Heads of ATSC, CTA, NAB Toast Completion of ATSC 3.0 Standards Suite
LAS VEGAS -- The heads of ATSC, CTA and NAB raised glasses of champagne and sparkling apple cider Tuesday to toast the release of the last of the suite of ATSC 3.0 standards. The toast came on the opening morning of CES in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s Grand Lobby.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
ATSC President Mark Richer thanked the “hundreds” of engineers who worked on 3.0 over the past five years. ATSC 3.0 “is the first internet protocol-based broadcast standard,” said Richer. “It’s going to offer all kinds of great services to the public,” including Ultra HD picture quality, immersive sound, interactivity and emergency alerting, he said.
In an age of “cutting the cord,” a “wonderful future” awaits the American viewer with the “combination of over-the-top and over-the-air” that 3.0 enables, said NAB President Gordon Smith. It took “courage” for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the other Republican commissioners to vote to authorize 3.0, he said. ATSC 3.0 has “not been without its opposition,” said Smith. “Some have said this might be a tax” on consumers, he said, referring to objections from FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel that the migration to 3.0 would force the public to buy 3.0-compatible TVs (see 1710120057). “But if that were true, then every exhibitor at CES today would be no different than the tax man,” said Smith.
Now that the FCC “has acted definitively and decisively” to authorize 3.0, the time has come to deploy the technology, said CTA President Gary Shapiro. Through 3.0, U.S. viewers will have “more innovative enjoyment of over-the-air television,” said Shapiro. “Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. It is the result of hundreds of people in this case.” It took “a huge effort toward consensus” to bring 3.0 about, “which is how we operate best, I think, in terms of moving things forward in this country,” he said. “I’d like to see some things in Washington happen as good as the ATSC process has occurred."