Complete Coverage: CES 2017

Las Vegas — The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) announced at CES that the suite of standards for ATSC 3.0, the next-gen, over-the-air broadcast system, is on track for completion this spring.

Currently a half-dozen standards — including physical and link layer protocols, captions and subtitles, and watermarking solutions — have been finalized, with more than a dozen in the candidate and proposed standard phase, and another three in draft.

“ATSC 3.0 is the next-generation broadcast platform that has the capability of delivering Ultra HD TV with HDR (high dynamic range), interactive features, and multi-channel immersive audio. ATSC 3.0 will present viewers with more streams, more choices, more channels, and more flexibility,” ATSC president Mark Richer said in a statement. “The new system can also be a pipeline for delivering data to the car, to mobile devices, and to the home.”

Related: Future of TV Front and Center at CES

At CES, ATSC 3.0 will see plenty of headlines, with Dolby showing off next-gen audio features in a Sony TV, LG Electronics incorporating a ATSC 3.0 tuner in a 65-inch set, Fraunhofer including MPEG-H audio tech based off ATSC 3.0, and Verance sharing its watermarking solutions based off the standard.

A Jan. 4 panel at the conference — “ATSC 3.0: A New Broadband Network” — will feature speakers from Amazon’s Elemental Technologies, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Ericsson, while a Jan. 8 panel — “Update on ATSC 3.0 – Next Generation Broadcast Television”— has speakers from Zenith Electronics, the National Association of Broadcasters, Sony, Triveni Digital and LG Electronics.