanying letter described a “stalled transition” and asked the FCC to both emphasize its support for the standard to CE manufacturers and create an ATSC 3.0 task force “to attack problems as they arise.”

The biggest problem, albeit not a new one, is a lack of available spectrum for both launching 3.0 in the biggest markets and fully exploiting the standard to offer new services in any market. That’s because unlike the 1.0 transition, broadcasters didn’t get any additional spectrum to launch 3.0, which the FCC deemed a voluntary standard.

Launching 3.0 first requires all the broadcasters in a market to work together to find a home for the existing 1.0 programming on one (or two) “lighthouse” station’s 6 Mhz channel, thus clearing it for 3.0 transmissions. This “channel-stacking” process is a complicated dance of shuffling the lighthouse station’s primary and secondary 1.0 program streams among multiple 1.0 “host” stations, with diginets from host stations sometimes switching sticks in order to create the most efficient 1.0 multiplexes across the market. In addition to some fancy engineering and investment in new MPEG-2 encoders, the process can also involve lengthy business negotiations between stations.

Jeff Birch

“It’s the same stumbling block in every market, and that’s divvying up the spectrum we’ve got to be able to accommodate everybody and all of their subchannels,” says Jeff Birch, VP engineering, CBS Television Stations. “And I’m not laying this at the FCC’s feet. In some of the markets, we’ve been able to make it happen, and it’s been a collective effort on the part of every broadcaster in every market.”

The channel-stacking problem is most acute in large urban markets, which tend to have both the most stations and the most diginets per station. Four of the top 10 DMAs—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco—have yet to launch 3.0. Los Angeles and Dallas are on-air with 3.0, but without all of the “Big Four” networks.

“If you count up all of the program streams in the New York market and try to carve out enough space to get at least one or two ATSC 3.0 sticks, and move everything from those sticks elsewhere, the math doesn’t work,” Birch says.

Nonetheless, he is hopeful that at least one New York station will begin broadcasting 3.0 this summer, with at least some of the stations participating.

Persistent Spectrum Crunch

Dave Folsom

Once the 1.0 channel-stacking is complete in market, broadcasters still face a spectrum crunch with their new 3.0 product. That’s because all five or six stations involved are sharing one 6 MHz channel. Setting the modulation scheme of the 3.0 signal to replicate the existing 1.0 coverage in a market generally gives a total payload of anywhere from 24.5 megabits per second (Mbps) to 29 Mbps depending on a market’s characteristics, says Dave Folsom, CTO for broadcast consortium Pearl TV.

Most 3.0 markets on-air today are working with around 24.5 Mbps. That gives each station around 4.5 Mbps, enough to do 1080p/60 video with high dynamic range (HDR). Folsom says that is a meaningful improvement in picture quality over the 720p and 1080i SDR currently offered in 1.0, particularly given the efficiency of HEVC encoders from vendors like Ateme, Harmonic and Synamedia.

“That might sound like a low number, but remember, HEVC is four times more efficient than MPEG-2,” says Folsom, who adds that the 3.0 signals have superior receivability over 1.0 due to the improved multipath performance of COFDM modulation.

But 4.5 Mbps is not enough for the 4K HDR format offered by streaming competitors like Netflix as well as by broadcast networks themselves through their own apps, such as Fox Sports. Over-the-air 4K HDR would require at least 2.5 to 3x more bits for an acceptable picture, Folsom says, and perhaps more for live sports.

Different, But Same?

Broadcasters could differentiate their 3.0 product by offering unique content, but they face a regulatory constraint there as well. To protect the interests of both 1.0 viewers and cable operators, stations transmitting in 3.0 are required by the FCC to offer “substantially similar” programing on their 1.0 signal, a de facto simulcasting rule that sunsets this July but is expected to be extended by 3.0 insiders.

Joe St. Jean

“I think the FCC is going to extend it, and we think that’s the right thing to do, and I think they’re going to look to change that sunset date to something plus-three years or plus-five years, which makes a lot of sense for us, because with the volume of sets out there we certainly don’t want to drop the 1.0 audience on an OTA basis,” says Joe St. Jean, EVP technology policy and standards, Paramount. “We need to give it some time where everyone is starting to manufacture in 3.0 before you can even think about sunsetting [1.0]. And then of course, the cable folks will need to convert to 3.0 at some point if it’s going to be differentiated.”

Broadcasters aren’t prohibited by the “substantially similar” rule from offering the same programming in 4K on their 3.0 broadcasts, but with channel-sharing they don’t have the available bits to do so. That’s why the NAB urged the FCC to speed up the entire process of shifting completely to the new standard. It called the dual transmission of the same programming in both 1.0 and 3.0 “wasteful” and noted the growth of 4K across streaming platforms. It said 4K will soon be considered “table stakes” for getting rights to high-value content like live sports and that broadcasters risk losing them to “pay TV platforms that are permitted to employ more advanced technologies.”

Sam Matheny

“If you want to unlock the true capability of the NextGen TV standard, you need to get past the point where we are, which is a lighthouse station and a whole bunch of channel-sharing,” says NAB CTO Sam Matheny. “We need to get to full deployment.”

Bet On HDR, Not 4K

What wasn’t mentioned in the NAB’s letter is that broadcast networks aren’t yet even delivering 1080p HDR feeds to their O&Os and affiliates. That is despite the fact that some are producing a bevy of content in the format, including all NFL coverage on Fox and CBS this past season (Fox used it to create upconverted 4K HDR for its app and pay-TV partners, and downconverted it for 1.0 distribution).

Folsom says none of the 3.0 stations he’s worked with are yet receiving native 1080p HDR network content. Instead, they are providing their 720p or 1080i SDR 1.0 feeds to the lighthouse station in the market, usually at a high-quality contribution rate of around 20 Mbps. The feeds are then converted to 1080p before they are fed into an HEVC encoder for 3.0 broadcast.

Stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which represent a large chunk of existing 3.0 sticks, are upconverting the SDR feeds to HDR using advanced HDR by Technicolor. That technology, formally known as SL-HDR1, dynamically adjusts the brightness, contrast and color saturation on a frame-by-frame basis. Other 3.0 stations are simply transmitting 1080p SDR.

Folsom says there are myriad issues relating to networks’ slow pace in providing 1080p HDR, including rights issues and upgrades that still need to be made to broadcast centers, distribution networks and commercial insertion systems at local stations. He says Fox, with its new fully IP, SMPTE 2110-compliant plant in Tempe, Ariz., is probably the furthest along.

“We have the bandwidth to do 1080p 60 HDR, and that is gorgeous,” Folsom says. “If the networks would only give us HDR, and I think they’re working on it, then that would be a real gamechanger.”

After upgrading its satellite IRDs from AVC to HEVC encoding during the C-band auction process several years ago, CBS is fully capable of delivering 1080p HDR to its affiliates. The network also has sufficient capacity to deliver both an SDR and HDR feed for some time, which it would probably do for an interim period to give stations time for necessary upgrades.

“We can deliver it to the affiliates’ door,” St. Jean says. “But they have to upgrade their plant in their station to support it, and that’s really where the heavy lift is going to be.”

None of the CBS-owned stations are fully ready to handle a 1080p HDR signal with their current infrastructure, Birch says. While fully supporting 1080p HDR doesn’t require a 2110 plant, it may mean upgrading to 3-gig HD-SDI in some cases. In the interim, CBS would probably take a phased approach as it did with the initial conversion from SD to HD, first allowing “pass-through” of a complete network signal and then creating “islands” of 1080p HDR equipment to support some local functions.

“I see that same scenario here, where we just get it from the IRD to the transmitter first,” Birch says. “Then we’ll have to figure out how to upconvert some local content so it looks like HDR and get that out to the transmitter, and then eventually rebuild the station to handle it all natively, which will not be cheap.”

Considerable Costs

Birch says a “very crude pass-through” would probably cost $100,000 to $150,000 per station. Before spending more on things like switchers and cameras to support HDR and/or 4K there would have to be “a philosophical conversation” about how much local stations are really going to change their operations for 3.0.

“Because will I do local news in 4K HDR in the near future?” Birch says. “Probably not. Maybe my live infrastructure doesn’t change that much, but my commercial playout and my network pass-through has to change. You’re still probably looking at $1 million a station to do some of this.”

Overall, Birch says there is a much greater difference in picture quality between SDR and HDR than there is between 1080p and 4K.

“We want to give the viewer the biggest bang for their buck,” Birch says. “The real grabber is HDR.”

St. Jean concurs and says that 4K is more of a “marketing effort” with consumers.

“I don’t think anyone really intends to deliver 4K anytime soon,” he says. “And quite frankly, I’m not sure there’s a need to, when the TV set is doing such a good job of upconverting.”

Stretching The Receiver Pipeline

As the NAB emphasized in its letter to the FCC, more NextGen TV receivers at lower prices need to come to market for the new standard to be successful. Pearl TV has been working on that issue with its “FastTrack to NextGen TV” program, partnering with semiconductor supplier MediaTek to develop a “reference platform” for high-volume TV manufacturers that includes a TV System on Chip (SoC), ATSC3 demodulators and software stack. That saves individual set-makers from investing in their own engineering work.

Of course, there are millions of existing 4K- and HDR-capable TVs in living rooms across the country that don’t have 3.0 tuners. Offering consumers a low-cost accessory device, such as a set-top receiver, would be the most cost-effective way to turn them into NextGen TV sets. There is also a strong demand for low-cost set-top receivers in countries like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago that have recently adopted 3.0.

In that vein, Pearl recently released a detailed set of requirements for a “Stand-Alone Receiver” that includes both a 1.0 and 3.0 tuner and connects to a legacy TV set via HDMI. It lists all technical requirements that need to be implemented under the standard including content protection under the A3SA [ATSC 3.0 Security Authority] specification, which involves encrypting content to avoid unauthorized duplication.

The encryption of 3.0 signals has become a thorny issue for some purchasers of early 3.0 set-tops, who initially used them to receive 3.0 lighthouse stations but then could no longer watch them after the stations began implementing A3SA encryption last year. Some viewers have complained about the issue on TV-focused message boards like AVS Forum, and even speculated that broadcasters are trying to create a pay TV service with 3.0.

Folsom notes that such encryption is standard practice with most internet media today including YouTube videos and is generally invisible to the consumer, and that it was always part of the 3.0 standard. He adds that there are no existing NextGen TV sets that have a problem receiving encrypted signals, and that Pearl is working with at least one set-top maker to help them address their issue.

“Some manufacturers put out receivers that did not have decryption capability in them, and when those receivers first were announced, there was at least one manufacturer that put a receiver out that did not have decryption capability in it,” Folsom says. “We warned that company that encryption was coming. So, there is now a vocal audience out there that said wait, you’re encrypting.”

Certifying such accessory devices to actually be NextGen TV-compliant and thus allow manufacturers to use the “NextGen TV” logo to indicate as much would obviously avoid such problems in the future. Pearl announced earlier this month that software firm Tolka is the first company to officially enter their “Accessory Device Certification Program,” which involves NextGen TV certification services and tools provided by Resillion (formerly Eurofins Digital Testing) on behalf of the CTA and the NAB.

“It speaks to the trust of having that logo,” Matheny says. “I’m buying a device designed to leverage the new standard, as opposed to something that could break on you later.”

