​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.

The FCC should apply the lessons from the spectrum frontiers proceeding to the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking, said NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan in a blog post Wednesday. “The Commission’s approach has been to “promote a flexible regulatory environment for the next generation of wireless services,” Kaplan said. “5G’s nascent status has not prevented the Commission from moving forward in the Spectrum Frontiers proceeding, and it shouldn’t stop the Commission from moving forward with authorizing Next Gen TV. As it did for 5G, the FCC should reject calls for delay to study ATSC 3.0," Kaplan said. “Delays in approving voluntary use of a new television transmission standard could affect U.S. leadership in broadcast television and deprive consumers of new features and services.” Since broadcasters and CTA have asked for an Oct. 1 NPRM, a nine-month timeline similar to the spectrum frontiers proceeding would lead to final ATSC 3.0 rules being issued in July 2017, Kaplan said. “Just one year from now, the Commission should be in the admirable position of having laid the foundation for the future of both the wireless and television industries.” Commissioners are voting Thursday on the spectrum frontiers order.

WRAL-TV Raleigh launched an ATSC 3.0 station operating under an experimental license, licensee Capitol Broadcasting said in a news release Wednesday. The official launch was a live simulcast of a WRAL newscast and a simultaneous second-channel broadcasting of a documentary shot in 4K/UHD HDR. WRAL plans to use ATSC 3.0 “to provide a deep offering of On-Demand content, access to multiple sources of video to enhance linear viewing, and a number of other 24/7 streams of TV and radio programming,” the release said. WRAL provided a similar function for the original ATSC standard for HDTV.

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.”

ATSC for the first time identified publicly the six high-dynamic-range proposals vying to be selected as ATSC 3.0's technical solution as the video codec of the next-gen standard gets elevated to the status of proposed standard from candidate standard (see 1605100047). The proposals to be evaluated are from Dolby, Ericsson, NHK/BBC, Qualcomm, Technicolor and a joint proposal on open HDR10 from Qualcomm, Samsung and Sharp, ATSC President Mark Richer emailed us Friday. "ATSC is making great progress in our consideration of HDR technologies for ATSC 3.0." ATSC's S34-1 ad hoc group on ATSC 3.0 video "will review HDR proposals and demonstrations in late June," he said. S34-1 representatives have said the group hasn’t decided whether to go with a single HDR technology or with multiple solutions, and that the selection will follow comparative demonstrations of the various proposals in mid-June at CBS Labs in New York. S34-1 representatives have said it plans to finalize its selection by July 31, when ATSC 3.0 video's candidate standard period is set to expire.

FCC approval of the April 13 petition seeking commission authorization of ATSC 3.0's physical layer (see 1604130065) would neither delay the post-incentive auction TV channel repacking nor add cost to the process, said petitioners America’s Public Television Stations, Advanced Warning and Recovery Network Alliance, CTA and NAB in May 12 meetings with staff from the offices of Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, said a Monday ex parte filing at the commission. “Most transmission equipment being manufactured today is capable of being easily upgraded to permit Next Generation TV transmission,” the petitioners told commission staff in a 13-page PowerPoint presentation, the filing said. The market-based approach of the transmission plan will keep it from being a burden to MVPDs or small broadcasters, since they won’t be forced to upgrade to receive or broadcast the new signal, the filing said. “If Next Generation TV offers a compelling viewing experience that consumers demand, MVPDs may choose to negotiate with broadcasters to carry content featuring higher resolutions, higher frame rates” and high dynamic range, the filing said. “No ambitious project can be expected to proceed without challenges,” the filing said. Though the petition asks the FCC to set the stage for the future of television, "it also seeks to protect viewers who rely on legacy equipment that may be unable to receive Next Generation TV programming," the filing said. "Broadcasters propose to lead the transition by partnering with other stations to simulcast their signals in both formats. This will ensure that viewers continue to receive free, over-the-air signals in the current standard, while also allowing broadcasters to begin delivering Next Generation TV signals." The petition underlines an approach that means "there will be no clock dictating the transition" to ATSC 3.0, unlike in the transition to digital from analog, the filing said. "If Next Generation TV provides a superior viewing experience and exciting consumer benefits, consumers will demand Next Generation-capable television receivers to take advantage of these new opportunities. Thus the market, not mandates, will drive the pace of the transition."

