ATSC’s mobile TV standard on the clock: Technology would join a crowded list of competitors

The field of technologies and systems vying for industrywide recognition as the standard for mobile broadcast television has reached 11, with three proposing a complete system while the others are focusing on key links in the framework, such as audio codec.
The Advanced Television Systems Committee has received preliminary proposals that aim to meet the organization’s criteria for a backwards compatible technology to the current standard. The ATSC, which is an international, nonprofit organization that develops or adopts voluntary standards for digital television systems, has requested proposals from companies offering systems that facilitate the delivery of digital TV programming and data to mobile, pedestrian and handheld devices via the digital broadcast signal.
The ATSC-M/H standard is expected to support free (advertiser-supported) television, mobile and handheld subscription-based TV, clipcasting, datacasting, interactive options and real-time navigation data for in-vehicle use, according to ATSC’s formal request for proposals.
The organization has clout in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Canada as the adopted digital television standard, so one could assume that whatever standard rises to the top for mobile would likely be paramount for the offering in each of those countries.
“The only place where our system will work is in the countries where ATSC is an adopted digital television standard,” said Jay Adrick, VP of broadcast technology at Harris Corp. LG Electronics Co. Ltd., Zenith Electronics Corp. and Harris are joint developers of the Mobile-Pedestrian Handheld in-band mobile TV system, which they submitted to ATSC’s Technical Standards Group last month.
After complete proposals are finalized early this month, the 70-plus member committee will be tasked with building consensus around a standard to be adopted and implemented by early 2009, when broadcasters are required to shut down their analog broadcasts.
Adrick, who sits on the board of directors for the ATSC, is unsure the committee will meet that less-than-concrete deadline.
“The ATSC standard process for the television standard took many, many years,” he said. “It’s a pretty aggressive goal given the process within ATSC.”
Adrick said he’s doubtful it can be done, but remains hopeful. “I personally have doubt that that big of a committee can orchestrate the activities in that period of time. It’s definitely going to be a challenge,” he added.
Mark Aitken, director of advanced technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group and chairman of the specialist group that will eventually adopt the mobile standard, said it’s too early in the game to make any accurate predictions. “Until after we receive the details of those submissions there’s going to be a lot of guess work going on,” he said.
The complete proposals were due July 6; once they’re received they’ll be made available to all parties in ATSC for review. Each proposal will then be evaluated against a set of somewhat flexible criteria established by the committee before a standard is adopted.
“There has not been a consensus on an absolute date, but there is general agreement that the launch of services will be roughly synonymous with the analog shutdown,” Aitken said.
The complete systems already proposed for the standard include MPH; Advanced-VSB (A-VSB), which was co-developed by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Rohde and Schwarz; and a yet-to-be named system from Thomson Grass Valley. Nokia Corp. has submitted an incomplete proposal broadly based on DVB-H and Qualcomm Inc. submitted a partial system that also aims to be backwards compatible, Aitken said.