GatesAir To Test Fixed/Mobile TV System

GatesAir (formerly the transmission division of Harris Broadcast) is preparing for a trial of its next-generation transmission system supporting fixed TV and mobile video reception on the same channel with an undisclosed European TV transmission network operator and a separate wireless service provider, a company executive said at IBC 2014.

The trial, which is due to begin sometime within the next six months, is intended to show the feasibility of transmitting both OFDM-based digital television — in this case DVB-T2 — for home reception and LTE-based video to smartphones and media tablets on the same television channel.

During a one-on-one interview Sept. 12 following an Imagine Communications event held in conjunction with IBC 2014 in Amsterdam, Rich Redmond, chief product officer for the company, said that while the goal of the trial is to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the GatesAir approach, he is also hopeful that broadcasters and wireless companies more broadly will recognize the business implications of the trial.

According to Redmond, one possibility of this approach would give broadcasters a technical solution to offer wireless operators that fear video will swamp their networks. In this case, broadcasters could lease capacity to carriers for transport of popular linear television content, essentially taking the unicast cell network model out of their equation and replacing it with one-to-many TV transmission.

Another possibility is to lease broadcast capacity to carriers so they can proceed with plans to roll out their own programming services without eating up their own wireless network capacity.

At the 2014 NAB Show in April, GatesAir first showed the concept, which leverages a signaling component known as Future Extension Frames, or FEF, and time division multiplexing to alert both television sets and mobile devices when to ignore the portion of the signal intended for the other device. The NAB demo was based on DVB-T2.

Here at IBC 2014, GatesAir is also highlighting the concept.

For more on IBC 2014, click here.