Mobile TV technology pool getting crowded

With two technologies already jockeying for play on the nation’s digital television airwaves, it was only a matter of time before the TV industry moved to adopt a standard for digital mobile television.
Earlier this week, the Advanced Television Systems Committee moved to begin the process of researching and defining potential standards that it claims will enable broadcasters to deliver television to mobile and handheld devices via their digital TV signal. The technical standards organization, which is composed of around 150 companies representing players throughout the TV supply chain, previously helped define the digital TV standards that eventually were mandated by the Federal Communications Commission.
The field of proprietary technologies vying to be included in the forthcoming standard currently sits at two, but there could be plenty more in the pipeline. Earlier this month, Harris Corp. announced it has joined forces with LG Electronics Co. Ltd. and its U.S. research subsidiary, Zenith Electronics Corp., to develop Mobile-Pedestrian-Handheld technology, its flavor of choice for digital mobile TV. Early this year, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. announced the development of Advanced-VSB, a similar technology.
“I don’t know how many companies are developing technologies,” ATSC President Mark Richer said. “The standard is going to be for use by broadcasters in their existing spectrum. We expect there will be multiple proposals.” Any eventual standard is almost certain to be backwards compatible with current digital TV standards.
Jay Harris, VP of broadcast technology at Harris, said, “Neither of these are shoe-ins to pick. They may very well go off and pick criteria that are in neither of the formats. They may have a completely different idea.”
The standard adopted by ATSC and later the FCC for digital television represents a mix from many different proposals. The mobile digital TV standard would likely come from a similar hodgepodge of ideas. Whatever standard ATSC’s membership approves with a two-thirds majority vote will carry a “great deal of credibility” in the industry as the organization is the most “recognized standards body,” Richer said.
ATSC sets voluntary standards and depending on the direction of the technologies, ATSC-M/H may or may not require FCC approval. The regulatory agency typically agrees on a baseline standard, which leaves developers plenty of wiggle room to develop add-on features. Most “enhancements to the standard have not made their way into FCC rulemaking,” Adrick said. “There have been a lot of things that have been done outside of the standard.”
When the organization decides on a standard that supports free (advertiser-supported) television, interactive services delivered in real-time, subscription-based TV and on-demand content, it will be called ATSC-M/H. “We don’t have a formal timeline at this point,” Richer said. “I think the earliest that we would see what we call a candidate standard . would be the end of this calendar year.” There is no deadline for submissions at this point, and ATSC hopes a standard will be agreed to by early 2009, before analog TV service is cut off.