LG has debuted at CES what may be the first market-ready ATSC 3.0 television set. The ATSC 3.0-enabled 4K Ultra HD TVs are being rolled out to support this year’s nationwide deployment of the Next Gen TV broadcast standard in South Korea. Starting this spring, in advance of the 2018 Winter Olympics, new 2017 models of LG 4K Ultra HD TVs and large-screen LG smart TVs sold in Korea will have both ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1.0 tuners, the company announced at CES 2017.
At CES, one of these new models, a 65-inch-class LG LED TV with an embedded second-generation ATSC 3.0 tuner, displayed UHD broadcast programming that includes high-dynamic range (HDR) content. LG also demonstrated ATSC 3.0’s advanced electronic service guide capabilities, including broadcast video-on-demand and a program guide delivered by the ROUTE (Real-Time Object Delivery over Unidirectional Transport) protocol specified in the nearly-finalized ATSC 3.0 standard. The EPG shown demonstrated an integrated OTA-OTT (over-the-air/over-the-top) scheduled, where subject-related content, over different media, were seamlessly integrated.
LG’s early introduction of ATSC 3.0-enabled TVs builds on the company’s role in the development of the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards, including the approved A/322 Physical Layer Standard at the heart of the new broadcast system that will merge the capabilities of broadcast and broadband. Core technologies developed by LG and its U.S. R&D lab, Zenith, are included in the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Standard; LG contributions to the A/322 transmission system include the scrambler, forward error correction, bit interleaver, mapper, time interleaver, OFDM framer, frequency interleaver, pilots, reserved tones, and guard interval functions.
“In parallel with our extensive standards development work with the ATSC, LG has been collaborating with Korean broadcasters and the Korean government to support the Next Gen TV launch this year,” said Brian Kwon, president of the LG Home Entertainment Company. “The combination of the latest ATSC 3.0 chipset with our industry-leading LG 4K OLED and LG SUPER UHD displays will deliver the promise of Next Gen TV for consumers in Korea. Early availability of ATSC 3.0 products in Korea also sets the stage to support U.S. broadcasters’ Next Gen TV rollout plans in 2018 and beyond,” he said.
LG’s new ATSC 3.0 TVs for the Korean market were demonstrated at the 2017 CES at the Las Vegas Convention Center. South Korean broadcasters have been directed by the Korean government to begin ATSC 3.0 broadcasts next month (February).
— agc
Aldo Cugnini is a consultant in the DTV industry.
