In July and August, we continue our summertime road trip along the Road to ATSC 3.0.  For the ATSC and our members, this expressway has two parallel fast lanes: A) ongoing standards work to further enhance Next Gen TV, and B) support for broadcaster and manufacturer implementations of Next Gen TV powered by ATSC 3.0.

In his keynote address at the Midwest Next Gen TV Summit in Columbus, Ohio in late June, the Honorable Michael O’Rielly provided his policy and marketplace insights about ATSC 3.0. Following are excerpts from the FCC Commissioner’s remarks to the more than 125 broadcasters from Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin in attendance.

South Korea literally paved the Road to ATSC 3.0, adopting its Next Gen TV standard in 2016 and launching 4K UHD ATSC 3.0 broadcasts in May 2017. Momentum continues to build since the landmark UHD broadcasts of the Winter Olympics. In addition to UHD, broadcasters continue developing new services on Korea’s ATSC 3.0 service roadmap.

In the Chat Room this month, THE STANDARD sat down with Bob Campbell, who chairs the new ATSC 3.0 Conformance Implementation Team. The ATSC is fortunate to have such a noted international standards and testing expert leading this effort. In addition to his day job as Eurofin’s head of engineering and his intensive ATSC work, Campbell chairs the Improving Interoperability Task Force for the HbbTV Association, serves on the HbbTV Steering Group and co-chairs the CTA WAVE Test and Compliance Task Force.

Alan Stein is the Vice President for Technology, Development and Standards at Technicolor. He spends most of his ATSC time as chair of the S34-1 video ad-hoc group. In his “spare” ATSC time, he also actively participates in the ATSC’s S31 Specialist Group on System Requirements, S34 Specialist Group on Applications and Presentation, S37 Specialist Group on Conversion and Redistribution of ATSC 3.0 Services and the S34-2 audio ad-hoc group.