Anne Schelle

The Tolka software stack, designed specifically for accessory receivers, was demonstrated at CES 2023 in January as one of several products being “next for certification” under Pearl’s FastTrack program. Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle is hopeful that Tolka will have a fully certified product ready in time for the NAB Show in April. She adds that Pearl is working with several other vendors in the accessory device program, which includes rounds of pre-testing at its lab in Bradenton, Fla. A big priority is keeping the engineering costs down for smaller companies that might be selling sub-$50 products like USB accessories, while also making sure consumers don’t get burned by a non-compliant product.

“Our goal is to get them all funneled through, so they’re getting logoed this year,” she says.

The post For NextGen TV, Cheaper Receivers, Bigger Markets And More HDR Are Next appeared first on TV News Check.

“America’s broadcasters are proud of the collaborative effort that is bringing free over-the-air next-generation broadcasting to viewers in more than 60 cities across the country,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “With consumers already purchasing, on average, more than 13,000 NextGen TV sets every day and more than six million TV receivers equipped with NextGen TV electronics already in homes, the focus now turns to expanding the audience base to provide more connection options for consumers. This remarkable growth underscores why Pearl TV recently launched its Fast Track for NextGen TV program.  We’re speeding up the process to bring more upgrade accessory receivers and television models to market.”

The FastTrack program provides consumer electronics manufacturers with an easier, faster, and more cost-effective process to introduce NextGen TV-compatible products for consumers. It guides device makers through the NextGen TV logo and other conformance requirements—meeting those of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) — and including security and regulatory compliance, testing, and opportunities for distribution and marketing partnerships.

“NAB applauds Tolka on powering the upcoming ADTH NEXTGEN TV upgrade accessory receivers, which have officially begun the process of securing NEXTGEN TV certification,” said Sam Matheny, executive vice president and chief technology officer at the National Association of Broadcasters. “We are optimistic ADTH will achieve certification in time for the 2023 NAB Show and provide first-hand insight into cost-effective, consumer-friendly receivers coming to market that will deliver a complete experience for NextGen TV viewers.”

Tolka’s software stack on ADTH receivers was demonstrated at the 2023 International CES as one of several products “next for certification” for the NextGen TV mark. Conformance requirements to earn the NextGen TV certification mark are detailed in Pearl’s recently published guide for consumer electronics manufacturers.

NextGen TV certification services and tools are provided by Resillion (formerly Eurofins Digital Testing) on behalf of the CTA and the NAB, which joined forces in 2019 to launch the innovative logo program. At the 2023 NAB Show, Dr. Bob Campbell, director of engineering at Resillion, will be delivering an update on the certification program’s progress and the latest developments in accessory device compatibility.

“The NextGen TV logo is essential to maximize device sales, demonstrating compliance to the standards and giving consumers confidence in a product,” Campbell said. “Resillion is keen to assist any company looking to carry the mark and hopes ADTH will be one of many certified Campbell TV accessory devices on display at NAB Show.”

The post Tolka Enters NextGen TV Upgrade Accessory Device Certification Program appeared first on TV News Check.

The award will be presented during the NAB Show on Tuesday, April 18, at 6 p.m. in the Las Vegas Convention Center.

For the past six years, Schelle has led Pearl TV’s effort to rally the fractious TV station group community to implement a new, advanced broadcast TV transmission standard, while convincing consumer electronics companies to produce compatible sets. The consortium of eight of the larger broadcast TV companies has helped lead the way for the industry’s ever-growing adoption of the ATSC 3.0 standard and the opportunities it opens for expanded, personalized programming and new industry revenue streams including advanced advertising and datacasting.

“Anne’s work has brought NextGen TV to an inflection point,” said TVNewsCheck Publisher and Co-Founder Kathy Haley. “Her ability to keep the industry relentlessly focused on the end goal, even as a chorus of naysayers predicted that 5G and streaming would swamp the fledgling technology, has given local broadcasters the ability to reinvent their role in a fragmenting media world.”

TVNewsCheck’s Women in Technology Leadership Award recognizes women who have contributed substantially toward advancing their industry technologically. It supports the National Association of Broadcasters Education Foundation’s Technology Apprenticeship Program, which trains, informs and recruits a diverse workforce that meets the emerging technology and engineering needs within the broadcast community.

Register here to attend the 13^th annual Women in Technology Awards Presentation Ceremony and Reception at NAB Show in Las Vegas.

Previous Women in Technology Leadership Award honorees:

• Sharri Berg, president, Fox Weather and COO of news and operations, Fox Television Stations
• Judy Parnall, head of standards and industry, BBC
• Marcy Lefkovitz, VP, technology and workflow strategy, The Walt Disney Co.
• Barbara Lange, former executive director of SMPTE
• Lisa Pedrogo, VP of engineering and strategic initiatives, WarnerMedia
• Tish Graham, former VP of broadcast technology at ABC Owned Television Stations
• Diane Tryneski, now board member and adviser to several digital technology companies
• Glodina Connan-Lostanlen, now chief sales officer, Imagine Communications
• Michelle Munson, now founder, Eluvio
• Renu Thomas, then EVP of media operations, technology and IT at Disney ABC Television Group
• Darcy Antonellis, now executive adviser, Amdocs
• Wendy Aylsworth, now CEO, Walden Pond
• Cindy Hutter-Cavell, senior engineer and practice manager, Cavell Mertz & Associates
• Andrea Berry, now EVP operations & technology, Telemundo Enterprises and LATAM

The post Pearl TV’s Anne Schelle To Receive TVN’s Women In Technology Leadership Award appeared first on TV News Check.

Switching on the new transmission standard were NBCU’s WBTS (NBC), CBS’s WBZ (CBS), TelevisaUnivision’s WUNI (Univision), Hearst Television’s WCVB (ABC), Cox Media Group’s WFXT (Fox) and WGBH (PBS).

“This launch took an extraordinary amount of collaboration among the six stations involved and demonstrates the broadcast industry’s commitment to NextGen TV,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “NextGen TV exponentially expands the type of content broadcasters can provide and the ways that viewers can engage with their television screens. Boston’s launch underscores the excitement we all share as we continue innovating this technology and launching new markets.”

Associated with NextGen TV is the RUN3TV web platform that brings interactive experiences and streaming content to over-the-air viewers. Built by broadcasters for broadcasters, RUN3TV’s web-based platform architecture enables stations to develop, innovate, and differentiate at the application services layer, allowing a consistent viewer experience across all NextGen TV devices. Broadcasters can leverage advanced advertising in live and streaming content, audience insights, and premium content distribution thanks to the new platform.

The six Boston stations will build on the growth of the new standard and local interest with a holiday brand marketing campaign to deepen consumer awareness and engagement. Through February 2023, the campaign will engage with consumers over social media and educate on how to look for the Consumer Technology Association-accredited NextGen TV logo, features and where to buy.

LTN is enabling the video transport between the contributing Boston stations. Using the LTN Network, a proprietary multicast IP transport network, it ensures that each station’s content is sent to the NextGen transmitter with the highest reliability and lowest latency.

The post Six Stations Launch NextGen TV In Boston appeared first on TV News Check.

CES 2023 comes amidst specific challenges for the technology industry, including continued supply chain vulnerability and softening demand for semiconductors, as well as bigger economic issues like inflation and the threat of a broad recession. CTA cited those last two factors in forecasting U.S. technology retail revenues of $485 billion in 2023, lower than the $505 billion CTA initially predicted for 2022 as well as the record $512 billion in revenues it said the industry accrued in 2021.

The trade group has subsequently lowered expectations for sales of laptops, LCD TVs, tablets, smartphones and gaming consoles in 2023. It did point to a few areas of growth in consumer hardware devices, including high-end OLED TVs and portable gaming consoles.

CTA noted the industry had enjoyed a surge in consumer technology spending over the past three years due to pandemic, and that the $485 billion number is still “roughly $50 billion above pre-pandemic levels.”

Meanwhile, CTA said major areas of revenue growth in 2023 include:

• Technology services such as gaming and video streaming apps, which CTA said will generate $151 billion in consumer spending.
• Automotive technology, with factory-installed automotive technology revenues rising 4% to $15.5 billion in 2023 and companies like Panasonic and LG increasing battery production for electric vehicles.
• Health and fitness technology, with health and fitness services including fitness subscription services and digital therapeutics projected to rise 9% to $928 million in 2023.

Gadget Debuts Wane

Of course, the historical role of CES as the place to introduce consumer gadgets, particularly TVs and other devices for the living room, has been steadily waning for years. In that vein, CTA has dedicated the new West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center to automotive and mobility companies, with more than 300 exhibitors, including the latest in EVs and in-car displays.

Sony, which made a splash in 2022 by declaring plans to make its own EVs, announced before the show that it wouldn’t be revealing any of its 2023 TV sets in Las Vegas. Samsung, the world’s leading TV manufacturer by volume, also didn’t discuss any new TV models in its press briefing. And during the “CES 2023 Tech Trends to Watch” presentation previewing the show on Tuesday night, CTA VP of Research Steven Koenig didn’t touch on TVs at all, focusing instead on enterprise technology and the transformative potential of 5G.

“5G is the first wireless generation that will actually be led by enterprise innovation,” Koenig declared. “5G means faster mobile broadband for consumers, but for commercial, industrial and IoT applications it’s really the greater capacity and ultra-low-latency that is going to unlock so much innovation. And we’re going to see that across this decade.”

Koenig didn’t talk about NextGen TV, or ATSC 3.0, which many broadcasters see as an alternative wireless data pipe to 5G. Neither did Samsung, LG and Sony, the first three set makers to declare support for 3.0 back at CES 2020. The lone set maker to mention it was Hisense, which introduced its first NextGen TV model at CES 2022 and this year detailed several higher-end LCD sets with NextGen TV capability.

LG did introduce some new TV models, including its first wireless OLED TV, the “LG Signature OLED M.” The 97-inch OLED, designed for sleek wall mounting, is only a panel with integrated speakers and a power cord. All of its electronic functions are supported by a separate “Zero Connect” transmitter box, that connects to peripherals like a cable set-top or gaming console and wirelessly transmits 4K video and audio at distances of up to 30 feet away.

LG Global CEO William Cho was also joined on stage by Paramount Streaming President-CEO Tom Ryan to announce that more Paramount streaming content will be coming to LG TVs. That includes the addition of 100 channels globally from Paramount Global’s Pluto TV to the LG Channels content platform, and the inclusion of the streaming app Paramount+ in LG sets on a global basis.

“Today I’m excited to announce that Paramount+ is ready to start its global expansion on LG smart TVs, with the first launch to start today in the U.K. and Ireland,” Ryan said. “Paramount+ will be available in more countries on LG smart TVs soon to follow in the coming days.”

Connecting Homes And Cars

Overall, the big consumer electronics manufacturers spent most of their time Wednesday talking about a connected world of intelligent devices, where smart TVs easily link to smartphone apps to control other devices in the home such as washing machines, air conditioners or security systems. And LG, Samsung and Sony are looking to extend that connected world to the automobile, as all three announced smart car software platforms that would naturally compete with Apple CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto.

LG and Samsung also pointed to digital health and content services as growth drivers, while Sony detailed advancements in its Playstation gaming unit, including a new VR headset as well as the continued adaption of popular games like Gran Turismo into major motion pictures. Andy Sony rolled out a prototype of the “Afeela” four-door EV sedan it has developed in partnership with Honda Mobility, which will be available for pre-orders in early 2025 with U.S. shipments in 2026.

One of Sony’s key technology partners on the Afeela project is Qualcomm, which is providing the “Snapdragon Digital Chassis,” an automotive version of the Snapdragon processing chip used in many smartphones today.

