Panel: 3.0 The Greatest Thing Since Color

The conversion to ATSC 3.0 transmission technology by broadcasters and TV set manufacturers would constitute the most important change in TV audio and picture quality since the 1960s, said a panelist at TVNewsCheck’s TV2020 conference on ATSC 3.0 at the NAB Show in New York today.

ATSC 3.0 “will be the most significant change since color was added to black and white,” said the panelist, Matthew Goldman, SVP of technology and TV compression at Ericsson Inc.

Goldman was a panelist along with other tech types in a session titled “The Future of Television” moderated by TVNewsCheck technology editor Phil Kurz. In his portion of the discussion, Goldman, like others seen throughout the daylong conference, was enthusiastic about the potential for the new transmission system to create an “unprecedented” viewing experience.

Visually, 3.0 will enhance the typical television picture in five areas — resolution (to 4K and even 8K levels); high dynamic range (HDR), allowing for greater picture clarity; “wide-color gamut,” a greater range of color than is possible now; so-called “10-bit sampling,” an improvement over the current 8-bit standard; and a higher per-second “frame rate,” which will also contribute to greater resolution and picture clarity, Goldman said.

Audio would be enhanced in several ways to create a more “immersive” aural experience, Goldman and others added.

“The combination of all of these together is what gives you that wow factor,” he said.

Elsewhere during the session, ATSC Chairman Richard Friedel, EVP and GM, Fox Network and Engineering, reported that the committee is close to completing all of its work on the technical aspects and ramifications of the new system.

“We are well on a track to finish this standard by the end of the year,” he said. If and when the standard is adopted, he said, broadcasters “will be on par with all of the programming services competing in the marketplace today.”

In his portion of the session, he also outlined the system’s new technical enhancements and benefits, but also added that the system will give stations greater capability and flexibility in a number of areas, including internet compatibility, emergency alerting and multilingual closed-captioning.

With the creative phase of the new 3.0 standard now nearing completion, a key facet of its rollout will be the ability of consumers to receive the signal and enjoy all of its enhancements.

On that subject, the TV2020 audience heard from a panelist representing South Korea-based LG Corp., one of the world’s leading manufacturers of TV sets. The panelist — John Taylor, VP, public affairs, LG Electronics USA — noted that the South Korean government has mandated a nationwide conversion to 3.0 next year so it can be up and running by the time South Korea hosts the 2018 winter Olympics. South Korea will be the first country whose networks will all be broadcasting in the new standard. 

As a result, consumer TV sets capable of receiving the new signals will soon be available in Korea, setting the stage for the time sometime later when the system is adopted in the U.S.

“Chips and receivers for ATSC 3.0 are coming and they’re coming fast,” Taylor said. “When ATSC Next Gen TV is launched in the United States, consumers will have a wide range of opportunities in consumer electronics to be able to see these signals,” he said.

Viewers in South Korea will be able to buy them in a matter of weeks, he said. “As early as February 2017, just a couple of months away, those first [ATSC] broadcasts are scheduled to begin [in Korea],” Taylor said. “And in parallel, the consumer electronics leaders in Korea — LG Electronics and our crosstown rival [Samsung] — are getting ready to provide receivers into the marketplace. I can’t speak for Samsung, but in LG’s case, we plan to introduce a wide range of different screen sizes for 4K ultra-HD TVs with dual tuners, both ATSC 1.0 and 3.0, in Korea starting next year.”

He also predicted that the proliferation of ATSC 3.0 compatible receivers will be widespread. “The day will come when ATSC receivers will be in your mobile devices.”

See all of TVNewsCheck’s TV2020 coverage here.