‘No Time Frame’ for Adding VVC Codec or 8K to ATSC 3.0, Says TG3 Chair

The work of ATSC’s “planning team 4" (PT4) on future video technologies is to study what “methods” are “available to us to add a codec,” said Noland. She chairs ATSC’s Technology Group 3, which supervised 3.0's framing. Nondisclosure agreements bar Noland from discussing “what’s happening in planning team 4 right now,” she said. PT4, chaired by Glenn Reitmeier, NBCUniversal senior vice president-advanced technology standards and policy, is expected to file a report with the ATSC board “in the coming months,” she said. The board "may or may not choose to make that public,” she said.

“There’s no time frame for adding a video codec within the ATSC signaling,” said Noland. Once the decision is made to add VVC to A/341, “a period of simulcast” likely would be needed to accommodate HEVC receivers already in the market “that don’t understand VVC and can’t be updated” through firmware upgrades, she said. “Those receivers will need to continue receiving an HEVC feed at some level.” VVC is still in the standardization phase, and products deploying it aren't expected before 2021.

Requiring VVC/HEVC simulcasts need not be worrisome for broadcasters already leery about what services they can deliver within 3.0's bandwidth constraints, said Noland. “As time goes on, you can lower the resolution of your HEVC service” for a lower bit rate, she said. Consumers then who “really want to see the super-cool stuff will buy a TV that’s got VVC,” she said.

History “dictates” that “the encoders will improve” in efficiency, said Noland. “What you see in bit rates with HEVC today is probably not what you’re going to see in terms of bit rates with HEVC tomorrow, or next year or two years.” It’s easy to “envision that a fair amount of bandwidth will be freed up” as encoder vendors “do their great work,” she said.

With encoder improvements, plus bandwidth efficiencies that single-frequency networks can deliver stations, “over time, the capacity of the 3.0 system is going to grow,” said Noland. “That’s going to allow for a simulcast in order to move from one video codec to another,” she said. “Eventually, you can sunset the old ones as the devices are pretty much done.”

The 20 standards documents in the 3.0 suite were “perfect right out of the gate,” Noland joked when we asked if the test-market deployments in Phoenix, Dallas and elsewhere raised technical issues requiring documents be retweaked. “There were a few areas where tweaks were needed,” mainly by adding “informative text, clarifications or recommended practices,” not "normative" material, she said.

One lesson gleaned from the test markets was when 3.0's framers “realized” that emergency alert information could be rendered “either using native receiver code” or through the broadcaster’s “app,” she said. “But what happens if the receiver’s trying to do it at the same time as the broadcaster app?” A new recommended practice was written that “the receiver should always yield to the broadcaster app,” she said.

Additional tweaks are expected this year, again arising from technical issues raised in the test deployments, said Noland. “Given the complexity of the system, I’ve been very pleased with how well the early deployments have gone and how much we got right. I’m pleased with it, but not perfect, for sure.”

The framers of 3.0 “certainly hope that we have specified a system that is very attractive” for broadcasters, TV makers, equipment suppliers and technology vendors, and that 3.0 is “well worth adopting as the market demands,” said Noland. Her “personal hope” is that 2019 will bring “a lot of momentum” for 3.0, and that by the end of 2020, “we’re going to see a significant number of people being reached by at least some three or four services,” she said.