Broadcasters Will Soon Get Their Own Mobile TV Standard
| |
| Electronics & Telecom Docs |
IHS sells a full selection of standards documents & collections from the industry's top organizations.
To learn more, and for a free quote, please complete the form below. |
|
 |
Mark Richer is president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), which developed the standard used in the United States for digital broadcast television. He discusses the development of a new technical standard that will allow broadcasters to transmit signals that will support mobile TV. |
Q: What is ATSC-M/H?
The ATSC digital television standard is the standard that’s used for digital broadcasting in the United States for digital broadcast television. It’s mandated by the FCC. It’s also been adopted in Canada, Mexico, Honduras and South Korea. So it’s out there and it’s being used. The technology is included in virtually every television that’s sold today. What we’re doing is expanding the technology so that it includes the capability to have broadcast signals received by mobile and handheld devices. So whether they’re phones or small televisions or mobile televisions, such as televisions in the backseat of cars, the technology will serve those devices. We’ve been looking at various technologies to consider putting into our standard for mobile and handheld. We call it ATSC-M/H.
A-VSB, which stands for Advanced VSB, is one of the three complete system proposals that we have. A-VSB has been proposed by Samsung and a company called Rohde and Schwartz. Also Nokia has joined that group and they’re supporting that effort. Another one is MPH, which stands for mobile, pedestrian, handheld, and it’s been proposed by Zenith, LG and Harris Corp. The third full system proposal that we have in front of us now is from Thomson and Micronas. Then we have other proposals for parts of the system, such as advanced audio coding.
Q: How is ATSC-M/H different from other technologies such as FLO and DVB-H?
It differs from those systems in that this is backwards-compatible with broadcasting in the U.S. That is to say that virtually all broadcasters, over 1,600 of them, have digital television on the air now. And this allows them to use part of their signal to reach mobile and handheld devices and still be able to transmit high definition television and other services to televisions. The FLO system by Qualcomm—and by the way, Qualcomm is participating in our work, which is great—the FLO system that’s out there now has to use its own channel. It’s not compatible with the existing broadcast channels. DVB-H is a similar situation. You can’t use DVB-H on a broadcast channel in the United States. Even in Europe where they use DVB for digital television, they use separate channels for DVB-H. That won’t work for broadcasters in the U.S. because broadcasters aren’t going to get additional spectrum—they have to use the channels they have. So backwards compatibility is key.
Q: Is this new standard going to help broadcasters become more competitive in the mobile TV market?
A lot of people believe broadcasters are well positioned. Most broadcasters that I’ve talked to don’t really see it as trying to compete with the other companies in the mobile space, especially the carriers, but they see their services being complementary to it. It could be a ubiquitous service that could be built into every device just as it’s built into every television. And they’ve got the programming, they’ve got local sales, they’ve got local brand identity and they’re very well positioned. And for a relatively low capital cost, they can get started right away because they already have a transmission tower and they’re on the air. We’re really scurrying to get the standard done and meet the timetable they have in mind.
Q: What is the timetable?
Broadcasters have asked us to try to get this done so they can start demoing services by February 2009 to coincide with the shutdown of analog television transmissions. It is very quick, but we think there’s a good chance we can make that schedule. It’s challenging because we have a competition going on right now between the different technologies, but on the other hand, we’ve seen some pretty impressive demonstrations. There are big companies behind them that know how to build all these devices—they know how to build television devices and how to build phones with video capabilities and how to build small display devices. So we think that we can certainly get there.
Q: Any signs of which technology is leading the pack?
No. Two of the technologies were demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show and we’re about to see some field demonstrations of the three systems and that’ll be pretty exciting. Over the next few months, I think the picture will be clearer. If we’re going to stay on this schedule, I would say by the end of the third quarter or certainly by the end of the fourth quarter of this year, we should be able to know which technologies we’re picking and then it’ll be a matter of writing and documenting the technology. That’s assuming we can stay on the schedule, which we certainly intend to do.
Q: Why hasn’t the technology for mobile TV for broadcasters been developed already?
I think it’s one of those perfect storm kind of things. Part of that includes getting to a point where it’s doable. Five years ago the technology wasn’t quite ready to do what we’re doing now in the broadcast space. The fact that the technologies have changed over the last few years is enabling this, but also broadcasters are far more interested in it than they were five years ago. There were some broadcasters that were interested in it five years ago, but many were not and now they see certain business opportunities that make sense to them.
|