M+E Connections

Growing adoption of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) version 3.0 standard is providing an opportunity for the over-the-air (OTA) broadcasters to be competitive in the digital space and become online content providers, according to Technicolor and Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Meanwhile, High Dynamic Range (HDR) is “thriving in the OTT arena, and broadcasters are quickly gaining ground with ATSC 3.0 and Advanced HDR by Technicolor,” the companies said in a joint news release on Dec. 15.

“One area in which broadcasters consistently enjoy a competitive advantage over OTT providers is in the delivery of live sports programming,” according to Mark Aitken, SVP of technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group and president of ONE media.

Sports, after all, is a “category of content that takes full advantage of HDR technology,” he said, adding: “HDR was on full display this year during the exceptional U.S. Open tennis championship broadcast over Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Tennis Channel. The Tennis Channel, which is brought to consumers through the Bally Sports Regional Networks in 23 markets, will be using Advanced HDR by Technicolor for both our streaming and over-the-air broadcast services in 2022.”

The U.S. Open showcased how ATSC 3.0 and Advanced HDR by Technicolor are “dramatically narrowing the competitive gap between over-the-air and streaming service providers,” according to Technicolor and Sinclair.

Additionally, the integration of emerging technologies enabled by the new Internet protocol (IP) friendly standard provides a crucial bridge for broadcasters to move into the rapidly evolving streaming market, the companies said.

“It is an important milestone,” according to Alan Stein, VP of technology at InterDigital. “We’re now seeing broadcast apps that embrace and extend the best ideas from OTT services while still having the scale and channel change speed that consumers like about traditional television,” he said, adding: “This allows broadcasters to play to their strengths, highlighting the absence of latency and unreliability that you sometimes get with some streaming applications and devices.”

Advanced HDR by Technicolor is the only industry solution that enables a standard dynamic range (SDR) and an HDR signal to be simultaneously delivered in one bitstream, Stein said. That is because it is an economically efficient and technically effective solution that sidesteps the need for broadcasters to use two channels to bring HDR and SDR services to viewers. This backward compatibility is crucial because of the widespread presence of legacy SDR televisions and set-top boxes that remain in the market today.

From a production perspective, Advanced HDR by Technicolor also supports the ability for broadcasters to use HDR cameras that bring higher quality into live production and integrate those inputs with SDR cameras into a single distribution workflow in a way that automatically adjusts to the capabilities of the receiving device, whether they are HDR or SDR capable.

“If you’ve got a television set that was manufactured in the last three years, and it’s 4K HDR-capable, you can connect your gateway or set-top box, and you’ve got glorious eye-popping HDR television,” according to Aitken. “It also maximizes the experience of SDR-only devices. Either way, we want people to see the difference,” he said.

What’s Expected for 2022

2022 is shaping up to be a very big year for NextGen TV as ATSC 3.0 adoption grows and rapidly maturing video technologies including HDR gain momentum, according to Technicolor and Sinclair.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) recently increased its estimate of TVs sold with ATSC 3.0 capability in 2021 from 800,000 to more than 2 million units, Technicolor and Sinclair noted, pointing out “that is a huge increase.”

That indicates there is now a ready market for consumers to receive the advanced services included in the standard, according to Technicolor and Sinclair.

Since its announcement at the 2018 CES, ATSC 3.0 has taken the broadcast and CE sectors by storm despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, the companies said. It also “continues to change the way the world experiences entertainment and broadcast,” they added.

“ATSC 3.0 can deliver more pixels at higher quality for Ultra High Definition (UHD), 4K, and HDR screens,” Stein said in a podcast interview for reporters, explaining: “This is a significant upgrade for customers with large screens.

ATSC 3.0 also offers personalization, interactivity and broadcaster applications, while also supporting mobile delivery. The latter is an especially hot topic among ATSC members who are working to address the possibility of mobile phones receiving ATSC 3.0 signals, Technicolor and Sinclair noted.

“About 40% of the US public today is served by a minimum of one ATSC 3.0 signal and related services,” according to Aitken. “By the end of 2021, we expect that number to top 50%,” he said.

HDR, meanwhile, is one of the features that “most visibly improves the consumption” of OTA and OTT content, Stein said. “It greatly enhances the viewing experience, especially for things like live sports,” he added.

Sony recently revealed that all its TVs for the second half of 2021 would be ATSC 3.0-enabled, supporting next-generation features including HDR and UVoice.

“Companies like Sony—and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon—are utilizing HDR to enhance viewer experience for as much of the market as possible,” Aitken said, adding: “The broadcast industry is responding rapidly. For those that embrace HDR early, it is a clear way to establish differentiation, which is critical with fierce competition.”

Broadcast, he added, remains one of the most ubiquitously available technologies in the market, which is why it’s been so crucial to develop standards that can evolve to deliver experiences that consumers across the nation expect and increasingly demand.