ATSC 3.0 Fest II Takes Maryland by Storm

Posted on April 4, 2016 in ATSC News

Building on the success of the first ATSC 3.0 Plug Fest in Shanghai last fall, a second round of testing was held March 2-25 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. This Plug Fest, hosted by Sinclair Broadcast Group and ONE Media, involved a number of equipment manufacturers and developmental groups, including Avateq, DekTec, Enensys, ETRI, LG Electronics, NERC, ProTelevision and TeamCast.

“It’s exciting to see companies collaborate to ensure ATSC 3.0 system interoperability,” said Mark Richer, ATSC President.

“The entire group was very positive about the Plug Fest. We completed about 212 tests in just over three days,” said Testing Coordinator Lachlan Michael, an R&D manager at Sony. “Minor issues with individual implementations were discovered, and in most cases fixed during our time in Hunt Valley. Participants worked ‘round-the-clock to improve their equipment, and re-tests confirmed the issues were fixed. Knowing your equipment works for a large number of test cases is a big plus for participants, as they can have confidence in their current implementations and now move forward with implementing and testing new areas of the specifications.”

The ATSC 3.0 standard is evolving at an extremely rapid pace. “Manufacturers have made so much progress, and continue to make progress,” Lou Libin, another testing coordinator and director of advanced technology at the Sinclair Broadcast Group, told TV Technology.  He noted that manufacturers involved in the testing compile notes on system shortcomings and remedy these when they get back home. In some cases, tweaks can be made as the Plug Fest proceeds.

Michael said experimental over-the-air signals from Sinclair’s full-power Channel 43, about 9 miles away, were useful in establishing system performance. “We set up an outdoor antenna and ran cable into the test room. The signal was transmitting 256QAM and code rate 9/15, which is a high bit rate giving a payload of around 25Mbps. This signal was correctly received by two different modulators, proving that the specification works not only in the lab but that some real-world noise and multipath was no problem, even for prototype receivers.”

Posted in ATSC News