Advanced Television

ATSC approves next-gen broadcast standard

March 29, 2016

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) developing the Next Generation Broadcast Transmission Standard (ATSC 3.0) has voted to approve as a Full Standard the key element of the Physical Layer, the so-called “Bootstrap” or the Discovery and Signalling feature of the standard. The Bootstrap includes the designs developed by ONE Media and supported by other broadcasters and equipment manufacturers, including notably the Pearl TV consortium of broadcast companies and the largest global television manufacturer, Samsung. With this approval, the first essential piece of the new paradigm in broadcasting is set.

“This is a historic moment for broadcast television; opening our industry to a spectrum of opportunities,” said David Smith, CEO and President of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc., ONE Media’s joint venture partner.  “I thank the broadcasters, the consumer electronics manufacturers and the global technical committees for supporting us and applaud them for recognizing the necessity for TV broadcasters to have a flexible, data agnostic and IP-based technology to compete in a TV everywhere world.  I am most grateful, however, to the many Sinclair employees and engineering teams who over the years, and more recently at ONE Media, were relentless in laying the groundwork for a new transmission system and developing the Bootstrap technology.  They are best-in-class.  While it has been a long journey, we are now one step closer to a platform that will revolutionise our industry and provide consumers with a multitude of new functionality. Over-the-air television that was once deemed a ‘mature’ industry just got a turbo boost of reinvention.”

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Business, Regulation, Standards