Monday, September 19, 2011

Future standards for broadcast TV?

The industry group responsible for digital TV broadcast standards, ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) is acting on a recent report suggesting continuing standards development in two areas - 3D TV, and a potential improved digital standard ATCS 3.0.
The ATSC 3D TV group will be charged with developing specifications for terrestrial digital television stations to carry 3D TV broadcasts.  The stated goal is to come up with a system that is backwards-compatible 3D capability in existing ATSC fixed and mobile services, in both realtime and asynchronous services. A South Korean firm demonstrated a compatible high-definition 3D signal over a single ATSC channel, using both the main fixed channel and mobile services as the second channel).  The group is anticipating that they will have a standard for testing within the year.
The ATSC 3.0 group will be charged with considering a wide range of new and emerging technologies that might be used to develop a potential successor to today's ATSC digital TV system.  The recent report concluded that there was sufficiently advanced technology currently available, or under development, to consider developing a new set of standards to replace the existing ATSC set of multiple standards.  Among the considered advances were improvements in coding and metadata improvements, a new variant on interactive TV called hybrid-TV (combining over-the-air and online), and asynchronous content delivery.  Any ATSC 3.0 set of standards is expected to not be backwards-compatible - meaning that there will likely be challenges to its adoption by the FCC.

Source:  ATSC Opens Two New Standards InitiativesTV Tech Check

No comments:

Post a Comment