TV broadcasters can’t stay out of the news. It’s not easy to maintain a low profile when you own the rights, lights, cameras and action, and the ways to distribute content live and on-demand. It seems everyone wants to be a TV broadcaster or to control TV broadcasters.

Without revealing any trade secrets, content drives the TV entertainment industry, not the technology. Content stands alone. Technology enhances content. It’s not a crutch.

HDTV didn’t increase TV ratings. It simply increased the quality of experience. People like the passivity of TV watching. Some folks seem to enjoy it most when half-asleep. Computers require thought and activity. This simple point appears to have gone missing. Another seemingly lost detail is the relationship between human visual acuity limitations at any distance more than 2x screen height and the amount of data it takes to deliver UHD. Both points are beyond the scope of this article.

Boot Camp

According to the ATSC, the future of TV depends on ATSC 3.0. A recent ATSC 3.0 Boot Camp and Broadcast Television Conference seems to raise as many questions as it answered. The mid-May event included a Super Panel discussion featuring NAB president and former Oregon US Senator Gordon Smith, former FCC Chair and NCTA president and CEO Michael Powell, and long-time CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro. The panel of industry leaders was moderated by former FCC Chair and communications attorney the Honorable Richard E. Wiley. It was an epic assembly of industry heavyweights at the right place and the right time.

Mr. Shapiro suggested the success of ATSC 3.0 will depend the ability of broadcast engineers and equipment makers “to convince (in a sense) broadcast management to invest in it and promote it. Television set manufacturers are definitely excited about it. They’re willing to introduce and try things but if there’s not support in the marketplace, you’ll see that dry up.”

Mr. Powell pointed out the new power is in “targeted advertising, recommendation engines and integration with commonly shared social platforms.” He remarked that we are entering a “stunning period for video consumption.” Then he pivoted toward caution. “The thing you should be warned about is this generation doesn’t have to just take it. They have the tools, ability and inventiveness to go entertain themselves. If you don’t give it to them, they’ll sit there and watch YouTube for the rest of your life.”

NAB president Gordon Smith said “3.0 is essential for broadcasting to have the flexibility and the incentive to do new things with less spectrum.” He went on to say “localism, live, free, journalism, consumer protection, emergency alerts – as long as those are important parts of public policy, I think broadcast television plays the indispensable role.” Those words have always been the keys, now more than ever.

Video highlights of the Super Panel discussions can be seen here.

Brave New 3.0 World

Around engineering test benches, details emerging from the “boot camp” are revealing some curious issues. ATSC 3.0 combines TV and IP, which makes it possible to deliver some program elements via broadband. It all amounts to personalization. The concept isn’t new, but the delivery pipelines are.

Interactivity with a live show or live via social media over IP is a natural application. Targeted news and weather information crawls fed to a specific viewer’s TV via IP would further personalize the viewing experience. Ads could be targeted just like the Internet. The key word in the brave new world of ATSC 3.0 is “targeted.” In the world of electronic marketing, shotguns are out. Lasers are in.

On the other hand, cable experts are saying ATSC 3.0 is virtually incompatible with the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) world of cable technology. QAM is the basis of analog NTSC and PAL color signals as displayed on a vectorscope.

Without delving into the engineering minutia of digital QAM for cable, the number of points in the QAM grid are usually a power of two. Common forms of quantized QAM used in cable are called 64-QAM and 256-QAM. A higher order QAM is expected to deliver more data less reliably than a lower order QAM. The broadcast world would never accept anything with less reliability. Broadcasters have always been more reliable and timely than everyone else.

ATSC 3.0 will require transcoding and conversion to make it compatible with cable QAM. Who will be responsible for transcoding, the broadcasters or the cable operators? Broadcasters have the most to lose if the transcoding doesn’t work. Advertisers won’t pay if the show doesn’t play. Cable operators are independent and will be paid by package subscribers regardless.

Bye-bye dot x?

More alarming is that as of now, the 3.0 standard makes it impossible for TV broadcasters to transmit a digital subchannel, also known as a second channel. Don't push the panic button yet. This is only true when broadcasting UHD. In ATSC 3.0, one HD channel and SD multicast channels are possible on half a channel. UHD broadcasting could complicate channel-sharing.

Fifteen years ago, TV stations didn’t know how they were going to pay for all the new technology. Now, most are happy with HD and the DTV transition because they are enjoying the revenue and rating enhancing benefits of broadcasting a second, third or more programming services on their ATSC 1.0 channel. It appears ATSC 3.0 broadcasting UHD may eliminate those wonderful revenue and identity sources. That would also force viewers who now watch those targeted channels for free, to subscribe to a delivery service to continue seeing their favorite shows. How likely is that?

Program sources moving from broadcast channels to cable or the Internet seems to be the opposite effect broadcasters should desire. HDTV is great, but when did any advertiser pay extra to run a HD spot? Will UHD be any different? Really? The loss of digital subchannels won’t be easy to explain to over-the-air fans, and the loss of the extra easy income they generate could hurt many stations.

Scalablility

The basic concept of ATSC 3.0 is scalability, similar to a concept first proposed when analog and digital HDTV transmission schemes were originally being explored. Resolution at the consumer’s display would depend on his or her receiver and display capabilities, antenna and signal strength.

The new standard calls for a higher data rate of approximately 25 Mbps in a 6 MHz channel, vs. the 19 Mbps of today’s ATSC 1.0 modulated 6 MHz channel.

The 3.0 standard supports “physical layer pipes” that contain different levels of data and compression for the video (one for HD, another for UHD) and a separate audio pipe. The receiver would display video from the most robust signal it receives. If the received signal is too weak, the receiver output would automatically switch from UHD to HD. The audio pipe would be synchronized with the viewed signal.

Another ATSC 3.0 challenge is HDMI, which doesn’t pass metadata. “Watermarking” metadata in the video and audio streams is being studied as an alternative. However, it’s not clear that present FCC must-carry rules include watermarks.

Many transition ideas are being floated, but the path in not nearly as clear as last decade’s scheduled DTV transition and analog shut-down. The only thing abundantly clear about ATSC 3.0 is that it’s coming to a TV near you sooner than later.

Who wants pie?

Meantime, newcomers are queuing up for their slice of the broadcast TV pie. In the past few weeks Apple bumped its killer TV service plans we’ve heard about for many years to next year after finding that retransmission negotiations are more complicated than they look. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos thinks Amazon will usher in the new golden age of television. Best of luck to both and welcome to the club, if you make it. By the way, head straight for the pie plate. There’s not much left.

This 14 August 2015 Financial Times headline proclaims “TV Flickers as Viewers Find New Screens. Record numbers of Americans are unplugging their subscriptions.” What’s that mean to American TV broadcasters? Exactly this: There has never been a better opportunity for free over-the-air TV broadcasters to bypass the paid-per-subscriber middlemen. There is no higher quality signal available to any viewer than that from a broadcast television transmitter and its free. Promote it!