ATSC 3.0 is a major version of the ATSC standards for television broadcasting created by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC).[1] ATSC 3.0 comprises around 20 standards covering different aspects of the system and in total will have over 1,000 pages of documentation.[2]
The standards are designed to offer support for newer technologies, including HEVC for video channels of up to 2160p 4K resolution at 120 frames per second, wide color gamut, high dynamic range, Dolby AC-4 and MPEG-H 3D Audio, datacastingcapabilities, and more robust mobile television support.[1][3] The capabilities have also been foreseen as a way to enable targeted advertising and finer public alerting.
The first major deployments of ATSC 3.0 occurred in South Korea, with the country’s major television networks launching terrestrial ATSC 3.0 services in May 2017 in preparation for the 2018 Winter Olympics. In November 2017, the United States’ Federal Communications Commission approved regulations allowing broadcast stations to voluntarily offer ATSC 3.0 services (Next Gen TV); however, they must be offered alongside a standard ATSC digital signal, and there will not be a mandatory transition as was done with the transition from analog NTSC to ATSC.
