DASH Industry Forum Continues to Forge Adoption with ATSC 3.0

Posted on September 1, 2020 in ATSC News

By Michael Dolan, Pearl TV

Since the DASH Industry Forum (DASH IF) and ATSC joined forces in the fall of 2015 to adapt DASH IF’s specifications to meet the requirements of ATSC 3.0 – this collaboration has been providing the bridge technology for both broadcast and broadband delivery, including use of both transports concurrently, to form a truly “hybrid” next-gen TV system.

DASH IF bridges the broad specifications published by ISO/IEC MPEG and various industry sectors trying to make practical use of DASH, and according to DASH IF, “helping transition it from a specification into a real business.” For ATSC, DASH IF continues to provide a critical ongoing role in making important core components of ATSC 3.0 possible.

“DASH Industry Forum is proud of our long-term collaboration with ATSC in driving interoperability between the broadcast and broadband worlds. We appreciate the selection of MPEG-DASH by ATSC as one of the foundations of its next-generation broadcast system and the trust they have placed in DASH IF as the industry forum to execute on that vision. We look forward to continuing our work together on bringing enhanced efficiency and new feature-sets to ATSC 3.0,” said Iraj Sodagar, Chairman and President of DASH IF.

To form the collaboration between DASH IF and ATSC, guests of each organization were invited to the other organization.  The ATSC TG3-6 group focused on requirements, and the DASH IF ATSC TF group focused on adapting their existing interoperability guidelines to those requirements. The initial work culminated very quickly in the publication of the “DASH-IF Interoperability Point [IOP] for ATSC 3.0” in January 2016, with a follow-up version in June 2018. There are now commercial TVs available that implement this application of DASH within ATSC 3.0.

ATSC has been busy fine-tuning the ATSC 3.0 specifications as product development advances and interoperability issues are identified. The DASH IF guidelines for ATSC 3.0 have stood the test of time, and looking forward ATSC TG3-6 is developing technical launch recommendations, which drive ATSC 3.0 decoder interoperability with ATSC 3.0 encoders, especially around ATSC 3.0 captions, “IMSC1”. ATSC anticipates publication of a Technology Group Report on the topic in the near future.

“In addition, some of the promises of ATSC 3.0 have not yet been fully realized, notably, decoder ad replacement personalization, more efficient audio coding using decoder side mixing, and improved service coding efficiency and service acquisition in general. These features all rely on continued collaboration with DASH IF,” noted ATSC President Madeleine Noland.

Indeed, the scope of DASH IF is not just about MPEG DASH, but providing interoperability on video, audio and caption codecs; common encryption, allowing simultaneous use of multiple DRMs; and other infrastructure technologies. Recent primary focus has been on live programming and low latency, and integration of MPEG Common Media Application Format (CMAF). These efforts are converging in a version 5 of their guidelines thus laying the groundwork for applying them to ATSC 3.0 to meet the promise of these forward-looking service features. Collaboration with DASH IF is expected to continue apace to meet these goals.

“ATSC deeply values our collaboration with DASH IF and all the members who have made the work possible. And in particular, ATSC would like to recognize Dr. Thomas Stockhammer, chair of the DASH IF Interop Working Group, who has been the keystone of the success of this collaboration,” Noland said.

More information on DASH IF: https://dashif.org/

Posted in ATSC News