On Monday, David Neff, president of Axcera, told me off the record that his company was planning to announce its endorsement of one of the three technologies — Harris/LG’s MPH, Rohde & Schwarz/Samsung’s A-VSB, and the Thomson/Micronas solution — being considered by the ATSC as a digital mobile TV standard. I deferred to his request to keep this information hush hush, but couldn’t help blurting out, “I bet it’s A-VSB. You mentioned the benefits of Single Frequency Networks several times today.” In response, Neff would only say, “You are quite perceptive.”
Of the three candidate standards, A-VSB makes the most explicit use of SFNs. I’m sure there is nothing about the other candidate standards that precludes the use of SFNs, but it seems Rhode & Schwarz and Samsung have been the most vocal about using these kinds of set-ups to ensure adequate signal coverage. So this is how I guessed it was A-VSB that Axcera would endorse. I’d love to chalk this up to my being the queen of broadcast technology, but I’m afraid it’s more that I’m a journalist and therefore good at picking up on patterns.
Last night, Axcera made it official: It’s endorsing A-VSB, and is developing transmission solutions for the commercial deployment of single frequency networks. According to Neff, his company decided to go with A-VSB because it has the longest track record of development (it’s been around since 2005) and is being developed through a collaborative and open process. In addition, third generation chipsets have been implemented for handsets and mobile devices that are compatible with A-VSB.
The company is holding demonstrations of A-VSB at booth C1307 in the Central Hall. If you can stop by before the show floor closes at 4pm today, you’ll be able to view what A-VSB pictures look like on some of the latest mobile handsets and devices.
When it comes to “hot” mobile TV products on the show floor this year, the focus seems to be mostly on exciters and multiplexers. This makes sense, since many broadcasters already have the transmission infrastructure in place to run a mobile TV service: They just need to integrate mobile TV-compatible exciters and multiplexers into their transmission networks in order to get services up and running.
Still, I’d feel remiss if I did not mention how some of the transmitter, antenna and power amplifier manufacturers are playing a role in mobile TV deployment. Thus far, I’ve met with a few companies in each of these spaces at NAB, and all have something to offer with regards to mobile TV. more
Axcera introduced the 6X Series liquid-cooled solid-state television transmitter that uses the company’s frequency agile exciter and LDMOS devices for broadband operation across the entire UHF band.
The showed a 6X transmitter that supports 7kW DVB-T, 10kW ATSC and 20kW analog operation on the floor. It will support power levels up to 30kW DVB-T and 40kW ATSC. According to company president David Neff, an important feature of the 6X transmitter is its relatively small form factor.
Axcera also highlighted the fact it’s supporting five different transmission technologies for mobile TV broadcasts with a red-hot car receiving mobile TV broadcast transmission as part of the NAB2008 demonstration of the technology.
Neff discussed mobile TV transmission, the final push to complete the DTV transition in the United States as well as a recently released report from research organization Centris showing that DTV coverage patterns may leave millions of viewers without over-the-air television reception.
Bitcentral unveiled Air Now, a backpack-based digital news gathering system weighing less than 10lbs, which will let a reporter transmit live reports via EvDO wireless channels from the field.
The product, according to the company’s Ken Lee, is like an ENG truck in a backpack. It consists of a laptop computer loaded with special encoding software, a cellular transmitting box and a battery that will power the unit for 2.5 hours. Air Now streams a live Windows Media 9 stream via an EvDO cellular network connection to an IP address at a TV station or elsewhere. According to Lee, the system produces useable results at data rates as low as 280kb/s.
I happened to be visiting Bitcentral when Andrew Lombard, chief engineer of McGraw Hill-owned KGTV in San Diego, was wrapping up a visit. Lombard said he was impressed with the performance of Air Now, and “looking down the road” could envision equipping journalists in San Diego and at the company’s Indianapolis station with the product. Lombard added he would help the company in its continued development of Air Now.
Yesterday, we started out shooting technology demos at Thomson Grass Valley. The company’s product manager of integrated production solutions, Scott Matics, showed us MediaFUSE. This new content repurposing and multidistribution system provides an end-to-end suite of automated tools that allow broadcasters to increase the amount of content available for Internet and mobile distribution.
I don’t know about you, but I think Internet and mobile are the way of the future. There has been a lot of talk about mobile TV at NAB, and obviously the Internet is a key distribution platform or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.
