‘Ingredients’ Prevalent at CES for 2020 ATSC 3.0 Launch, Says CTA’s Markwalter

Though ATSC 3.0 TVs for the U.S. market weren't featured at CES, the “ingredients” for a 3.0 launch in 2020 “were prominent in private demonstrations and press coverage,” wrote Brian Markwalter, CTA senior vice president-research and standards, in Wednesday's ATSC’s newsletter, The Standard. Examples he cited included Sony’s demonstration, “with a focus on ATSC 3.0,” of a TV remote-friendly “application-authoring environment that allows broadcasters to share a common user interface while integrating individually customized digital services from broadcast and broadband,” said Markwalter. The demo showed “integration of captured RF sources and encapsulated data” from digital over-the-top services, “illustrating how customization for individual broadcasters is possible with a common user interface and application-development framework,” he said. The system supports use of all application programming interfaces prescribed in A/344, said Markwalter. That's the 3.0 specification document that describes a receiver’s interactive content functionalities.