CTA and its broadcast industry partners on the petition at the FCC for authorization of the physical layer of ATSC 3.0 (see 1604200051) plan no comments on the commission’s public notice by the May 26 deadline (see 1604260064), Julie Kearney, CTA vice president-regulatory affairs, told us at the ATSC Broadcast Television Conference Wednesday. CTA and its petition partners -- the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance, America's Public Television Stations and NAB -- may well file reply comments when those are due June 27, Kearney said. “We’re really excited about the petition,” she said. “We’re excited about the innovation” that broadcasters are bringing forth through ATSC 3.0, Kearney said. The petitioners agree “to stay together as much as possible” in comments at the FCC on the petition and the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking to follow, “but we don’t plan to file comments in the comment round,” she said. “So we will file joint replies, if necessary. We are working together as a cohesive group, as a cohesive unit. We feel really good about it.”

“Hybrid delivery” of content and services is “one of the most important things” about ATSC 3.0, LG consultant Madeleine Noland told the ATSC Broadcast Television Conference Tuesday. Since ATSC 3.0 is an Internet protocol-based system, “marrying things together from broadcast and broadband gets a little bit easier,” said Noland, who chairs ATSC’s S34 specialist group that’s responsible for ATSC 3.0's audio, video and interactivity specifications. “From the beginning, ATSC 3.0 was conceived of as a hybrid system, where you can deliver some of your components over broadcast, and some of your components over broadband,” Noland said. “You might even be delivering components over broadcast and broadband that are intended to be consumed in the same service.” For example, a broadcaster may want to carry mainstream content over broadcast, while delivering “interstitials” via broadband as part of an over-the-top service, she said. Hybrid delivery via ATSC 3.0 also can be used as a “temporary handoff” for beaming content to mobile devices, she said. “You’re in your car or you’re walking or whatever, and the signal from the broadcast fades a little bit, and so the device switches to broadband to complete the service, and then switches back to broadcast when it’s all set.”

The FCC promised at last month’s NAB Show to put ATSC 3.0 “on a short leash,” Sinclair CEO David Smith said on a Wednesday earnings call. Once comments and replies have been submitted to the FCC by late June on the multi-industry petition for authorization of ATSC 3.0's physical layer (see 1604200051), Sinclair -- a longtime advocate of getting ATSC 3.0 implemented sooner rather than later -- thinks an ATSC 3.0 rulemaking notice “will go out as part of the normal protocol here,” Smith said in Q&A. “We think it’s reasonable that sometime early first quarter, possibly, of next year, the FCC will grant authority for the industry to move at its discretion” on the voluntary aspects of ATSC 3.0, Smith said. “So we view it just as an incredibly positive sign that the industry is ready to go, and people should start thinking about the business opportunities that are going to roll off the back of 3.0 over the next five to 10 years.” Smith regards the introduction of ATSC 3.0 as “just an enormous, life-altering event” for the broadcast industry, he said. “The NPRM should be out fairly soon,” Smith said. “Remember, this is just a procedural kind of process they go through, where they ask for comments and then they issue the NPRM, and everyone files their views of the world, and then they consider and they make a decision,” he said. “So we view this as kind of fairly routine.” FCC representatives didn’t comment.

The FCC Media Bureau as expected issued a public notice Tuesday seeking comment on the multi-industry petition for authorization of the physical layer of ATSC 3.0 (see 1604200051). The petition asks the FCC to approve ATSC 3.0 as an “optional standard” for broadcasting and approve rule changes to allow simulcasting during the deployment of ATSC 3.0. Broadcasters told us at the NAB Show that the commission's seeking swift comment on the petition is a positive sign but not a guarantee of further FCC action. Comments are due May 26, replies June 27, said the Tuesday notice in Docket 16-142.