Progress Underscores 2016 TV Tech Trends

A review of major television technology trends in 2016 reveals significant advancement on several fronts, including next-generation TV, IP media transport and news technology.

Even the TV spectrum repack, which awaits a meeting of the minds of spectrum buyers and sellers on price, made progress in the form of preparations needed to hit the ground running once the FCC finalizes new channel assignments.

TV Spectrum Repack
From the point of view of technology, the FCC’s TV spectrum repack at this point comes down to two issues: preparation and beating the 39-month repack clock.

Antenna and transmitter vendors have responded to the challenge by increasing their manufacturing capabilities. For example, ERI announced in April it was partnering with wireless provider T-Mobile to expand.

Summer visits to Dielectric in Raymond, Maine; ERI in Chandler, Ind.; and GatesAir in Quincy, Ill., confirmed the efforts.

Transmitter vendors are approaching the repack by designing products with the flexibility to transmit ATSC 1.0 now and 3.0 in the future.

Similarly, antenna vendors have designed a new generation of temporary side-mount antennas with an eye toward replacing these antennas with permanent antennas once the pressure of the repack is off.

As for the broadcasters who must pull off the repack in 39 months, successive failed auction rounds have made preparing more difficult, said consulting engineer Cindy Hutter Cavell of engineering consultancy Cavell, Mertz & Associates.

The FCC webinar in October laying out the agency’s zoned approach to the repack didn’t appear to make things easier. Industry reaction to the plan was tepid.

Still, continued development of MPEG-2 encoders aimed at making it possible to pack more HD and SD channels into a single 6 MHz assignment was a bright spot because channel sharing is an important part of the FCC’s repack equation.

For broadcasters assigned a new channel, there may be a silver lining to the exercise in the form of a modern, efficient transmitter that is easy to upgrade to future 3.0 operation and paid for from the $1.75 billion broadcast relocation fund. 

ATSC 3.0
2016 was a banner year for the Advanced Television Systems Committee and its next-gen TV standard ATSC 3.0. In March, ATSC began adoption of individual portions of the suite of 3.0 standards with approval of the 3.0 bootstrap signaling and system discovery piece of the physical layer.

Steady progress was achieved with adoption of other portions of the standard, including the entire physical layer, video and audio watermarking and audio — which provides for Dolby Labs AC-4 chosen for the United States and MPEG-H, which South Korea will deploy.

ATSC 3.0 testing and deployment took big steps forward as well in 2016. In March, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Coherent Logix’ One Media along with TeamCast launched ATSC 3.0 transmission testing via a single frequency network in the Washington-Baltimore area.

In June, engineers working with GatesAir, LG Electronics and Zenith R&D Lab conducted a mobile ATSC 3.0 test from Tribune Broadcasting’s Fox affiliate WJW in Cleveland to compare the performance of the next-gen standard with Mobile DTV (A/153). The tests reached two important conclusions: at a similar signal-to-noise ratio ATSC 3.0 performed slightly better, but with a technical setup for a more robust ATSC 3.0 signal, the next-gen signal outperformed Mobile DTV.

On June 29, Capitol Broadcasting Co.’s WRAL in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., made TV history with the launch of 3.0 commercial TV service, a 1080p simulcast of its main A/53 TV signal and two looping 4K content subchannels. Then a few days later, Sinclair announced a retooled 3.0 testing lab at its Baltimore headquarters run under the direction of Mark Aitken, its VP of advanced technology.

Next-gen TV advancement wasn’t restricted to the United States in 2016. The South Korean science ministry announced in late July that the nation had selected 3.0 for UltraHD television broadcasting with the goal of transmitting 4K coverage of the 2018 Winter Olympics from Pyeongchang, South Korea over the air.

Helping to propel 3.0 forward is the desire of broadcasters to offer new services and tap into never-before-available revenue streams. As TVNewsCheck Editor Harry A. Jessell reported in November, Sinclair President-CEO David Smith sees the next-gen TV standard as the only avenue to growth. Similarly bullish on ATSC 3.0 is James Goodmon Jr., VP-GM of Capitol Broadcasting’s CBC New Media, who sees video and audio quality, mobile delivery and interactivity as its major benefits for viewers and TV broadcasters.

