ATSC 3.0 is a major update of the ATSC standards and was created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). ATSC 3.0 will support mobile television, 3D television, 4K UHD, high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR), and wide color gamut (WCG). ATSC 3.0 comprises around 20 standards covering different aspects of the system and in total has over 1,000 pages of documentation. South Korean broadcasters began ATSC 3.0 operations in February 2017.
ATSC 3.0 is optimized to support highly flexible Distributed Transmission System (“DTS”) network architectures, which will dramatically improve signal reception in indoor and outdoor environments, including small portable devices and mobile receivers. As such, ARK is designing its network deployment to optimize mobile performance as a core capability. The protocols implemented in the new broadcast standard are very similar to those used in 4G cellular networks, but optimized for broadcasting over a much larger area, due to the relatively higher transmission power levels, and thus requiring far fewer transmission sites compared to traditional cellular network base stations. As a result, the company’s new wireless network will be the lowest cost provider of video content connecting directly with the consumer while providing both live, IP format television broadcasting/streaming and a new parallel path for Over-The-Top (OTT) internet digital video files