Three New ATSC 3.0 Standards Approved

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) Oct. 5 gave its approval to three more standards for ATSC 3.0, the next-gen broadcast TV transmission system for over-the-air delivery of high dynamic range (HDR), 4K resolution and other advanced TV features.

The ATSC 3.0 Link Layer Protocol—which transports data between the network layer to the physical layer on the sending side, as well as the data from the physical layer to the network layer on the receiving side—is among the three standards that received approval. Also approved were both Audio and Video Watermark Emission standards, which specify the audio and video watermark encoding used in ATSC 3.0 broadcasts.

“The latest ATSC 3.0 standards will help future devices transport incoming data and provide for both audio and video watermarks in broadcast content,” ATSC president Mark Richer said in a statement. “These are each important elements that will give ATSC 3.0 remarkable flexibility. The three new standards join two others (the A/322 Physical Layer and A/321 System Discovery and Signaling standards) already approved by ATSC members. Other parts of ATSC 3.0 are rapidly moving through the standardization process.”

In all, there are 20 standards in the ATSC 3.0 suite. The ATSC has also announced that it’s made progress on three new proposed standards and two new candidate standards, with the group’s technical subcommittee currently reviewing all five.