SMPTE Corrects Webinar ‘Error’ on Expiration Date of ATSC 3.0 HDR Document

An apparent “error” in a slide presented during the June 16 webinar on ATSC 3.0's “Ins and Outs” (see 1606160052) prompted webinar producer Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers to take the unusual step Friday of issuing an “updated slide” that restores July 31 as the date when the candidate-standard period expires for the A/341 document on ATSC 3.0 video. The original slide, presented on the webinar by Skip Pizzi, NAB senior director-new media technologies, said the expiration date had been pushed back by two months to Sept. 30, prompting an extended discussion in the webinar’s Q&A in which Pizzi and Dave Siegler, vice president-technical operations at Cox Media Group, described how ATSC’s S34-1 ad hoc group on ATSC 3.0 video needed more time to pick a winning high-dynamic-range proposal for the A/341 document. But that unexpected disclosure appeared to take by surprise ATSC President Mark Richer, who told us Pizzi mistakenly jumped the gun on publicizing a two-month deadline extension, and July 31 remains the expiration date until ATSC’s Technology Group 3 (TG3) changes it, which it may do when it meets in mid-July. Pizzi provided the corrected slide, said Joel Welch, SMPTE director-education, in a Friday email to participants in the June 16 webinar. The new slide still says, as it did in the original, that a winning HDR proposal will be picked in Q3, though S34-1 representatives told ATSC's annual broadcast conference last month the winning technology would be chosen by July 31 (see 1605100047). Welch has "no explanation" why the new stack of slides also contained one slide that hadn’t been part of the original presentation, except that Pizzi provided only the corrected slide on HDR's status, Welch emailed us Friday. Titled “Subject to Change,” the new slide summarizes ATSC’s standard public disclaimer: “Specialist Groups and ad hoc groups have made preliminary decisions to select technologies for incorporation in ATSC 3.0. Selections of all technologies are subject to approval of TG3 and ultimately the Voting Membership in accordance with ATSC due process.”