
Presenters at the virtual SCTE-ISBE Cable-Tec Expo 2020 on Oct. 14 examined a pair of ATSC 3.0-related issues of importance to cable operators, including the technical considerations of transitioning headend operations as broadcasters begin to take on NextGen TV and the opportunities the new broadcast standard offers to deliver enhanced TV viewing experiences to audience members with visual disabilities.
During the Developments in HDR, IP Video Workflows and ATSC 3.0 Audio Accessibility session, Mark Francisco, Comcast technology fellow, set the stage for his discussion of descriptive audio by explaining the size of the need and the opportunity to both do good and benefit financially by better serving audience members with disabilities.
When considering the size of the audience with disabilities, 20% of Caucasians have disabilities, 25% of Blacks and 33% of American Indian and Alaskan Native, said Francisco, making the point that the audience is large and diverse. On the economic side of the equation, a third of U.S. households have a disability. Those households command $220 billion, he added.
Twenty percent of people with disabilities are over 65 years of age, and 12 million Americans 40 years and older have some sort of visual impairment, he said.
A disability is a mismatch between the environment and an individual's capabilities at the moment, he said, noting the mismatch could be temporary, lifelong and shrink or grow over time.
The win-win or elegant solutions here are the ones that can cover temporary situations in addition to the permanent ones, said Francisco.
THORNY ISSUEThe cable television industry faces a thorny issue as the video experiences people have using platforms, such as streaming services, mobile phones and game devices, have advanced faster than those available via cable TV, he said.
The current conventions of ATSC 1.0 were ratified in 1996, and they are undergoing revision, but that takes time because of the massive scale we are dealing with, he said.
The bottom line with 1.0 is you can't fit so much in there and typically that means a primary and a secondary audio service per TV channel, said Francisco. With ATSC 1.0, all of the audio accessibility services are confined to a single auxiliary service that is monaural.
Francisco described work Comcast has done with NBC for the last three Olympics during ceremonies and some events to provide live audio description in the SAP channel for those with visual impairments. He also explained audio ducking, which dips the amplitude of a commentator and other audio to enable the video descriptive audio to come in another technique that has proven successful.
But the future of broadcast television audio is more immersive, personalized and inclusive, he said. ATSC 3.0 provides for audio multiplexing of all audio channels, including 5.1 and SAP. All of those bits are intermingled over time with headers that make it possible to pull out those channels. Audio description also can be its own substream with metadata to describe what it is, he said.
PLUS: ATSC 3.0: Its Not Just for Broadcasting
NextGen TV viewers can define their audio preferences and in the decoder in their set-top box or television desired audio can be reassembled from those substreams based on what viewers have told the receiver they wish to hear, such as music and effects, commentator audio and descriptive audio. Not only does 3.0 open up avenues previously unavailable to adding description at a lower cost, but it enables the more personalization of audio, he said.
GETTING TO KNOW YOUDuring the What Cable Operators Need to Know About ATSC 3.0 session, Perry Priestley, COO/CSO of Broadcast Electronics/Elenos Group, and Joonyoung Park, vice president and fellow, DigiCAP, discussed what cable operators need to understand about ATSC 3.0 signals, how they are different than 1.0 signals and what they must do to prepare for NextGen TV.
Priestly began by laying out the basic difference between 1.0 and 3.0 from a viewer's perspective, including 3.0 support for 4K UHD, high dynamic range (HDR), wide color gamut (WCG), frame rates up to 120fps, immersive audio and enhanced emergency alerting, captioning and video description.
He repeated the comparison from a broadcaster's point of view: 8VSB vs. OFDM, MPEG TS- vs. IP-based and encryption vs. none. Priestly laid out the benefits as well, including better OTA reception, immunity to selective fading, resilience to interference, spectrum efficiency, simpler channel equalization and support for mobile receivers.
The transition from 1.0 to 3.0 will take place in three phases, he said. During the first, a lighthouse will host the 3.0 services of full-power stations in a market while stations channel share to maintain 1.0 service. Phase 2 will see an expansion of the first phase. The final phase will see the shut off of 1.0 service, which Priestly predicted would happen no sooner than in five years.
[T]he cable company receiving ATSC 3.0 will have to get a new receiver that can decode and demodulate the ATSC 3.0 standard, said Priestly. There will be times, and this is going to be a difficult period, where you have to receive some signals from ATSC 3.0 transmissions and some from ATSC 1.0 to obtain all of the content you need.
Cable companies may also have to select programs differently because there could be a lot of duplication resulting from 1.0 and 3.0 simulcasts. Those programs will be in different formats, and there will be added complexity because the Emergency Alerting System and program guide will be different between the two, he said.
There will also be a lot of content that may need to be ignored like specialized data non-real-time data as well [content] that may be being delivered for overnight storage, he said. So, there will be data as broadcast apps that may pot
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
22/07/2026
RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...
22/07/2026
In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...
22/07/2026
Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...
21/07/2026
New research involving a cross-section of Mongolias independent media landscape finds enthusiasm for AI as a tool to improve efficiency, sustainability and resi...
21/07/2026
With winners Spain having already paraded the World Cup trophy through Madrid in front of millions of fans and the dust now settling on an epic tournament of th...