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After years of testing, updated versions and enough promotion to rival any hot new product launch, the next generation of broadcast television — ATSC 3.0, or NextGen TV — is (nearly) ready for primetime.
The latest phase in the standard’s development cycle, combined with advancements in viewing technology and changing audience habits, has created the perfect market environment for executing the promise of ATSC 3.0. Consumers will get the immersive, interactive and customized content experiences they want, and broadcasters will get the options and workflow flexibility they need to migrate to IP infrastructures.
As a brief catch-up, ATSC 1.0, released in 2009, was a traditional standard designed to maintain the status quo of previous broadcasting generations while still allowing room for key advancements such as analog-to-digital conversions and HD transmissions. What it didn’t do was provide a roadmap for getting to the future outlined by ATSC 3.0, which includes support for technologies more suited to the way content is now created, distributed, received and consumed.
For all its advancements, ATSC 3.0 still leaves many open questions, starting with its deployment and adoption, aligning over-the-air (OTA) and over-the-top (OTT) content delivery, finding the most efficient route to IP and making the most of a limited frequency spectrum.
A key element of ATSC 3.0 is that it allows more IP OTT transmissions, to the point where a station can have two paths, one solely dedicated to generating an IP feed for its customer base and even sending its main programming channels over