10 More Next-Generation Broadcasting Standards Moving to ATSC 3.0 ‘Candidate Standard’ Status

Posted on December 7, 2015 in Press Releases

Four New Candidate Standards Approved; ATSC’s Technology Group Voting on Six Others

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2015 – Wrapping up a milestone year for next-generation televi-sion broadcasting, 10 more standards in the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards – including video encoding, Internet Protocol transport, electronic service guides and closed captioning – are moving toward “Candidate Standard” status this month, the Advanced Television Systems Committee announced today.

On the heels of approving the ATSC 3.0 transmission system “Physical Layer” Candidate Standard, the ATSC Technology Group responsible for next-generation broadcast standards has also just approved four subsystems – for electronic service guides, second-screen ser-vices, and video and audio watermarks – and elevated those items as ATSC 3.0 Candidate Standards. Technology Group members will be voting this month on ballots to elevate six other subsystems to Candidate Standard status.

“With these latest Candidate Standards, the lion’s share of the overall ATSC 3.0 standard will be in place, as planned, by year-end,” said ATSC President Mark Richer. “Now that ATSC 3.0’s core technologies have been defined, broadcast and consumer equipment manu-facturers can proceed with confidence in building prototype gear to test and demonstrate the capabilities of next-gen broadcast television next year.”

The four freshly-minted Candidate Standards are Companion Device, Service Announce-ment, Video Watermark and Audio Watermark:

• SECOND-SCREEN SERVICES. The Companion Device Candidate Standard (A/338), which enables second-screen viewing, explains the communication between a “pri-mary” device (typically a television) and a “companion” device (second screen, such as a tablet or smartphone). This candidate standard will allow moving interactivity from the primary screen to the companion device and providing additional services related to and synchronized with the broadcast.
• ELECTRONIC SERVICE GUIDES. The Service Announcement Candidate Standard (A/332) describes encoding and transport of metadata used to create Electronic Service Guides. This will allow viewers to see an onscreen interactive listing of ser-vices offered by broadcasters.
• ENABLING ENHANCED SERVICES. The Video Watermark (A/335) and Audio Wa-termark (A/334) Candidate Standards provide a means for broadcasters to insert metadata information into the video signal to send information for interactive ser-vices to ATSC 3.0 television receivers connected to multichannel video program-ming distributors.

The six subsystems beginning the Candidate Standard balloting process this month are: 1) Video Encoding, 2) Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization and Error Protection, 3) Captions and Subtitles, 4) Link Layer Protocol, 5) Service Usage Reporting, and 6) Audio/Video Watermark Payload:

1. The A/341 Video standard specifies how to encode video in the ATSC 3.0 system. It uses HEVC (H.265) video compression, the latest MPEG video coding standard, and provides support for 4K Ultra HDTV as well as future capabilities for transmis-sion of information to enable wider color gamut, higher frame rates and high dy-namic range.
2. The A/331 Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization and Error Protection standard represents the Internet Protocol (IP) based transport system for data/content in the ATSC 3.0 system, as well as the signaling metadata necessary for the receiver to as-semble the services into a coherent whole. Support is provided for broadcast, broadband and hybrid delivery) as well as synchronization mechanisms.
3. The A/343 Captions and Subtitles standard covers how to encode and carry closed captioning. Captioning is treated and carried as a component of the television service. It is based on technology from W3C (IMSC1, similar to SMPTE Timed Text)
4. The A/330 Link Layer Protocol standard deals with how to package data from the transport layer into packets that are carried in the physical layer frames. It sup-ports encapsulation of IP Packets, MPEG-2 TS packets and other future packet types.
5. The A/333 Service Usage Reporting standard defines enhanced audience meas-urement techniques, specifically the option to encapsulate and transport infor-mation about viewer usage of services from the receiver to the broadcaster.
6. The A/336 Audio/Video Watermark Payload standard describes the types and encoding of information and metadata carried in the audio and video watermarks.

A few remaining ATSC 3.0 subsystems, including audio, security and interactive capabili-ties, are expected to be balloted for TG3 voting as Candidate Standards in early 2016.

-30-

About the ATSC: The Advanced Television Systems Committee is an international, non-profit organization developing voluntary standards for digital television. The ATSC member organizations represent the broadcast, broadcast equipment, motion picture, consumer electronics, computer, cable, satellite, and semiconductor industries. For more information visit The ATSC web site

Media Contact:
Dave Arland, Arland Communications
(317) 701-0084
Dave@ArlandCom.com

Posted in Press Releases