FoBTV Meeting Held in Las Vegas

FoBTV (Future of Broadcast Television) held a meeting in Las Vegas on April 11, 2018. The FoBTV is a voluntary organization with 85 members of more than 20 countries of professional broadcasters, standardization organizations, etc., to share and exchange views and opinions on the future of TV broadcasting. They hold a regular meeting twice a year; in April during the NAB Show in Las Vegas, and in September during the IBC in Amsterdam.

On April 11 in Las Vegas there were two sessions held; Technical Committee and Management Committee.

Approximately 30 people attended the meeting; and from Japan Dr. M. Sugawara, Chairman of DiBEG, Mr. T. Saito, Executive Research Engineer, and Mr. K. Murayama, Senior Research Engineer of NHK STRL respectively, Mr. H. Ogawa, Director for Digital Broadcasting Technology of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), and Mr. K. Kono, Vice Director General, R&D Headquarters of ARIB, participated.

Technical Committee

Representatives of ATSC, DVB and ARIB each reported their latest development on their standardization activities since the last meeting.

ATSC:

ATSC 3.0 was officially approved as the digital terrestrial TV standard of the US as FCC Report & Order 17-158 on November 16, 2017.
The TG1 which had been undertaking the maintenance of ATSC 1.0 has been dissolved, and the pending subjects would be undertaken by TG3.
The remaining challenges are: the maintenance and revision of the standard, tackling new technologies, support to the actual incorporation of new technologies, field trials, and education.

DVB:

WiB (Wideband reuse-1) as a new DTT network architecture is now being studied in respect to digital terrestrial TV. TM (Technical Module) and CM (Commercial Module) are studying the feasibility, and the final report would be available in June this year.
While the distribution of broadcasting contents via IP network, such as OTT, has various merits, the current costs are much higher than the conventional broadcasting; which leaves some problems in some countries where broadband environment has not been furnished.
The standardization activities on DVB DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) and DVB-I (for Internet) are now in progress.
Separately, activities on single illumination system, target add insertion, IP distribution at each household, EWS, VR, HDR dynamic mapping, etc. are in progress now.

ARIB:

Latest and future status of launching 4K/8K broadcasting, trends in the R&D activities on terrestrial 4K/8K broadcasting.
Enacting and revision of standards on the studio equipment and systems for 4K/8K broadcasting and the transmission and distribution of program contents.

EAS (Emergency Alert System)

AWARN (Advanced Warning and Response Network) Alliance made an introduction of “Emergency Alert System” (EAS) utilizing ATSC 3.0.

In the United States, above all in the state of California, the deployment of seismic intensity meters are going on; and the awareness and interests in emergency alerts such as for earthquakes are increasing.