Phoenix Consumers Already Asking When They Can Buy ATSC 3.0, Says Pearl
Since KFPH-CD Channel 35, a Univision-owned Class A station in the Phoenix market, became “the first stick to go up” in the Pearl TV-led ATSC 3.0 model-market project (see 1804080002), “we’re getting a lot of emails from consumers,” Pearl Managing Director Anne Schelle, told the ATSC Next Gen TV Conference Monday. In the emails, initiated through the model-market project website that went live during last month’s NAB Show, consumers are “asking when they can buy this new service,” said Schelle.
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The Phoenix public’s early curiosity toward 3.0 is “a testament for consumer interest in the next best thing,” said Schelle. “We’re going to continue to update consumers” through the website, she said. “As we continue to move spectrum, we’ll be using the site to notify consumers.”
Pearl is “really excited” to have the top three TV makers in LG, Samsung and Sony participating in the model-market project, said Schelle. With FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in attendance last week in Phoenix, “we were able to show and demonstrate the first TVs built to the full stack of ATSC 3.0 from all three vendors,” she said. “That’s really exciting. I mean, they just got shipped and turned on. Not everything’s working, I’ll be honest about that, but the video played, and we didn’t have to do much. That’s very different, I think, from your experience that you had with analog to HD.” Kudos for that go to the South Koreans, she said. “We wouldn’t be here, I think, without the Korean market moving forward” on 3.0, she said.
Pearl’s “directional perspective” sees the possibility of 3.0 broadcasts reaching a third of the U.S. population by late 2019, said Schelle, urging her audience, “don’t take this as gospel.” The forecast assumes the three-year repack will remain on schedule, she said. “I can tell you that the Pearl companies are committed to rolling out additional markets. It cannot only be the ones that are sitting up here today. 2019 is right on our heels.”
“A lot of development work” will be happening in 2018 and 2019, said Schelle. “It’s conceivable you could see early product in the forms of set-top boxes, gateways, in 2019, but really moving to consumer scale” by 2020's Q4 holiday selling season, she said. A high-volume ramp-up of 3.0 TVs will follow in the years thereafter, she said. “There’s different ways to scale,” she said. “You can scale through partnerships. We haven’t developed all those business models.”
ATSC Conference Notebook
Sinclair doesn’t see its 3.0 single-frequency-network in Dallas as a test, but “the beginning marketplace deployment,” said Mark Aitken, vice president-advanced technology. “Why an SFN? Because we want to address all device types of the future, not just the ones that we’ve got in hand today.” All such future devices “need to have sufficient RF saturation,” because “if you haven’t got signal level, you haven’t got anything,” he said. “Think of Dallas as, if you wanted to look at the entirety of the United States and build something, and you wanted to build multiple transmission sites, what are you confronted with? What are you faced with?”
With 3.0, “we are at that magical moment in time where the plans are done, but the products are not,” said NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny in a conference keynote. “This is the place of invention, creation and innovation,” said Matheny. “It is an exciting place and one that should inspire us to do our best work.” NAB will be devoting “substantial” effort and investment to the 3.0 cause, “and we know you will be too,” he said. “We invite and encourage it and look forward to working with you. We need invention. We need alpha testing. We need beta testing, and we need a mechanism to get to conformance.” Matheny wants to be “clear” that he doesn’t see this as a “problem” but an “opportunity,” he said. “Our ability to tell stories and communicate will improve with next-gen TV, and that will lead to a better-informed public,” he said.
The 3.0 demonstrations Capitol Broadcasting ran in February of the Pyeongchang, South Korea, Olympics in 4K HDR (see 1802200002) “almost felt like a little mini real-life plugfest,” said Director-Engineering Pete Sockett. “I looked at this entire ecosystem and it worked,” he said.
Society of Broadcast Engineers members holding one of the group’s “core-four certifications” can qualify for a 3.0 “specialist” certification under an ATSC-SBE “cooperative effort” announced Wednesday at the conference. Now that the 3.0 suite of standards is released, ATSC will “continue its mission of developing standards” and “recommended practices” on 3.0, President Mark Richer told the conference. “One of the things we’re also doing is trying to help the industry with the implementation and deployment” of 3.0, he said. “An element of that is helping wherever we can” on education, he said. With the broadcast industry preparing to deploy 3.0, “broadcast engineers must be proficient in the next-generation television technology,” said SBE President Jim Leifer in a statement. SBE previously implemented similar specialist certification programs for engineers in computer networking, AM directional arrays and digital radio, said the group.