‘Tier 2' TV Vendors Readying for ATSC 3.0 Compliance Tests: MediaTek

MediaTek is working with several “tier 2" TV vendors to bring ATSC 3.0 “solutions” to market, Alfred Chan, vice president of MediaTek’s TV business unit, said in a prerecorded workshop video shown to ATSC’s in-person NextGen Broadcast Conference Thursday. MediaTek is the world’s fourth-largest semiconductor company but the market leader in TV SoCs, with an estimated 65% share, he said.

Chan expects 3.0 TV designs from the tier 2 suppliers to be ready for compliance testing this quarter or in Q4, he said. “I believe that platform is ready” for wider TV maker adoption, he said. “From MediaTek’s standpoint, the chips are ready, fully integrated with all the components.”

MediaTek sees 2021 as “the beginning” of wide 3.0 set adoption, impeded somewhat by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Chan. It regards 2022 as a year of “ramping up,” with “more and more volumes” of products and brands available in 2023, he said. He’s “absolutely” looking positively toward the wider deployment of 3.0 TVs, he said. LG, Samsung and Sony remain the only 3.0 TV set suppliers. CTA forecasts that roughly 2 million 3.0-compliant sets will be sold in the U.S. this year, up from its previous estimates of 800,000.

ATSC is pleased with the early consumer adoption of 3.0-compliant receivers and broad consumer tech industry support for the technology, President Madeleine Noland told the in-person gathering of about 180 people, with about 100 more participating via the livestream. An estimated 70 models of 3.0 TVs are available, mostly at the high end but one priced at $600, she said. She recalled that the first ATSC 1.0-compatible receiver in the late 1990s cost more than $20,000. ATSC spokesperson Dave Arland told the crowd that that was for a Panasonic two-piece receiver that would sell for about $33,000 in 2021 dollars.

It’s “not surprising” that 3.0-compliant TVs are “starting at the high end,” said John Taylor, LG Electronics senior vice president-public affairs and communications, on the prerecorded video. “We anticipate” that 3.0 capability will “gravitate into more and more models, more quickly,” than previous technologies like stereo TV, due to the “wind in the sails” of broadcaster 3.0 adoption, he said. “As we look ahead to 2022, we think that’s just going to be a turning-point year, when you have more and more models from more and more manufacturers.”

All 40-plus models in Sony’s 2021 TV lineup have 3.0 reception built in, said Nick Colsey, Sony Electronics vice president-business development. They include a 43-inch model at $599 that Noland cited in her conference introduction. Sony’s 3.0 offerings go “all the way up” to a 100-inch model, plus “everything in between,” he said. Building 3.0 capability into the sets across the board “produces the economies of scale that we need to bring the price of these new capabilities down,” he said. Sony thinks the “time is now” to make 3.0 a mass-market feature, he said.