“We are on a mission to really make everyone and everything connected and intelligent, to make every single device intelligent and have high-performance computing,” said Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon. “We look at the opportunity to turn the car into a software-defined vehicle that is 100% connected.”

Broadcasters’ CES Roadmap

Anne Schelle, managing director of broadcast consortium Pearl TV, said her CES schedule is chock full of meetings with set makers and other CE manufacturers about NextGen TV. But she wasn’t surprised the big players aren’t highlighting it at CES.

“It’s up to broadcasters to educate consumers on the services that will be available to them on NextGen,” Schelle said. “To them, it’s just another feature on the TV set.”

The biggest news for broadcasters at CES, Schelle said, is actually the announcement late last month that system-on-a-chip supplier MediaTek has now entered commercial production of TV System on Chip (SoC) ATSC 3.0 demodulators. That should help pave the way for other manufacturers to launch high-volume, low-cost NextGen TV sets as well as accessory devices.

“It will be available first quarter and they’ve been working with us on getting it certified and ready,” Schelle said. “That’s huge, because those are the chipset solutions purchased by the Tier IIs, and they do it in a way that allows you to create a lower-cost device.”

Another boost for NextGen TV could come today, Jan. 5, with the planned launch of 3.0 broadcasts in Miami. Boston is expected to light up later this month.

Sixty-six U.S. markets were live with 3.0 broadcasts as of Tuesday, according to ATSC. In its CES booth the standards body is discussing its efforts to expand 3.0 adoption internationally and demonstrating set-top and USB receivers that can be used to upgrade existing smart TVs to NextGen TV capability. Sponsors include Gaian Solutions, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Pearl TV and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Sinclair’s Plans

Sinclair has been devoting a lot of time and resources to the connected car market itself in the past few years, as it sees 3.0 as a natural complement to cellular connectivity for delivering software updates; position, navigation and timing (PNT) data; and various infotainment services. Through CAST.ERA, its joint venture with Korean mobile operator SK Telecom, it began testing 3.0 automotive applications in Korea back in 2019, using 3.0 to deliver broadcast programming and 5G to deliver targeted ads based on GPS information.

Last year, Sinclair reached an agreement with Korean automotive supplier Hyundai Mobis to partner on developing and implementing 3.0 automotive applications in both Korea and the U.S. Hyundai Mobis has developed a windshield antenna and a 3.0 receiver with Wi-Fi gateway capability that allows connected tablets or phones in the car to easily receive the 3.0 programming.

Late last month, Sinclair successfully tested the automotive solution developed with its Korean partners in the Washington, D.C., market. A live 3.0 feed was broadcast from Sinclair’s WIAV with the help of SK Telecom control software. It was received in a Hyundai Palisade SUV equipped with the Hyundai Mobis receiver and several connected tables, with geo-targeted information delivered based on GPS data.

At CES Sinclair is demonstrating several automotive applications for 3.0. One is a fully mobile audio infotainment service that is being readied for consumer trials by several auto dealerships in the Baltimore market. Another is a prototype EV charging kiosk that can receive local content and advertising through 3.0 datacasting, an application that Sinclair aims to commercialize nationally through a partnership with digital signage firm USSI Global.

Sinclair will also be demonstrating how its “broadcast app” developed for 3.0 can not only be received and used by NextGen TV sets getting a 3.0 signal, but also through a station’s 1.0 signal, whether the sets are getting that signal over-the-air or through a legacy cable or set-top box.

The key is the Verance Aspect audio-based watermarking solution that is part of the 3.0 standard but is also designed to be backward-compatible with 1.0. It would allow Sinclair or other broadcasters to offer 3.0’s interactive features, like weather or traffic information or OTT content, without having a live 3.0 signal in the market or without it being carried by pay TV platforms. Aspect is currently included in LG’s NextGen TV sets.

“If the consumer has a 3.0-capable television set that’s supporting Verance, we can convey the information to that 3.0 smart TV watching an ATSC 1.0-derived channel and drive them to the broadcast app,” explained Sinclair SVP of Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. “It also means that for all of the markets that have ATSC 1.0, but don’t have 3.0 live, we can still do and produce the broadcast app and bring value to the consumer.”

Evoca’s Fall

One piece of bad 3.0 news this week was the shuttering of Evoca, the fledging pay TV service that blended 3.0 and 1.0 over-the-air transmission with OTT streaming in a hybrid set-top box. Created as a low-cost alternative to traditional pay TV platforms, Evoca launched in 2020 in Idaho and expanded to Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Michigan using LPTV spectrum and consumers’ broadband connections to deliver 80 channels. The company raised $35 million from strategic investors and netted 10,000 subscribers in total, with a reported churn rate of less than 1%. But it shut down Dec. 31, 2022, after running out of money and being unable to raise additional capital, which Evoca CEO Todd Achilles said was mostly a matter of bad timing.

“We got this far on $35 million,” Achilles said. “The next natural stage for us was go to more financial investors. But the climate for that is completely on ice, unfortunately.”

Evoca had difficulty securing top content from major media companies given its scale. But Achilles said there was no problem with the 3.0 technology, which provided reliable reception to small indoor antennas that Evoca bundled with its set-tops.

“Without a doubt this kind of hybrid architecture is the best way to deliver video to the home — deliver your core content over the air and then supplement that with other programming over the Internet,” Achilles said. “It effectively gives you infinite capacity on your system, with the reach and efficiency of broadcast.”

Achilles, who worked in the “fiercely competitive” wireless industry before starting Evoca, concedes that high-power broadcasters have been hamstrung by the FCC’s simulcasting requirement on early 3.0 stations. But he also thinks the majority of broadcasters still don’t realize how much potential 3.0 has.

“Broadcasters have a huge opportunity,” he said. “They already had the best spectrum, now they have the best air interface. It’s a matter of putting those two things together to usher in a whole new age of media. The industry has to stop turning the crank and doing the same stuff. Otherwise, they’re going to lose more spectrum.”

The post In A Gadget-Light Year, CES Pitches A Connected, Mobile World appeared first on TV News Check.

Switching on the new transmission standard were Tegna’s WUPL (MNT) and WWL (CBS);  Gray Television’s WVUE (Fox); Hearst Television’s WDSU (NBC); Nexstar Media’s WGNO (ABC) and WNOL (CW).

Today’s launch in New Orleans follows a decade of development and months of planning and preparation by the local stations. WUPL has converted to ATSC 3.0 transmissions and will broadcast its own programming, as well as the programming of the other participating stations, in NextGen TV format.

“Local broadcast stations play an important news and information role in the communities we serve,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “With changes in the broadcast television market over time, the value in bringing more innovation to newsrooms and viewers with smart solutions like NextGen TV is crystal clear. Launching NextGen TV enables broadcasters to deliver the latest news and emergency alerting information, which is critical in a geography such as New Orleans, where extreme weather events are common and local news updates and information is vital.”

Associated with NextGen TV is the RUN3TV web platform that brings interactive experiences and streaming content to over-the-air viewers. Built by broadcasters for broadcasters, RUN3TV’s web-based platform architecture enables stations to easily develop, innovate, and differentiate at the application services layer, allowing a consistent viewer experience across all NextGen TV devices. The broadcaster can leverage advanced advertising in live and streaming content, audience insights, and premium content distribution thanks to the new platform.

“New Orleans will now get the most out of live news, events and sports programming, while giving its broadcasters a more compelling and interactive way to deliver their content,” Schelle added. “These stations all share a commitment to provide their viewers with the best content and service and the launch of NextGen TV enables that by creating a more inspired and personalized viewing experience.”

The post Six Stations Launch NextGen TV In New Orleans appeared first on TV News Check.

To that point, none of the roughly 250 3.0 stations broadcasting across nearly 60 U.S. markets today are using the Dolby AC-4 audio technology included in the standard to deliver Dolby Atmos 5.1.4 audio, which offers additional overhead audio channels to create an immersive sound experience that makes viewers feel like they’re part of the action. Most are simply passing through the Dolby 5.1 surround sound from the Dolby AC-3 encoder used in their ATSC 1.0 broadcasts.

Mark Aitken

That includes Sinclair’s 3.0 stations, which are offering an improved picture today via 1080p video with “Advanced HDR by Technicolor” technology, which applies special processing to standard dynamic range (SDR) content to create HDR. Mark Aitken, Sinclair SVP of advanced technology, isn’t sure that immersive audio will ever be that important for local stations.

“I’m not sure there’s a big play for broadcasters in that immersive audio environment,” said Aitken. “Certainly, it’s not going to be used in local broadcast stations. News is almost entirely ‘center-stage’ with a personality, and so even stereo gets lost in that mix.”

Nor are any 3.0 stations currently using AC-4’s new object-based audio capabilities to deliver personalized audio streams to a TV set, such as a “home announcer” commentary feed for a sports broadcast, though a few stations have experimented with multiple language feeds.

Most of 3.0’s audio delay in the U.S. is attributable to the same factors that have held back the rollout of UHD content: there is still a small base of NextGen TV-capable sets; the distribution chain from networks to local stations is not fully ready for new formats; and broadcasters are somewhat hamstrung in experimenting with their 3.0 content because of FCC rules that require them to effectively simulcast their 1.0 programming. Rights considerations for high-value content like professional sports may also preclude 3.0 personalization features like alternative commentary for some time.

Some major U.S. broadcasters have produced live sports in immersive audio in conjunction with their UHD and HDR efforts, but distribution has been limited to special pay TV channels or streaming platforms. Industry insiders say the rest of the world is far ahead of North America in implementing immersive audio, whether it is Dolby Atmos or the competing MPEG-H standard developed by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute.

Larry Schindel

“Europe is leading the charge here,” said Larry Schindel, senior product manager for audio processing vendor Telos Alliance, which makes AC-4 encoders for broadcast applications as well as up- and down-mixers used to blend stereo, surround (Dolby 5.1) and immersive audio in live production.

NBC has been the leader among U.S. broadcasters in pursuing immersive audio, said Schindell, producing a number of Notre Dame college football games in Dolby Atmos as well as providing the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in 4K HDR and Dolby Atmos to Comcast subscribers. Turner and ESPN have also experimented with some Atmos productions, for basketball and college football, respectively.

Terrestrial U.S. broadcasters can’t deliver immersive audio without going to 3.0 and AC-4. But many cable and satellite operators as well as streaming platforms like Netflix can deliver Dolby Atmos by using Dolby Digital Plus JOC (Joint Object Coding), a process by which Dolby Digital Plus with Atmos decoders receive a legacy 5.1 mix and sideband metadata and use them to reconstruct the original Atmos mix.

“That last mile has proven to be a bit of a bottleneck, but it is getting better for sure,” said Schindell.

An Early Winner

One new AC-4 capability that early 3.0 stations are taking full advantage of is “Voice Plus,” a dialogue enhancement technology developed by Dolby Laboratories specifically to address problems viewers have hearing dialogue amid music and other sounds in entertainment programming. Voice Plus was one of the most popular 3.0 features with consumers in early focus groups conducted by broadcast coalition Pearl TV in Phoenix, Ariz.

Anne Schelle

“The sound is so amazing today that’s being produced, but it’s harder and harder to hear the actors’ voices,” said Pearl TV managing director Anne Schelle.

Dolby promoted the dialogue enhancement technology in a series of commercial spots in 2021. Those same spots are running again this year in 25 NextGen TV markets reaching 30 million households, Schelle said.

