The 2017 NAB Show may be looked back upon in the future as the moment when ATSC 3.0 next-generation TV standard went mainstream in the U.S. television industry.
“I think it was three years ago,” recalled Advanced Television Systems Committee President Mark Richer, following the April 24 official opening of the NextGen TV Hub powered by ATSC 3.0 in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center, “that I spent the whole convention in a closed meeting room across the street at a hotel talking to the CEOs of the major groups and networks and explaining what ATSC 3.0 is.
“I did that two years in a row. We don’t have to do that anymore because they now understand its potential.”
No longer just a highly complex engineering effort involving many of the brightest engineers in television, consumer electronics and academia worldwide, next-gen TV enabled by 3.0 is something that now rolls off the tongue and is easily understood.
Witness Gordon Smith, NAB president-CEO, who summed up next-gen TV during his State of the Industry address April 24 in fewer than 35 words.
“This is the world’s first broadcast standard that offers the advantages of broadcast and broadband,” he said, summing up 3.0…. “With next-gen TV, we see the seamless convergence of over-the-air and over-the-top.”