Our next stop was Sony, where we viewed the TriMaster BVM-L230, a 23in full HD LCD master monitor. The picture clarity was incredible. The monitor features the industry’s first 10-bit LCD Panel driver with full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution. The BVM-L230 also features a Sony developed LED backlight system, which offers wide color spaces and color accuracy not available in conventional LCD monitors.
So representatives from every company at this year’s NAB, and surely every NAB since the beginning of time, want to convince the public that their companies are the best, whether they are trying to corner the newsroom system market from acquisition to playout or focus specifically on one aspect of the broadcast industry and encourage integration with as many companies as possible.
But, really, what can I say to a company that was featured, in small or large part, in more than a dozen booths beyond its own — not just integrated by these companies, but backed by as well — and that adheres to the idea of being “cheaper, faster and better” than any other company that is trying to do what it does? more
This morning, I got the chance to view a live demo of two of the three technologies being considered by the ATSC as a mobile digital TV standard — A-VSB and MPH. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) has set up a van in the Central Hall outfitted to recieve two live channel feeds — one UHF and the other VHF — to demonstrate how each system performs.
For the demo, I squeezed myself into the backseat of the van, where a monitoring wall was set up behind the driver and passenger seats. The two main video displays depicted a live, MPH-enabled feed from a local UHF channel and another live, A-VSB-enabled feed from a local VHF channel. According to Victor Tawil, senior vice president of technology for MSTV (which is performing the trials of all the potential ATSC technologies on behalf of the OMVC), the two systems are periodically swapped between each channel, so that the UHF channel might be getting an A-VSB feed and the VHF channel the MPH one. This keeps things as objective as possible, and is also the protocol for the actual field trials of the systems. more
I visited the RF Technologies booth yesterday afternoon, and learned the company is releasing a new low RFR SFNstar broadband slot antenna. It has up to 7 channels (42 MHz) of bandwidth at 700 MHz, and is designed for use with upper and lower 700 MHz mobile TV networks, as well as mobile video and DTV transmissions. Probably what a broadcaster would find most handy about the antenna is that its bandwidth is wide enough to handle multiple 700 MHZ transmissions. Also, because of its low RFR performance, it is possible to place it on rooftops and short towers and not run afoul of radiation safety thresholds.
A typical 10-bay broadband SFNstar antenna with a 50 kW ERP and mounted with a center of radiation of 22 feet above ground or rooftop will produce less than 50% of the maximum general public RFR limits. This gives broadcasters looking to deploy an SFN network as part of a mobile TV network much more flexibility in terms of where they can mount the antennas.
RF Technologies is offering the Broadband SFNstar antennas with input power ratings from 7.5 to 50 kW, allowing several DTV or mobile TV transmissions from a single antenna. The antenna also uses circular polarization technology, so no matter what direction an end user turns his or her mobile device receiver, the coverage remains the same.
There is no reason the television industry cannot have a working mobile television standard by the end of 2008, Sterling Davis, vice president of engineering at Cox Broadcasting and member of the Open Mobile Broadcasting Coalition, said on the opening day of NAB2008.
Davis offered a report to a gathering of more than 400 broadcasters April 14 on progress the coalition has made testing competitive systems offered by Harris, Rhode & Schwarz and Thomson as part of its Independent Demonstration of Viability (IDOV) project aimed at birthing an ATSC-approved mobile TV standard by the end of the year.
According to Davis, field trials of the systems began in March and will continue in April in San Francisco and Las Vegas. During NAB2008, the Sinclair Broadcast and Telemundo stations in Las Vegas, are transmitting mobile TV as part of their digital stream. more
Amid all the hoopla surrounding the potential ATSC mobile digital TV standard at this year’s show, one established European standard made a quiet, though possibly momentous entry into the U.S. scene: DVB-SH. The satellite company ICO launched into space at 4:12pm Eastern today, Monday, April 17th, its G1 satellite, placing it into its initial geosynchronous transfer orbit at 4:56pm. After making an initial telemetry and command contact with a ground station in Perth, Australia, it will go into its final position where it will be miles above the eastern Pacific, providing services to the continental U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The satellite will operate in the 2GHz S-band.
ICO is using the satellite to trial its ICO mim, an interactive mobile video, navigation and emergency service, which is based on DVB-SH, a hybrid digital terrestrial/satellite mobile TV standard. The company wants to launch the service by 2009, and is envisioning it as an in-car type service. It would be sort of like a Sirrius satellite radio service – except based on video. It’s generating a fair amount of buzz at the show. more
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the 2008 NAB Show in Las Vegas as the news happens. Check back throughout the day for the latest in industry news, reports from press conferences and product introductions.