AC-4’s ability to enhance dialogue in legacy content was one of the key reasons it was selected by North American broadcasters for the 3.0 standard, said Mathias Bendull, Dolby’s head of consumer audio playback, broadcast. He noted that unlike immersive audio or personalization, Voice Plus doesn’t demand any extra work by broadcasters.

Mathias Bendull

“It doesn’t require any additional implementation or any additional content,” Bendull said. “It is just the way that the Dolby AC-4 encoder is configured that it delivers a signal that is capable in the AC-4 television sets to create this dialogue-enhanced version of the content that is processed through the TV station. That is a feature that consumers have very positively responded to.”

Another feature that is built into AC-4 is the ability to support high-quality audio description for the visually impaired. While the AC-3 codec used in 1.0 delivers audio description in mono or stereo audio, even if the program is in 5.1, AC-4 matches the quality of the audio description to the program’s overall audio quality whether it is stereo, surround or Atmos. Cable operators like Comcast that have tested AC-4’s audio description feature see that a major accessibility benefit of 3.0, Bendull said.

Competing Standards

Looking globally, adoption of Dolby Atmos and MPEG-H varies based on geographic region. And makers of professional audio equipment like Lawo currently need to support both, as do many consumer set manufacturers.

“There are some parts of the world that have chosen Atmos, and others are favoring MPEG-H,” said Christian Struck, senior product manager of audio for Lawo. “Brazil, China and Korea have standardized on MPEG-H, while most parts of Europe and North America are on the Atmos track.”

Christian Struck

Capabilities of the two standards for things like personalization and different language tracks are pretty similar, and Struck is hopeful that the industry will eventually standardize on one flavor of immersive and next-generation audio metadata.

Overall, broadcasters’ interest in immersive audio is picking up now that the COVID-19 pandemic situation has improved, Struck said. When COVID-19 first hit in 2020, he said, “broadcasters had to focus on staying on air, and so immersive audio was put on a backburner.”

Lawo started working on immersive audio back in 2011, doing special developments on 22.2-channel sound for the Japanese “Ultra-HD” consortium, and contributing to some early immersive trials during the 2014 Winter Games in Russia and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. At that time broadcasters were starting to debate whether viewers would embrace the aspect of audio personalization or rather preferred having “the best seat at the venue without leaving their homes,” Struck said.

While some broadcasters thought features like different languages or commentators would be the most compelling to viewers, the first step focused on providing the “kick that you get from a three-dimensional sonic image,” he said.

Since then supporting the development of immersive audio in live production has been a “continuous process” for Lawo, said Struck, who noted that most immersive audio activity to date has been in Europe and Asia. BT Sport in the U.K. began broadcasting Premiere League professional soccer in 4K and Dolby Atmos back in 2017. The Bundesliga soccer league in Germany has also adopted immersive audio for top matches broadcast on Sky, using a dedicated immersive audio control room in central Germany that remotely controls the audio processing equipment at the game venues.

There are two sides to immersive audio, Struck explained, the capturing side and the reproduction side. Capturing essentially involves more microphones and a tracking-based automated mixing system like Lawo’s KICK for compelling field-of-play noises. A suspended special microphone array, or “tree,” captures the crowd, announcements, etc., to provide the enveloping “sound bed,” while the other signals are arranged in the sound field based on other considerations.

The Lawo mc² 56 console supports an increasing amount of immersive audio production for live sports.

The mixing console then transmits separate submixes, called “stems”, to the immersive processor for encoding. This approach is often channel-based, i.e., any setting change by the user affects one of the 5.1.4 (or more) channels. Next-generation audio, on the other hand, relies on “sound objects” whose levels can be set by viewers at home for a personalized experience, with less or no commentary or a louder or softer crowd.

In the end the bigger challenge is on the reproduction side, which requires the appropriate data to be sent through the broadcast chain to a consumer receiver connected to an audio system that can receive and decode the information and then accurately deliver the immersive effect, such as through the use of extra speakers mounted in the ceiling.

One of the reasons that personalization initially rated higher as a new audio capability was that it was something that could be supported by conventional stereo speakers and didn’t require new equipment in the living room. But with more people listening on binaural headphones, the development of soundbars, and directional speakers that use controlled sound reflections from the ceiling and walls to create an immersive effect, a big technical hurdle has been lifted, Struck said.

“All big manufacturers of speakers have very good sounding soundbars for comparatively little money, and it kind of becomes the new standard,” he said. “If you buy a home cinema system you immediately have up-firing speakers or a soundbar that is able to reproduce three-dimensional sound. So that has helped a lot. And people really feel the difference.”

Working in immersive audio gives broadcasters more freedom to place audio sources that in a conventional stereo or surround mix would probably wind up as front or center channels. There are also new considerations, such as the need to add a layer or two of downmixing to validate surround and/or stereo mixes for viewers who don’t have immersive home audio systems. This means more monitoring work for audio engineers who also need to check their metadata encoding to make sure it can be properly decoded on the receiver side.

Struck is hopeful to see a significant increase in Dolby Atmos coverage to complement 4K picture quality globally, but says it is still early days with immersive audio for most U.S. broadcasters.

“Immersive is a topic in pretty much every conversation, but it’s not the leading or driving factor,” Struck said. “Broadcasters currently focus on remote production, ST2110-based infrastructure utilization, and the flexibility provided by distributed architectures. But I’m confident immersive audio will take off in the near future.”

The amount of live sports being produced in immersive audio is certainly growing; Bendull said a dozen international broadcasters are using Dolby Atmos for their coverage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Dolby Atmos is also being delivered with AC-4 in over-the-air broadcasts in Poland today, and Dolby is currently working with some partners in the U.S. to demonstrate Dolby Atmos at a local station in the near future, probably early 2023.

“There is content in much higher quality available than what makes it through the pipe,” Bendull said. “So we are doing some work to demonstrate what terrestrial ATSC 3.0 experienced with immersive audio will sound like.”

The post Immersive Audio Still A Work In Progress For NextGen TV appeared first on TV News Check.

Anne Schelle, Pearl TV managing director, said: “Adding digital monetization capabilities creates a game changing opportunity for over-the-air broadcast services. Expanding on the unique ability to deliver hybrid television service and better engage with their viewers, broadcasters are easily able to integrate with their existing over-the-air and connected TV monetization platforms.”

RUN3TV was built to support NextGen TV, otherwise known as ATSC 3.0, and bring content to life through two-way web interactivity. As NextGen TV has reached an inflection point — now reaching 55% of U.S. households, approximately 120 television models available at retail, and a growing device ecosystem — NextGen TV gives broadcasters the ability to directly engage with their viewers via their broadcaster applications supported by RUN3TV Web TV Platform.

RUN3TV has incorporated the commonly used server-side ad insertion (SSAI) model, including client-side reporting. SSAI is used to enable video advertising in many IP content distribution scenarios including over-the-top (OTT), connected TV (CTV), advertising-based video on demand (AVOD), free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) and IP broadcast channels. RUN3TV’s SSAI implementation includes the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s video ad serving template (VAST), dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) ad insertion specifications and the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard.

Robert Folliard, Gray Television  senior vice president, government relations and distribution, said: “NextGen TV is building an active, connected and digital audience using the same interactive technology of ad platforms and privacy models already in use in digital environments. By 2024, there will be 10 million addressable over-the-air households in the U.S. There’s a plethora of opportunities for broadcasters with RUN3TV — think of it as web pages over the air that are completely customizable. I am excited to see how broadcasters will lean in on this new capability, engage with the platform and harness a new revenue stream.”

Integrations are in progress with broadcasters’ ad tech partners that support SSAI, including Google Ad Manager, Madhive, Amazon AWS Media Tailor, Magnite, Springserve and Freewheel. Broadcasters that use these ad tech partners have deployed NextGen TV applications in 25 markets, according to Pearl TV.

“Connected TVs continue to be a driving force behind turning the TV screen into a full-funnel marketing tool, bringing together the premium environment of television with all the tools digital has and more,” said Adam Helfgott, Madhive CEO. “Now, with NextGen TV and the RUN3TV framework, we can bring these capabilities to over-the-air delivery, so that broadcasters can leverage our high-fidelity technology, such as our proprietary connected TV device graph of 100 million households, to deliver local-at-scale precision.”

The post Pearl TV Adds Digital Monetization Capabilities To NextGen TV appeared first on TV News Check.

There are more than 120 television models that support NextGen TV at retail from Hisense, LG, Samsung and Sony. Now broadcasting in more than 50 markets reaching 55% of U.S. households, NextGen TV is expected to reach 75% of U.S. television households by the end of 2023.

The FastTrack program seeks to provide support to manufacturers interested in making devices that support the full NextGen TV service feature set — enhanced video, audio and the interactive features that will bring more content and modernized viewing guides. The detailed device requirements will be updated continuously to aid manufacturers as NextGen TV evolves.

“This new program will make it easier for companies interested in jumping into the NextGen TV device ecosystem to design, manufacture and sell upgrade accessories,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “While we’ve seen continued success of the transition, the ATSC 3.0 standard is not backward compatible. This program helps solve that. With a simplified process, accessory price points will decrease making it more affordable and easier for consumers to enjoy NextGen TV even without an enabled television.”

The FastTrack program will help accelerate the availability of devices for consumers by guiding device makers through the NextGen TV logo and other conformance requirements — including security and regulatory compliance, testing, and opportunities for distribution and marketing partnerships.

Pearl said that by 2024, “more than 75% of all televisions sold are expected to be available with dual HDTV and NextGen TV reception. Having an affordable alternative to investing in a new NextGen TV receiver without a built-in display is essential to meet the portion of the potential viewing audience that does not have television sets that support the standard.”

“NextGen TV is experiencing hockey stick growth among consumers and broadcasters, yet some viewers with television sets bought prior to 2020 have yet to enjoy the rich features of the standard,” said Rob Folliard, Gray Television senior vice president, government relations and distribution. “Device makers can now address this issue with full support and guidance to manufacture and market compatible products that consumers need and want to enjoy over-the-air television service for free.”

Manufacturers and members of the broadcast industry interested in participating in the FastTrack program can review the resource guide at https://pearltv.com/station-resources/ or contact Pearl TV at info@pearltv.com.

The post New Pearl TV Program Lets Consumers Upgrade TV Sets To Receive NextGen TV appeared first on TV News Check.

But over the same time period streaming video has exploded for broadcasters in the form of free advertiser-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels, first with national offerings from major networks and more recently with regional and local services being launched by station groups. And the early consumer experience of NextGen TV has been hampered by government regulations that make it hard to differentiate the new services from the legacy ATSC 1.0 programming already delivered over-the-air, according to broadcasters speaking yesterday at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025 conference in New York.

Broadcasters’ biggest bone of contention is the FCC requirement for stations launching 3.0 to not only simulcast their primary programming stream in 1.0 but for the programming to be “substantially similar” through July 2023, even though they haven’t received any new spectrum for 3.0. So to launch 3.0 in a market, broadcasters are reaching channel-sharing agreements that cram multiple 3.0 program streams onto one (or two) “lighthouse” stations. The deals also find new homes for the lighthouse station’s displaced 1.0 programming, including multiple diginets, on “host” stations in the market.

“Even in markets that are lit up, about 75% of the bandwidth is actually on 1.0, because there are only one or two lighthouses in the market that actually get to do 3.0,” noted ATSC President Madeleine Noland, who spoke on the panel “NextGen TV, Streaming and the Future of Local Media” moderated by this reporter.

