NAB 2023: Technology Demos Show Range of Possibilities with ATSC Standards
At NAB 2023, the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is expecting the global rollout of next-generation broadcasting to dominate conversations in more than 40 ATSC member exhibition booths and a host of related conferences.
ATSC is exhibiting in the West Hall (booth 3443) at the Las Vegas Convention Center. A comprehensive Guide to ATSC 3.0 at the Show is now available online, giving attendees a snapshot of how ATSC’s member companies are applying the capabilities of the new standard. ATSC 3.0 is the subject of 16 conference sessions during the show, along with additional pre-show events staged by the Society of Broadcast Engineers and the Public Media Venture Group.
ATSC 3.0 is established as the next-generation broadcasting standard in South Korea, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, and the U.S. where the voluntary rollout now includes 69 TV markets that reach 60% of viewers. The newly-appointed Brazil Minister of Communications, Juscelino Filho, is planning a visit to the ATSC booth along with other government officials from the Brazilian Ministry of Communications and the Brazilian Telecommunications Agency, ANATEL, and prominent Brazilian broadcasters. Brazil has already selected key ingredients of the ATSC 3.0 standard for their TV 3.0 initiative.
“In addition to the delegation from Brazil, we are very excited to welcome 16 member companies in our NAB Show booth, showing all varieties of new applications for the ATSC 3.0 standard, from enhanced accessibility to better video and audio quality, and new ways of applying the Internet Protocol advantages of the standard for the benefit of both broadcasters and viewers,” said Madeleine Noland, President of ATSC.
Several in-development set-top receivers for NEXTGEN TV will be on display at the ATSC’s NAB Show exhibit. Beginning later this year, the new certified upgrade receivers are expected to join NEXTGEN TV products at retail stores. Americans are projected to buy 5 million NEXTGEN TV sets this year, according to the Consumer Technology Association – or nearly 14,000 ATSC 3.0-equipped sets every day.
One innovative new technological leap made possible by ATSC 3.0 is the application of Tower Networking, which could be used to send source television signals in a market, a method of signal distribution that could be more efficient than traditional fiber, microwave or satellite delivery. The ATSC’s Tower Networking Implementation Team will have center stage at the ATSC exhibit to show how this new capability might be implemented.
“The aim of our Tower Networking Team is to design, implement, test, validate, and demonstrate the Inter-Tower Communications Network. This would link broadcast towers to form a Tower Communications Network for control, monitoring, data communication, localized datacast and broadcast services, as well as signal distribution to Single Frequency Network transmission towers,” Noland explained.
Among the ATSC members demonstrating in the organization’s West Hall booth are large exhibits from ATSC sponsors Gaian Solutions, Pearl TV, Saankhya Labs, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. The ATSC booth will also include kiosk exhibits featuring demonstrations from members CeWi Networks, Coherent Logix, Crown Castle, Fincons Group, Freecast, Harmonic, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Labwise by Allegro DVT, Resillion (formerly Eurofins Digital Testing), Shift2Stream, and Sony Electronics. Various exhibitors will use advanced OLED and LCD/LED NEXTGEN TVs provided by longtime ATSC member and sponsor LG Electronics.