ATSC Extends Deadline to Sept. 30 for Picking Winning ATSC 3.0 HDR System

​ATSC’s Technology Group 3 agreed Thursday to extend the candidate standard period on the ATSC 3.0 video document (A/341) by two months to Sept. 30, as expected (see 1606160052), the group said Monday in the July/August issue of its newsletter, The Standard. ATSC 3.0's framers pushed last month for the extension to give themselves more time to pick a winning high-dynamic-range technology for 3.0 video. A/341 was one of seven candidate standards for which TG3 extended the expiration dates to Sept. 30. But each of those candidate standards is “moving apace within the TG3 process” toward elevation as proposed standards, ATSC said. In two days of HDR demos and comparative tests hosted last month by CBS in New York, six HDR proponents vying to be chosen for A/341 (see 1605200031) “were given an opportunity to demonstrate their technology in any way they wished, using any of the available equipment and content,” said Madeleine Noland, the LG consultant who chairs ATSC’s S34 specialist group on ATSC 3.0 video, in a write-up in The Standard. During the event, “detailed comparative demonstrations were conducted using common pro-reference monitors and common content for apples-to-apples comparisons among the systems,” Noland said: “An expert viewing area was set up with a wall of monitors -- five consumer displays and 10 professional reference displays. Equipment also included a number of cameras, encoders, video servers, and more. Two live sets were constructed -- one predominantly light and the other dark. The sets were carefully designed to provide a range of luminance and colors to both show off and challenge the proposed technologies. In addition to content captured live, the demonstrations used pre-recorded content prepared in advance.” Noland didn’t indicate which of the six proponent systems fared best.