Capacity is tight for both the 3.0 and 1.0 broadcasts, and broadcasters are aggressively using video compression to make it all work. That means that they can’t increase the data rate of the 3.0 streams to offer dramatically improved pictures, such as 4K HDR, or even make the signal significantly easier to receive through more robust modulation schemes. The end result is the same programming in 1080p HDR that may not look very different from the 720p or 1080i content customers are already getting in 1.0, said Kerry Oslund, VP of strategy and business development for E.W. Scripps.

Oslund asked the audience how many people had NextGen TV sets currently receiving 3.0 signals, and a smattering of hands went up [New York is one of several big markets where 3.0 is not yet on-air].

“That’s one of the things we’re really concerned about,” Oslund said. “Right now, you know if you turn on your 3.0 TV set you get generally the same thing as if you were watching 1.0. And that’s not how you differentiate the experience. That bothers us and it makes us nervous. Because when a 3.0 customer goes to watch 3.0 television, we want them to see a differentiated experience beyond just better pictures and better sound, which it will have. But in a lot of ways that’s like a steering wheel and brakes on a car — you expect that.”

Oslund said that Scripps and other broadcasters would like to offer different programming in 3.0, perhaps with interactive enhancements, to make buying a new set a more compelling proposition.

Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV consortium of which Scripps is a member, also would like to see the “substantially similar” rule lift.

“I do understand the reasoning behind that, but we do feel like we need to be able to showcase content to get consumers excited to come over to NextGen,” Schelle said.

Another way the FCC could help the 3.0 rollout, she said, is to expedite a proceeding on the rules for how multicast [diginet] channels could be carried in 1.0 and 3.0, a rulemaking process that started back in November 2020. That would make it easier for broadcasters to juggle the multitude of program streams in large markets, a task at which she said they’ve done an “amazing” job so far.

“We’ve preserved every diginet and every main channel out there, and we’ve worked closely with the cable companies,” said Schelle. “In fact, they participate in every transition we do. That’s all to ensure that the consumer already watching ATSC 1.0 is not impacted at all — that’s our bread and butter.

“But by the same token, we need help,” she continued. “We need help in terms of some of these tougher markets, to have more flexibility in how we move around the diginets and the mains. That’s number one. That proceeding has been sitting there for a long time and it would be great if they could move that along.”

Oslund also addressed concerns about privacy and data collection via 3.0 sets that were raised in a speech earlier this week by FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. Speaking at Penn Law on Tuesday, Starks touted 3.0’s various benefits but also said “we must set proper guardrails” when it came to data collection for targeted advertising, particularly geographic location information.

Oslund countered that geographic location data could provide great benefit to the public during emergencies, such as when Hurricane Ian lashed Fort Myers, Fla., earlier this month.

“We want to have enough data so that NextGen TV and enhanced emergency alerting services can help a consumer with a customized evacuation route from their home, their street, their neighborhood, to where they need to go to be safe,” Oslund said. “Some people talk about that same data and they think about it from an advertising perspective only. I can promise you this company is built on 140 years of trust and we’re not going to throw it away by abusing that trust by somehow reaching too far into the data quagmire. But we do want to have enough so we can enhance our emergency alerting and our community service aspects of what we do.”

Francesco Moretti, deputy CEO and CEO of international offices for Fincons Group, has already been working for the past 10 years with European broadcasters to pursue advanced advertising on connected TVs using the HbbTV broadcast standard. He said that privacy concerns there are addressed by consumers opting in to receive additional premium features from their providers in exchange for sharing data. He expects a similar model in the U.S.

Fincons helped Italian broadcaster Mediaset launch its first interactive advertising back in 2017, with a publishing overlay of targeted advertising for connected TVs. A year later Mediaset started dynamic ad replacement. For more than four years they’ve been able to get feedback from audiences on their preferences, behavior and expectations, Moretti said, which has helped them “transform and evolve the business model of advertising” combined with attribution.

Mediaset recently linked connected TVs with smartphones to create an attribution system that tracks the effectiveness of dynamic advertising insertion. During one week of an automotive campaign the linked TV/mobile system showed an increase of 18% in visits to dealers and an average visit of over an hour, a clear indication that consumers were spurred by the TV spots to go shopping.

“It’s a sort of win-win for both the broadcaster and the audience,” Moretti said. “Mediaset can create profiles of behavior and experience and track and understand exposure of the audience to a different campaign. And with the geolocation of the mobile it is able to understand during the week of the campaign how much the traffic to the store is increasing.”

Schelle said that such a dynamic advertising and attribution system could be supported in the U.S. today with NextGen TV, as the digital revenue models that broadcasters are currently using on their OTT or FAST channels are easily transferable. The “RUN3TV” WebTV application platform that Pearl TV has developed to run on NextGen TV sets uses the same server-side ad insertion (SSAI) model with client-side reporting prevalent in many existing IP content distribution scenarios. It will allow dynamic ads to be placed against interactive content such as VOD clips or localized newscasts that consumers can quickly access through the sets’ broadband connection.

“It’s really just bringing those models over in this Web environment,” Schelle said. “Everything you can do there, you can do on the live linear broadcast in the application environment.”

Pearl TV also announced at NAB New York that it has created a “FastTrack” program to speed the development and retail availability of low-cost upgrade accessory receivers for 3.0, such as HDMI peripherals for legacy TV sets and USB dongles for smartphones. Those devices would be in addition to the roughly 55 million NextGen-capable sets that CTA projects could be in U.S. households by 2024.

“You take the projection of over-the-air households at 18%, and you have a 10 million [set] base audience that you can reach, which gets very meaningful for advertisers,” Schelle said. “Right now, what’s important is to enable the Web features.”

For more TV2025 coverage, click here.

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Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, said: “The Motown Test Track continues to be a lead research and development environment for service providers, like Auton, automakers, OEM vendors, media distributors, and internet service providers of all types to convene and foster new application development.

“The innovation from the broadcast industry behind the NextGen TV standard is unbound and is reflective of its commitment to enabling a national wireless data distribution fabric for the automotive industry, which it needs to deliver mobile video, audio and digital content to the on-the-move public.”

Pearl TV added: “As the automotive industry faces a rapidly increasing demand for wireless connectivity to the growing market for connected and autonomous vehicles, it will require a digital operating environment with ubiquitous access to the internet, cloud and meta content. As 5G and other technologies gradually emerge, ATSC 3.0 uniquely offers a one-to-many delivery option, with a robust, fully scalable platform at a lower cost than other solutions.”

The testing was performed in concert with the E. W. Scripps Co.’s ATSC 3.0 Lighthouse station WMYD powered by the Triveni Digital Broadcast Chain. This collaboration proved the ability of the standard to deliver files in a wide range of urban, suburban and exurban environments, underscoring the diverse range of mobile use cases possible with broadcast internet.

Robert Foster, Auton CEO, said: “Auton continues to lead the way in developing an ATSC 3.0 mobility platform that is effective, secure and more cost-effective for delivery of essential software updates and infotainment to the connected and autonomous vehicle market.

“By pioneering the use of NextGen TV technology, we’re able to satisfy the growing demands of the automotive industry with the ultimate integration that will enhance access to mobile broadband services for consumers, enterprises, fleets and public transportation and personal portable devices.”

Ralph Bachofen, Triveni Digital vice president of sales and marketing, said: “Our Broadcast Chain provides many tools for optimizing data delivery from the physical layer via integrated FEC and ModCod settings through application layer mechanisms such as statistical multiplexing or opportunistic data insertion. These tools can be applied together or separately on each of the data services according to the business needs and use cases.”

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Curtis LeGeyt

While it’s the same town and the same time of year, NAB 2022 will feel very different than previous NABs that routinely drew over 90,000 attendees and 1,600-plus exhibitors. For one, it will be significantly smaller, which is no surprise given the continued impacts of COVID (attendees still have to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test result to get their badge). As of Wednesday, NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said both exhibitors and registrations have “really ramped up” in the last few weeks, and he was now expecting between 950 and 1,000 exhibitors and was “optimistic” for an attendance of around 60,000.

That attendance would represent a 35% drop from the last NAB, which is consistent with predictions from vendors with which TVNewsCheck spoke. But it would represent far healthier attendance than the 2022 CES show, which suffered a 70% drop in attendance from the January 2020 CES, down from 170,000 to 45,000.

“We couldn’t be happier about where things are landing right now,” LeGeyt says. “What we’ve been most focused on is ensuring that anyone that comes out there is going to have an experience that’s different than the NAB show they remembered from 2019 or before. We’ve reimagined the format of this. And that it will be something where they say, ‘I remember why it’s so important to be in-person at a trade show.’”

New Show Geography

The overall exhibit space at the Las Vegas Convention Center will be smaller, with a total footprint of around 500,000 square feet compared to just under one million in 2019. And it will have a new geography, as NAB is no longer using the cavernous South Upper and Lower Halls, which were located a considerable walking distance from the Central and North Halls. Instead, the show is moving into the gleaming new West Hall built across Paradise Road from North, where a parking lot was previously. The three halls are now served by the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, a system of underground tunnels created by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Tesla offers free rides between halls in its electric vehicles.

The smaller footprint isn’t just due to COVID. Several large vendors said after the 2019 show that they were reducing the size of their booths, or had already done so, as many of the products they sell have shifted from physical hardware to software-based solutions. And since many of those software-centric products can be demonstrated remotely — a capability vendors leaned on heavily throughout the pandemic — vendors were also looking to get more involved in conference sessions to get a better ROI on their NAB spend.

In conjunction with the new floorplan, NAB has reorganized the 2022 exhibition and companion conference into four “content pillars”: Create, Connect, Capitalize and Intelligent Content. The “Create” pillar will be located across Central and part of North Hall, Capitalize across part of North and Connect and Intelligent Content will be in the West Hall. Many anchor exhibitors have moved to new locations, including several post-production companies that had previously been in South relocating to North.

Schedule Changes

Another departure for NAB this year is the schedule. For the first time the show floor will be open on Sunday, following a decision in early 2019 to rejigger the exhibition to run from Saturday through Wednesday instead of Monday through Thursday with the hope of boosting attendance. The idea was that one didn’t have to “eat up an entire workweek” to attend NAB, LeGeyt says.

When the change was first announced, the reaction among exhibitors was mixed, with many vendors suggesting that Wednesday would simply become the “new Thursday,” historically a sleepy day on the NAB Show floor. Of course, after two years of no large trade shows and an industry that has been transformed by remote work due to the pandemic, it will be difficult to assess whether the schedule change was originally a good idea or not.

For his part, LeGeyt says he hadn’t heard much negative feedback about the schedule switch. Grass Valley CMO Neal Maycock agrees.

Neal Maycock

“I think people have forgotten what days it used to be on,” Maycock says. “No one seems worried about that anymore. It’s funny to think that was a big controversial thing a couple years ago. Now, it’s like, ‘Well, the show’s happening. Who cares what days it is?’”

Smaller, But More Serious Crowds

Maycock says he was struggling to get a sense of what attendance might actually be, but that if it reached even 50% of 2019 that would be a “very good result.” He says key customers are continuing to book meetings, even though non-COVID events like the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger are keeping some personnel away. Compared to the fall 2021 show that was canceled, Maycock also sees that more senior executives, rather than junior staff, are booking meetings with Grass Valley, which is emphasizing its cloud-based based production platform and various third-party product integrations in its booth.

“We’ve already got enough appointments to make it worth going,” he says.

