ATSC Adopts Mobile DTV Standard

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) voted to approve the A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV Standard, which is the set of technical specifications necessary for broadcasters to provide new services to mobile and handheld devices using their digital television (DTV) transmissions. Formal development of the ATSC Mobile DTV system began in May 2007 with the issuance of http://www.convergedigest.com/qa655.aspa request for Proposals (RFP).


Mobile DTV signals are carried along with current DTV services. ATSC Mobile DTV was developed to support a variety of services including free (advertiser-supported) television and interactive services delivered in real-time, subscription-based TV, and file-based content download for playback at a later time. The standard can also be used for transmission of new data broadcasting services.


A/153 ATSC Mobile DTV leverages Vestigial Side Band (VSB) modulation, with enhanced error correction and other techniques to improve robustness and reduce power consumption in portable receivers, coupled with a flexible and extensible Internet Protocol (IP) based transport system, efficient MPEG AVC (ISO/IEC 14496-10 or ITU H.264) video, and HE AAC v2 audio (ISO/IEC 14496-3) coding. In addition to live television, the new ATSC Mobile DTV standard provides a flexible application framework to enable new receiver capabilities, such as interactive television services ranging from audience measurement and simple viewer voting to the integration of Internet-based applications and transactions with television content.
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