On the eve of the 2016 NAB Show in April, Sinclair’s Aitken, speaking at a well-attended dinner sponsored by Hitachi-Comark, told broadcasters they must begin to consider these benefits and how to build future business models based upon them.

For all of its progress in 2016, however, ATSC 3.0 remains a thing to be pondered and cautiously approached at CBS where the next-gen TV standard received a lukewarm reception.

IP Clarity
Unlike today’s DTV MPEG transport stream, ATSC 3.0 transmits IP packets, which leads people like NAB CTO Sam Matheny to describe the next-gen TV as being a “high-power, high-tower broadband service.”

At the 2016 International CES, One Media, Sinclair, Samsung and the Pearl TV consortium demonstrated the potential of next-gen TV as an IP OTA television system in a private suite.

On the other side of the broadcast equation — where acquisition, switching, playout and master control are done — 2016 started off with a splintering that saw the emergence of competing IP media protocols and standards.

ASPEN, anchored by Evertz; AIMS, formed by several broadcast tech heavy-hitters including Imagine Communications, Grass Valley and SAM; and NMI, the IP media protocol from Sony, were joined before the NAB Show by NewTek with its NDI protocol offering the industry different solutions to transport IP media packets.

In February, Belden CEO John Stroup warned that nobody wants proprietary IP and that broadcasters were making their displeasure over IP fragmentation known.

So it shouldn’t have been entirely surprising that although each camp would be focused on demonstrating the strength of its respective ecosystem at NAB, there would be signs of consensus to emerge. Post-NAB cooperation continued to build and was evident at IBC 2016’s IP Interoperability Zone in September and the 2016 SMPTE Technology Conference & Exhibition’s ST-2059 interoperability demo, which focused on delivery of timing references across an IP network.

Ultimately, SMPTE 2110, which is expected to be completed in 2017, is the target for an industry-accepted IP media transport standard.

News Tech
Tech advances weren’t confined to trade shows, manufacturing facilities and the meetings of standards organizations, however. News saw several advancements.

For instance, NBCUniversal O&Os in August began rolling out several StormRanger trucks equipped with dual-polarization radar to give local meteorologists and viewers a better look inside threatening weather systems from locations closer to the fronts.

At Sinclair, advancements took the form of two-person drone newsgathering teams, which the station group plans to have in more than 40 markets by the end of 2017. As of late September, following the kick-off of FAA drone pilot certification testing, the group had six drone teams in place.

Safety is a key concern for broadcasters launching drone newsgathering. At the NAB Show in April, drone service provider Aerobo demonstrated how its unnamed aerial vehicles with breakaway rotor arms and parachutes promote safety.

No newcomer to news tech, IP newsgathering also saw important progress in 2016. Once thought of as a supplement to traditional ENG equipment, IP newsgathering has become just as important to newsgathering as microwave.

In Dallas, IP newsgathering even showed it can be superior to microwave by allowing WFAA photojournalists to stay live with extended coverage of the Dallas sniper shooting in July.

Graham Media Group did its part to advance newsgathering in 2016 with deployment of the Fortress 4G LTE system from General Dynamics for use in Jacksonville, Fla., by its WJXT on 2 GHz BAS channels.

New approaches to spectrum also could help to find an answer to increasingly crowded wireless mic channels. The 2016 national political conventions were the first in history to max out wireless mic spectrum.

Inside stations, broadcasters relied on new technology to address news production challenges in 2016.

Sinclair announced late last year it would standardize on the Avid MediaCentral platform, and in January station group SVP-CTO Del Parks described how the move will make newsroom technology more manageable and newsroom talent easier to recruit and keep.

New technology also helped stations across the country improve their on-air news product from new sets and studios, such as at KDKA Pittsburgh and WFXT Philadelphia, KING Seattle and KTLM McAllen, Texas.

Fade To Black
As so much changes around them, TV broadcasters can take some comfort in the fact that technology advancements in 2016 are paving the way forward to ensure they remain relevant media organizations and continue to serve their communities.

Whether it’s the FCC mandating stations operate on new channels, consumers looking for news, sports and entertainment on their digital devices or viewers demanding more and better news product, technology plays a key role in broadcasters’ succeeding.

Ditto for advancements in transmitter and antenna technology, which will be all the more relevant and impactful if the repack actually happens.

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.