Bitcentral CEO Steve Petilli says he was a bit concerned about attendance on Sunday, which is shaping up as a travel day for some customers. But Petilli has been able to secure appointments throughout the show with all of Bitcentral’s key customers, and he says that a smaller, less congested NAB might not be a bad thing.

Steve Petilli

“That’s one of the things that we’re hoping, is that it’s not as frenetic,” Petilli says. “I think it’s much more useful as a show if we don’t have crowds of people in the booth who are elbowing each other, and not enough meeting rooms to really sit down and have time with the customers. I think the people who really need to talk to us and are serious are going to be showing up, and we’re going to get a lot less looky-loos.”

About a month ago, Sony was predicting much lighter attendance for NAB ’22 than past shows but has seen booth appointments pick up in the last couple weeks, says John Studdert, VP of media solutions for Sony Electronics. Studdert says that most station groups were “going in full force” while attendance from networks was more mixed, which could be attributed to reorganizations like the one occurring at Warner Bros. Discovery as well as a shift in focus to new streaming efforts.

“There’s a lot of transformation taking place,” he says.

John Studdert

Studdert is seeing lighter attendance from customers in Europe and Asia due to the ongoing impacts of COVID. But he expects that U.S. attendance will be about 70% of pre-pandemic levels.

Sony will be in its familiar Central Hall location with a footprint comparable in size to previous years. Key themes will be the shift to IP-based SMPTE-2110 compliant operations; REMI production for live events; virtual production; and various cloud-based solutions.

“I think the industry is continuing to wait for the [cloud] toolsets to mature, especially on the live side,” Studdert says. “At the same time IP is continuing to mature as well. So, I think those two could either work in concert, or to some degree compete with each other.”

Satoshi Kanemura

Another Japanese vendor that will be highlighting IP solutions is FOR-A, which has actually increased the size of its booth to demonstrate an end-to-end software-defined production chain. Satoshi Kanemura, president and COO of FOR-A America, says that in-person shows are particularly important for small-to-mid-size vendors like FOR-A. He sees a similar value placed on attendance from customers, with some network customers skipping the show but a lot of “mid-tier and low-tier” broadcasters still making the trip.

Overseas Impact

Like Sony, most vendors expect attendance from European and Asia-Pacific customers to be down.

IP transmission vendor Net Insight, which is based in Sweden, is sending about the same number of people to NAB 2022 as 2019. But that’s because it has grown its U.S. operation. Fewer executives are coming from Europe, and the company is also seeing fewer European customers making the trip as well. Per Johansson, head of sales, Americas for Net Insight, says that a few customers from large media companies just canceled meetings in the past week due to new corporate-wide COVID restrictions.

Per Johansson

Net Insight had already downsized its booth somewhat from 2019 in its planning for last year’s canceled show. The company has also decided to virtualize several demonstrations in its booth this year that it initially planned to do with equipment in the booth, by remotely controlling systems back in Sweden. By doing so it is also showing that it can keep up with the needs of customers who are increasingly reliant on “at-home” or REMI-style productions.

“It’s going to be less and less equipment out at the edges in the future, and it shows we’re trending in that way,” Johansson says.

Van Duke

Master control and playout vendor Playbox NEO has seen strong response from customers and is forecasting NAB 2022 as a “purchasing show,” says Van Duke, U.S. director of operations for Playbox NEO. But he isn’t seeing many international customers make the trip and thinks it will be a U.S.-dominated show. Like other vendors, he says that Wednesday looks to be very quiet, and wonders why NAB hadn’t cut back on the total show hours.

“I think Wednesday is going to be dead,” Duke says.

Taking Stock Of Next-Gen TV

Sinclair Broadcast Group is bringing “several dozen” and maybe as many as 50 to 60 employees to Las Vegas, says SVP of Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. The continued rollout of the ATSC 3.0 transmission system is a big focus at NAB for Sinclair, which has been transmitting 3.0 signals from its NBC affiliate KSNV Las Vegas for the past two years. During the show, it will be demonstrating 3.0 datacasting applications, including “GPS enhancement” for drone delivery of packages outside the convention hall, as well as 4K HDR programming.

Aitken says NAB 2022 is key for broadcasters rolling out the new standard.

Mark Aitken

Ralph Bachofen

“During COVID, a lot of our folks haven’t seen [the technology],” Aitken says. “It’s been difficult putting your hands on gear and obviously having those face-to-face conversations. We’re making the best of the show.”

One of 30-plus vendors demonstrating 3.0 technology at NAB is Triveni Digital, which makes datacasting solutions and test and measurement systems for ATSC 3.0 transmission. Triveni has already booked a number of meetings at its new location in the West Hall and is expecting “really good traffic,” says Triveni VP of Sales and Marketing Ralph Bachofen.

“It sounds like all the big guys are coming,” Bachofen says, though he noted that overall attendance from PBS member stations may be down now that PBS no longer holds a technical conference before the show.

Madeleine Noland

The ATSC booth is anchoring the “Future of Delivery” area in the West Hall, which ATSC President Madeleine Noland describes as “drop-dead gorgeous.” Noland is “very excited” about prospective attendance for NAB, which includes significant delegations from Korea, Brazil and Jamaica.

“To be honest, it feels like pre-COVID when it comes to how preparations are going,” Noland says. “The amount of excitement that’s building, the number of people who would like to meet, the amount of activity in our booth as well as up and down the show floor.”

With 3.0 signals now covering 50% of the country and topping 80% predicted by year-end, Noland thinks the rollout is going very well, particularly considering the logistical challenges that COVID-19 posed throughout 2020. Between set-makers Sony, LG, Samsung and Hisense there are now over 120 NextGen TV models available.

At CES, attendees wanted to see 3.0 set-top boxes and other peripherals, Noland says, and she is happy that a number of them will be demonstrated at NAB. The other theme that arose was side-by-side comparison of ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 broadcasts, and that is something that will also be shown in the ATSC booth.

Anne Schelle

Besides datacasting and UHD, interactivity is another key benefit of the 3.0 standard. The Run3 broadcast app developed by E.W. Scripps will also be on display in the ATSC booth, says Anne Schelle, managing director of broadcast consortium Pearl TV, as well as in private demos at the Wynn hotel.

“We’re focused on the consumer story, video, audio and interactive,” Schelle says. “You will see some real examples of the broadcast application and some recent developments in ad technology with lead generation and monetization. We’ll be showcasing that.”

The post Vendors Eager For ‘Reimagined’ NAB Show appeared first on TV News Check.

In the test car, LG Electronics installed a system to receive and display ATSC 3.0 signals on a rear-seat entertainment TV. As the car traveled from the signal coverage of one TV station to the next, the NRT handoff technology succeeded in keeping a steady TV signal on the receiver device.

“The success of the demonstration  is meaningful as it shows that both entertainment and data services in moving cars can be commercialized” said Yeongho Je, director of C&M standard lab at LG Electronics. The two ATSC 3.0 test signals were provided by WKAR, the Michigan State University public media station, and WMYD, The E.W. Scripps Co. MyNetworkTV affiliate in Detroit. Technical support and proof of concept project management was provided by Pearl TV. Heartland Video Systems installed and configured servers and installed the DigiCasters at both TV stations.

“Achieving seamless data hand off between the signals of adjacent ATSC 3.0 TV stations is foundational for any datacasting application in the automotive and mobile fields,” said Anne Schell, Pearl TV managing director. “While data handoff technology is not new, confirming a successful test of this technology for use with ATSC 3.0 spectrum is an important step forward.”

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Stations and networks are also making greater use of cloud platforms, both public and private, for everything from disaster recovery to full production and playout systems. And next year should see significant progress for two new wireless technologies: the ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard and the various 5G services being rolled out by wireless carriers.

The IP Transition

The past two years have seen several major new broadcast facilities built with IP networking infrastructures including NBC Universal’s new Telemundo Center in Miami, CNN’s new headquarters at 30 Hudson Yards in New York and BBC Wales’ new facility in Cardiff. 2020 will see several more “greenfield” sites completed with technical infrastructures based on the SMPTE ST 2110 IP networking standard, including a new London base for CNN and a media center in Boston that NBCUniversal is building to support its various broadcast and cable properties there.

Several station groups are considering new IP projects in order to centralize or consolidate operations to serve multiple stations, some after recent acquisitions, say major vendors of IP control software. Reducing their real estate footprint, or moving infrastructure to remote locations with lower rents, is a driver.

Imagine’s Steve Reynolds

“Nearly all of the conversations we’re having with stations are along the lines of, ‘How can I virtualize?’ ” says Imagine Communications President Steve Reynolds. “How can I move equipment and expense out of those in-market operations and move them into something that makes a lot more sense from a size and scale and cost-efficiency perspective?”

The NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations group has already created a data center in Dallas that can support virtualized news production workflows for its smaller Telemundo stations, with KBLR Las Vegas being the first to flip the virtual switch.

Several other broadcasters are also considering the data center approach, particularly since they have already virtualized many of their everyday functions for news production using on-premise COTS hardware. Once a broadcast system is “containerized” through virtualization, it can be moved to any IP environment, including a remote data center or even public cloud.

One of the challenges in early ST 2110 builds has been configuring systems from different vendors to talk to one another over an IP network under the control of enterprise-class orchestration software. CNN engineers say that after equipment installation at 30 Hudson Yards was complete, months of configuration work were still required before being ready to go on-air.

At least a partial solution to that problem is promised by the Advanced Media Workflow Association’s NMOS (Networked Media Open Specifications) protocol for communicating with and controlling remote IP equipment.

NMOS, which allows two devices to automatically discover each other across an IP network, is expected to greatly streamline setting up IP broadcast infrastructures. The key specs are IS-04 — which handles device discovery and registration — and IS-05, which covers connection management. Major vendors like Imagine, Evertz and Grass Valley have been working diligently on supporting NMOS, but to date it’s been a slow road.

Hearst’s Joe Addalia

“The plug-and-play nature of 2110 is the NMOS spec, which is basically that the device says here I am, announces itself on the network and the rest of the network sees it,” says Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for Hearst Television. “That piece is just becoming a reality now, and that’s what makes it easy and manageable …. Even in a television station, you’re dealing with thousands of flows now when you go to IP, as opposed to one wire that has audio, video and metadata in it.”

The successful implementation of NMOS across the industry is “what’s going to get the last piece of apprehension out of the way” in going from SDI to IP, says Chuck Meyer, CTO-Live for Grass Valley. He concedes that as a group, vendors have been somewhat slow in making it happen.

Grass Valley’s Chuck Meyer

“The goal is to press one button to connect,” Meyer says. “We’ve put a lot of work into software development, and I think we’re very close to one-button configuration.”

Chasing The Cloud

While cable programmers like Discovery and the Disney cable networks have been originating their linear program feeds from public and private cloud platforms for several years, broadcast networks and TV stations have been slower to adopt cloud workflows.

Broadcasters may use the public or private cloud to support new digital businesses like OTT, or to handle media processing like transcoding. But most have shied away from using it for mission-critical operations like live production or playout, often due to latency concerns when switching between network feeds and local programming.

But that mindset appears to be changing. Fox Corp. last week announced a sweeping deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in which it will employ AWS’s cloud technology to support ingest, production and playout for all of its businesses, including the Fox-owned stations, as it creates a new technology platform in the wake of the Disney/Fox merger.

The AWS system, which will eventually replace technical infrastructure that Fox sold to Disney but still uses under a transitional services agreement, will work with existing Fox production centers in Los Angeles, New York and Charlotte, N.C., as well as a new technical hub Fox is building in Tempe, Ariz.

