NAB 2018 and ATSC 3.0, any news?

B

Bruce Watson

Veteran
I'm not hearing a thing about the transition from ATSC 1.0 (HDTV) broadcasting to ATSC 3.0 (Ultra HD) broadcasting. Since this is going to be yet another thing to drive 4k cameras, and therefore post (editing, coloring, output CODECs, ...) I would have thought it would be a big topic here. It's supposedly a big topic at NAB (which is just ending?). But... crickets.

What's up with that? I would expect DVXuser to at least be talking about it somewhere. Surely the documentary people and the indy movie people (that's most of us here, right?) are interested in this. So, are there really no interesting announcements coming out of NAB about the move from HDTV to Ultra HD broadcasting? I mean really, if this doesn't effect broadcasters (the "B" in NAB), then what does?

Or am I the only one interested? (it's happened before...)

EDIT: So I *am* the only one interested. Alrighty then.
 
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Broadcasting and innovation?

I wonder, perhaps they are still more concerned about videos delivered interlaced "we can't handle progressive" or videos one pixel over title safe, not to mention "disasters that must explode TV's at home" when videos go slightly over color gamut or, heaven forbid, the worst, an illegal luminance value, than being concerned about technological innovations such as UHD and HDR and the increasing technological gap between broadcast and video over the internet?
 
Unless you find the way for the government to resell the RF spectrum like they did during the digital transition nobody will even try to incur the massive infrastructure expense. I think we can forget the ATSC and focus on web delivery .
 
Atsc 3.0

Atsc 3.0

Bruce Watson said:
I'm not hearing a thing about the transition from ATSC 1.0 (HDTV) broadcasting to ATSC 3.0 (Ultra HD) broadcasting. Since this is going to be yet another thing to drive 4k cameras, and therefore post (editing, coloring, output CODECs, ...) I would have thought it would be a big topic here. It's supposedly a big topic at NAB (which is just ending?). But... crickets.

What's up with that? I would expect DVXuser to at least be talking about it somewhere. Surely the documentary people and the indy movie people (that's most of us here, right?) are interested in this. So, are there really no interesting announcements coming out of NAB about the move from HDTV to Ultra HD broadcasting? I mean really, if this doesn't effect broadcasters (the "B" in NAB), then what does?

Or am I the only one interested? (it's happened before...)

EDIT: So I *am* the only one interested. Alrighty then.
Click to expand...

Well... ...at least there are two of us. I didn't make it by the ATSC 3.0 area(s) at NAB this year. I have in the past 2 years and I see great potential. I suggest looking at ATSC.org for some info and sign up for the NAB newsbrief which has commentary on what is happening. I get the impression that at CES 2019 there could be some TVs with the hardware to accept the new standard. There are a handle of stations testing ATSC 3.0 and from what I have read there are some bugs that still need to be fixed.
 
Most stations haven't recovered from their HD upgrade so there will be very few of them chomping at the bit to move to yet another upgrade. Hell a few stations have only just made the move to HD for their local productions in the last 2 years. The expense would be another $million+ just to get network programming in UHD, it's not a cheap transition. Last this came around, it was looking like most stations in the USA would skip UHD and upgrade when 8K is widely available, much like they waited until very late to go HD. A station in a market of 90 or higher would struggle to do any upgrades so soon after the HD transition.
 
I just hope the transition to UHD broadcasting allows for some innovation and streamlining when delivering content to broadcasters. The current system is so frustrating.

Oh this station needs 720p at 60fps MPEG-2 at 35mbps. Oh this file needs to go to another station? That needs to be 1080i30 MPEG-2. This station won't accept anything lower than 50mpbs and this station won't accept anything higher than 15. Okay now this station needs XDCam, is that EX or HD? Oh it needs to be in an mxf wrapper, not an mov. Now I need to export with 5 seconds of black and re-close caption because this station is the only one that requires it. What do you mean I have to pay $200 to send this file with ExtremeReach? They won't accept a dropbox link? </rant>

So yeah, they need to do a lot more than just up the resolution. Frankly the whole broadcasting industry needs to die and switch to online streaming.
 
Cary Knoop said:
Broadcasting and innovation?

I wonder, perhaps they are still more concerned about videos delivered interlaced "we can't handle progressive" or videos one pixel over title safe, not to mention "disasters that must explode TV's at home" when videos go slightly over color gamut or, heaven forbid, the worst, an illegal luminance value, than being concerned about technological innovations such as UHD and HDR and the increasing technological gap between broadcast and video over the internet?
Click to expand...

"I'm sorry but it appears your audio is too loud for our system. Our requirements are -24dbfs and it appears at 2:34 the audio spikes to -20dbfs. Please fix and resend!"

:furious3:
 
Yes, there are some large problems and much of the automation causes even more issues. A single black frame in the middle of a piece of work can trip the QC system in use at a lot of places.
 
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