As part of the deal, Fox will be using two new AWS products designed to address latency problems in using the cloud for live production or high-end post production: an “AWS Local Zone” in Los Angeles that places compute and storage resources close to Hollywood clients to deliver single-digit millisecond latencies; and “AWS Outposts,” compute and storage racks built with AWS-designed hardware that allow customers to run some latency-sensitive applications on-premises, whether that’s in a station or a production truck.

PBS has also been working toward moving its media workflows and network playout into the public cloud for over a year, though it hasn’t yet announced its final plans. And stations are now looking at adopting the cloud for discreet workflows, such as disaster recovery, with an eye toward expanded use of the cloud for future services enabled by the 3.0 rollout.

Diversified’s Jason Kornweiss

Major networks like CNN and NBC have no problem spending the money to build redundant IP routing cores to ensure continuity, says Jason Kornweiss, VP of emerging technology for systems integrator Diversified. But he says many smaller stations moving to IP don’t have those financial resources. Instead, they are buying a single IP router and investing in the private or public cloud as an insurance policy.

“Some may leverage the cloud as a second system, to offload a backup copy with the ability to play out,” Kornweiss says. “That’s what stations are looking at as a backup strategy, either through a data center or a third party, such as an Amazon-hosted infrastructure. NBCU, for example, has full disaster recovery in Dallas for any one of the stations.”

Consumer dollars have already shifted to the cloud, Reynolds notes, which is perhaps a bigger reason for broadcasters to follow. He says that many stations looking to rebuild are adopting a “digital-first” strategy and designing an infrastructure that will serve OTT, mobile and 3.0 just as easily as it will support their over-the-air feed.

Imagine is already doing proof-of-concept trials for non-real-time workflows like disaster recovery or transcoding through the public cloud. Reynolds expects that will soon lead to distribution to OTT channels, like virtual MVPDs, and eventually origination of the main broadcast feed.

“That movement to cloud is just going to keep accelerating,” Reynolds says. “And I think a big part of the reason is that even for these smaller stations and these smaller station groups, their monetization has already moved to cloud. It’s a consumer behavior — so much of the audience is now trying to connect to these guys through some means other than an over-the-air antenna.”

In using the cloud to process and distribute their content, broadcasters will be able to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms offered by public cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Fox’s Paul Cheesbrough

In discussing the AWS agreement at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Fox Corp. CTO Paul Cheesbrough said that Fox content will automatically be indexed in real-time using Amazon’s scene detection and facial recognition algorithms. Fox will also be using the Amazon Kinesis data analytics and Amazon SageMaker machine learning tools.

3.0 Ready To Go

As TV stations retool their production and playout infrastructures for the IP age, many are also preparing to launch a completely new IP-based transmission system in the form of the ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcast standard. The first “NextGen TV” connected-TV sets capable of receiving 3.0 broadcasts are expected to be shown at next month’s CES 2020 show in Las Vegas, with product hitting store shelves in late spring or early summer.

Two large consortiums of stations, Pearl TV and Spectrum Co., are working to give early adopters something to watch.

At the NAB Show in April, the biggest station groups announced that they would launch 3.0 services in the top 40 markets by the end of 2020. In fact, 61 markets overall are expected to launch 3.0 on at least one “lighthouse” station. Doing so will require the cooperation of multiple stations in a market to “channel-stack” existing 1.0 services in order to clear spectrum for 3.0, as well as the consent of networks and syndicators to have their content aggressively compressed using the latest 1.0 encoders.

While only a handful of 3.0 stations have launched to date, Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle says those top-40 plans are on schedule and that 3.0 proponents have support from “all the networks now” in restacking 1.0 services to make 3.0 happen.

Pearl TV’s Anne Schelle

While the eventual plan for 3.0 is expected to include single-frequency networks (SFNs) that employ multiple transmitters to deliver robust mobile coverage in a market, the initial 3.0 broadcasts will likely include one, and sometimes two, sticks in market. They will deliver 1080p HDR video with Dolby AC-4 audio, content protection and a consumer-facing application that will run on a NextGen TV set.

Schelle won’t disclose which markets will light up first, but says that by the second half of 2020 broadcasters will be able to support consumer electronics manufacturers with a “reasonable penetration of markets.”

She says participating stations have been coordinating their efforts via lengthy conference calls and will make some announcements at CES. The 3.0 launches, which also require coordination with cable operators and other MVPDs in a market regarding changes to the 1.0 signals they carry, will likely occur on a rolling basis throughout 2020.

“From our perspective, we’re getting enough markets on air to support the CE [consumer electronics] launches,” she says.

More Experiments With 5G

Of course, the launch of 3.0 won’t be happening in a wireless vacuum, but instead at the same time as major carriers are slowly expanding the various 5G wireless services they launched in 2019. Whether 5G eventually represents a competitive or complementary service to 3.0 remains to be seen, but it’s safe to say that 2020 will be too early to tell either way.

But one way that broadcasters are already looking to play with 5G is using its high-bandwidth, low-latency wireless pipe for professional contribution applications, such as backhauling signals from wireless cameras in live sports production.

Fox tested 5G backhauls with AT&T during the 2018 U.S. Open golf tournament, and earlier this month, NBC Sports, Sony and Verizon teamed up for a similar test during a Houston Texans vs. New England Patriots NFL game.

An NBC Sports camera operator captured game video with a Sony PXW-Z450 shoulder-mounted camcorder and streamed it with Sony Mobile Communications’ prototype transmitter box and Xperia 5G mmWave device over Verizon’s 5G “Ultra Wideband” network to a production room in Houston’s NRG Stadium.

The Vendor Outlook

After a wave of acquisitions and restructurings in recent years in the media technology space, M&A activity is expected to be somewhat slow in 2020 among technology vendors while consolidation continues among their customers.

But there is one very big fish in play in the form of Grass Valley, which parent Belden Inc. in October announced it would be divesting after purchasing it in 2014 for $218 million. Grass Valley was integrated with several other broadcast vendors that Belden acquired for a total of $700 million between 2009 and 2018, including Telecast Fiber Systems, Miranda, Softel and Snell Advanced Media. Unfortunately for Belden, the combined revenue of those acquired companies once topped $600 million but Grass Valley generates $346 million in revenues today.

The most likely buyer for Grass Valley is a private equity firm, says Joe Zaller, founder of research firm Devoncroft Partners, as the price tag will likely be too steep for a strategic acquisition by another media technology vendor. Belden indicated at the time of the divestiture announcement that a deal was imminent, Zaller says, but it hasn’t closed one yet.

While Grass Valley is profitable, its performance never lived up to the initial optimism that Belden expressed over the acquisition. Its linear playout business in hardware servers had taken a significant downturn in recent years.

The unpredictability of Grass Valley’s revenues, which are mostly due to the cyclical nature of broadcast investments in technology, also made it a tough fit in Belden’s overall portfolio for investors who are used to the steady revenue streams of the company’s other businesses.

“Within broadcast, it was always very lumpy, and you could sense their frustration in that they couldn’t get their head around how to predict demand in a better way,” Zaller says.

What may complicate the sale, he adds, is that Grass Valley, like other media technology vendors, is facing a business model transition as it changes how it sells and bills for technology. It is moving from a hardware model with upfront capital investment by customers to more of an “opex” model with recurring revenues for software-based services. Those revenues may turn out to be more predictable in the long run, but such a move will likely first cause revenue to dip for a period of 18 to 24 months — not the best selling point for a PE firm.

There have been some notable deals in 2019, says Devoncroft Principal Analyst Josh Stinehour, including IP contribution specialist LiveU being acquired by private equity firms Francisco Partners (former Grass Valley owner) and IPG Capital, and Sony taking a 45% stake in Norwegian routing software supplier Nevion.

Looking ahead, Stinehour says that vendors should pay close attention to the Fox-AWS deal. He says that Amazon providing Fox with on-premise hardware in the form of “AWS Outposts,” as well as professional services, is very significant. In fact, he thinks the extent of technology that AWS eventually winds up providing — and not providing — to Fox could define the future playing field for broadcast technology vendors.

“It will be very interesting to see how third-party suppliers fit into that installation, because that’s going to say a lot about what the market’s going to look like in three, five, seven years,” Stinehour says.

While he’s optimistic that there will still be viable business opportunities for third-party vendors, Stinehour notes that some media companies are already filling technology gaps from cloud providers by building their own  systems or outsourcing functions to a services company like Encompass.

Stinehour says the final workflow for Fox’s greenfield platform with AWS could be a “referendum” for what the market opportunity is for media tech vendors going forward.

“What is the gap between what AWS is ever going to be willing to provide to the media vertical, versus what a Fox needs to run a broadcast operation?” Stinehour asks. “Whatever that gap is, that’s going to be the market that’s left over for all the suppliers that we know and love.”

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Led by Pearl TV and TV stations owned by E.W. Scripps, Fox Television Stations, Meredith Local Media Group, Nexstar Media Group, Tegna, Telemundo Station Group and Univision, the initiative will test advanced business models enabled by the next-generation broadcast television standard.

As part of the comprehensive system with technology partners, Harmonic will provide participating stations in Phoenix with its Electra X ATSC 3.0 media processor, which integrates its encoding solution and statistical multiplexing technology, and a DASH packager, to ensure seamless distribution of ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.

“This unique initiative is the first time that a single market will test the ATSC 3.0 standard and provide a framework to the industry,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV. “Partnering with forward-thinking technology providers like Harmonic, Pearl TV can validate groundbreaking improvements for over-the-air broadcasting and experiment with innovative use cases that ATSC 3.0 enables. All of that is possible in a real-life broadcast environment.”

Harmonic’s Electra X media processor is a fully software-based solution that combines two decades of codec and statmux technology developments with Harmonic’s DASH and OTT expertise. The Electra X system supports HDR, and also performs the important task of decorating ATSC 3.0 channels to ensure they are suitable for targeted ad insertion.

Beyond over-the-air (OTA) transmission, the Electra X media processor connects to Harmonic VOS 360 SaaS platform in the cloud to enable hybrid OTA/OTT services.

“Having a software-based solution for ATSC 3.0 is critical for broadcasters as they enter a new era of television with the post-auction repack and ATSC 3.0,” said Tim Warren, Harmonic’s SVP and chief technology officer, video business. “Harmonic’s software-centric approach to video delivery is flexible, cost-effective and future-proof. Our software-based solutions, combined with deployment experience in OTT and cloud, makes it easy for broadcasters to comply with the next-generation broadcast standard, as well as ATSC 1.0 in the short term. We are excited to be part of this groundbreaking initiative and power the delivery of new broadcast services.”

Harmonic will demonstrate its ATSC 3.0 solutions at the 2018 NAB Show, April 9-12, in Las Vegas at booth SU810.

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ATSC 3.0 promises to improve broadcast TV reception and service and create new business opportunities for broadcasters, but it is not compatible with any of the TV sets now in use.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and others have raised concerns about the impact the new standard would have on consumers with incompatible sets.

The announcement comes two days before the FCC is expected to authorize use of the new standard on voluntary basis.

The project, which is expected to get underway next spring, includes setting up a transitional “lighthouse” station.

During the standards transition, prior to consumers upgrading to new 3.0-capable sets, broadcasters who choose to broadcast in 3.0 have said they would simulcast in the existing standard over a commonly operated station, which has come to be called a lighthouse.

Other objectives of the “model market:” confirming basic TV service parameters and performance, ascertaining the appeal of HRD video and immersive audio, testing interactive and targeted advertising and insuring compatibility with local cable systems.

The Pearl consortium includes Cox Media, E.W. Scripps, Graham, Hearst, Meredith, Nexstar, Raycom and Tegna.

Fox, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo Station Group and Univision, which have stations in Phoenix, will also participate.

“What we learn in Phoenix will be critical for a successful deployment of next-generation TV across the country,” said Pearl TV Managing Director Anne Schelle. “The model market collaboration will help broadcasters develop commercial launch profiles, station configurations, interoperability with MVPD retransmission and support requirements for a basic ATSC 3.0 TV service,”

The participating stations:

• E.W. Scripps’ KNXV (ABC)
• Fox’s KSAZ (Fox) and KUTP (MNT)
• Meredith’s KPHO (CBS) and KTVK (Independent)
• Nexstar’s KASW (CW);
• Telemundo Station Group’s KTAZ (Telemundo);
• Tegna’s KPNX (NBC)
• Univision’s KFPH-CD (UniMas) and KTVW (Univision).

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“The audio watermark is an enabler for multiple use cases for 3.0,” says Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, a consortium of eight major television station groups. “Those include the ability to enable audience measurement in the future and to trigger interactive functions of ATSC 3.0.”

While A/344, the 3.0 audio watermarking standard, is intended for use with next-generation TV, the mark can be inserted into today’s 1.0 broadcasts without harming reception, says Joe Winograd, EVP, CTO and founder of Verance Corp., the San Diego-based company responsible for developing the watermarking technology.

“By getting this into the market ahead of the full ATSC 3 transition, broadcasters can begin to set the foundation for their long-term strategic direction,” he says.

The testing, which began in December 2016, relies of TV households with specially equipped ATSC 1 receivers that recognize the audio watermark and then reach out to broadcast internet servers via the sets’ Ethernet connections to launch 3.0 web-based services, says Winograd.

Last week’s release of an FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at authorizing 3.0 and the nearing completion of the next-gen TV standard, which is expected sometime in the first or second quarter of 2017, make the testing all the more timely.

Hundreds of households around the country were equipped with the special digital TV receivers at the launch of testing, and more will be added as the audio watermark trial continues throughout 2017, he says.

None of the sources contacted for this story would reveal the specific stations involved in the testing. The rather nebulous “national broadcasters and additional broadcasters” description given by Winograd regarding participating broadcasters is as about as specific as anyone would get.

However, sources at Sinclair Broadcast Group and Pearl TV, whose members own more than 220 television stations in the United States, confirmed the audio watermark testing is ongoing.

“We have not yet announced further market tests [beyond the initial audio watermark implementation testing conducted by Heart Television and Cox Media Group many months ago], but certainly there are things in the works,” says Pearl TV’s Schelle. “We are hoping to release results of the test before NAB [April 22-27 in Las Vegas] and talk about the results at the show.”

The audio watermark standard is a critical component of next-generation television because it activates so many of the new broadband-related services broadcasters will be able to offer with 3.0 as well as play a key role in audience measurement, Winograd says.

“The way to look at the watermark technology is as another pipe, or way, for broadcasters to get information into the receiver,” says So Vang, NAB VP Advanced Technology, who organized and ran a demonstration of 3.0 interactivity at the 2016 NAB Show.

Audio watermark messages delivered via that pipe can activate 3.0 services described in other parts of the next-gen standard, including service usage reporting (A/333), the companion device standard (A/338) and interactive content (A/334), says Advanced Television Systems Committee President Mark Richer.

One example of the A/344 watermark working with other parts of the standard is assisting viewers with specific language needs, Richer says. “Imagine an audio service that is not available in a broadcast. But once the receiver recognizes the program via the watermark, it can then go out over the broadband connection, retrieve the desired audio service, sync up the audio with the video and verify it’s been done properly — all seamlessly to the consumer.”

That same type of broadband connectivity can also help broadcasters achieve a new level of audience measurement and analytics, says Mark Aitken, SVP of Advanced Technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group, which is taking part in the watermark testing.

“I think it is fair to say that the industry as a whole is beginning to measure elements of our audience that were once relegated to Nielsen numbers,” he says.

“It is really in so many ways a big step forward on the part of the broadcast industry to take on the audience measurement analytics that we will find ourselves enjoying in an ATSC 3.0 deployment,” he says.

That sentiment reflects a key point Aitken’s boss, SBG Chairman, President and CEO David Smith, made in November 2016 on a panel of broadcast CEOs at TVNewsCheck’s TV2020 event held in conjunction with NAB Show New York.

“Broadcasters [currently] have no clue what goes on in the real world. We have no legitimate, honest-to-God audience measurement data whatsoever,” Smith said at the time.

“…(W)hen an IP-based platform [ATSC 3.0] is launched, every device in the marketplace, I know who it is and where it is. I can now sell a specific ad to that …. That is worth more. If you do nothing more than that alone, and you get 2X. What’s that worth in terms of Wall Street’s view of growth?”

While longer range, knowing more about individual station viewers and cashing in on the ability to deliver personalized ads targeting specific viewers may prove more lucrative, there are nearer-term benefits to the ongoing audio watermark testing, says Verance’s Winograd.

“By getting this [the audio watermark] into the market ahead of the full ATSC 3 transition, broadcasters can begin to set the foundation for their long-term strategic direction,” says Winograd.

“That foundation is based upon a direct connection to their viewers via broadband as a part of that broadcast service to deliver personalization, interactivity and advanced advertising features.”

Better understanding a station’s audience will give broadcasters a leg up on where they are today, he says.

“By deploying this technology today, broadcasters can begin collecting that data, building the data models and laying the foundation for targeted advertising, for interest-based personalization and interactivity in the future,” Winograd says.

To stay up to date on all things tech, follow Phil Kurz on TVNewsCheck’s Playout tech blog here. And follow him on Twitter: @TVplayout.

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“ATSC 3.0 is rounding third base and heading into the home stretch,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, a consortium of leading station groups that backs 3.0 and commissioned the guide. “It’s time for managers, engineers and planners at all levels to look ahead and get ready for the requirements. 

“ATSC 3.0 is the ‘glue’ that will enable broadcast protocol to exist in an internet environment, which means better pictures and sound; personalized and geo-targeted viewing; mobile viewing; more information about emergency alerts; and the seamless integration of broadcasting programming with other Internet Protocol services,” Schelle added.

The guide, which will be periodically updated, is available here.

Broadcasters have asked the FCC to permit use of 3.0 on a voluntary basis and are hoping the agency launches a rulemaking to that end in the next few months.

Because 3.0 is not compatible with 1.0 and, thus, any of the TV sets in use today, the guide suggests a transitional scheme that involves slowly introducing 3.0 signals while weaning consumers from their 1.0 stations.

The scheme would require stations in each market to collaborate. Working together, they would begin offering multiple 3.0 signals on a small scale by sharing a single designated “lighthouse” station.

Over time, they would increase the number of 3.0 stations and channels, while decreasing the number of 1.0 stations and channels. Eventually, 1.0 would be reduced to multiple signals on a single “night light” station.

“This concept of a ‘night light’ station would provide some ATSC 1.0 service, thus not stranding any consumers who don’t have ATSC 3.0 receivers,” the guide says.

Among the specific recommendations:

• Buy transmitters, RF systems and antennas with 3.0 in mind, even if it costs more. “Purchasing the components that will support stations’ future ATSC 3.0 plans can greatly reduce expenses during an ATSC 3.0 transition.”

• Add vertical polarization to the antenna, “if mobile services are in the station’s future.”

• Buy transmitters that software-upgradable to 3.0 and can be outfitted with additional power needed to handle vertical polarization.

“If broadcasters incorporate ATSC 3.0 into tower structural engineering studies, tower modifications and transmitter, RF system and antenna installations during … the repack, they will pay only once for potentially expensive and time-consuming work.”

The “repack” is shorthand for the FCC’s plan to reorganize the TV band after the incentive auction in which hundreds of TV stations are selling their spectrum and going dark.

The repack will involve hundreds of stations that chose not to sell their spectrum moving to new channels. The government will pay for the moves from the auction proceeds, giving affected stations an opportunity to simultaneously upgrade to 3.0 at the expense of the wireless buyers.

The guide is primarily the work of Pearl TV, which includes Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Graham Media Group, Hearst Television, Media General, Meredith, Raycom Media and Tegna.

Other contributors include Sinclair Broadcast Group, American Tower, Dielevtric, Ericsson, GatesAir, Harmonic, Hitachi Kokusai Electric, Comark, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Triveni Digital and the consulting firm of Meintel, Sgrignoli & Wallace.

It was edited by Myra Moore and Jay Adrick of Digital Tech Consulting with oversight from Sterling Davis of Cox Media Group and Dave Folsom of Raycom Media.

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“Right now if you search any breaking news story, you’re not getting [content from] the trusted news sources,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, a coalition of broadcast groups advocating for the new standard. “You’re getting some guy … who set up his news site a week ago — and he’s getting the revenue.

“That’s a bad experience for the consumer,” she said.

Speaking at TVNewsCheck’s annual NewsTECHForum in New York Tuesday morning, Schelle said that under the new standard, which is IP-based, broadcasters will be better equipped to embed their content with “the signals” that will boost it to the top of search results.

The new standard, which has yet to receive FCC approval, will also improve local broadcasters’ ability to produce and distribute content based on what particular segments of their audiences want, she said.

“Local news will become more important.”

For instance, ATSC 3.0 would allow broadcasters use repeaters to deliver hyperlocal content to particular communities within their markets — as well as sell that hyperlocal inventory to advertisers wanting to target those viewers, Schelle said. That’s a particularly attractive option for TV stations whose markets include more than one city.

The IP foundation of ATSC 3.0 also means the new standard will make it easier for broadcasters to distribute content across multiple devices, Schelle said. At the moment, doing that is considerably more difficult because linear feeds are not necessarily compatible with digital platforms, she said.

In addition, the new standard provides local broadcasters with the means to make news content more dynamic, she said. Interactive capabilities mean stations could include polls, allow viewers to follow particular stories and offer other features that make consuming content a more engaging experience.

Under ATSC 3.0, local broadcasters will also have a more robust role serving communities in disasters, Schelle said. The standard’s emergency alert system will allow stations to deliver interactive tools like evacuation maps.

Although ATSC 3.0 will take seven to 10 years to fully deploy once approved (Schelle said she expects the industry to file the plan with the FCC sometime in 2016, hopefully by spring), adopting it will be far easier on broadcasters than earlier transitions, most notably the analog-to-digital conversion, Schelle said.

Not only will broadcasters be able to use the same equipment to broadcast under both the current 1.0 standard and next-gen 3.0, but the cost of fully transitioning is relatively inexpensive as well, she said.

Implementing the new standard will require TV stations to upgrade their transmission systems, which will cost each roughly $250,000-$500,000 each.

Broadcasters have said they find that particularly palatable when you consider the moneymaking opportunities enabled by ATSC 3.0, particularly targeted advertising.

Studies show the broadcast industry could generate an additional $20 billion a year — effectively doubling its current annual revenue — if it fully deploys the ATSC 3.0 standard.

All of which, Schelle said, makes the new standard an integral component in the long-term viability of local TV, which consumers already have identified as their most trusted source of local news.

“If we are the trusted news source, and we provide the news consumers (i.e., millennials) want, than we need to make that happen,” she said. “I believe 3.0 is a way to do that.”

To listen to a recording of this panel session, click here.

Read all of our NewsTECHForum 2015 coverage here.

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