Mobile ATSC: And Then There Were Two (Or Maybe Just One?)

LG and Samsung have, it seems, embraced a lesson that the long-dueling Blu-ray and HD DVD camps refused to accept…compromise often benefits both sides more significantly, and certainly produces returns-on-investments more speedily, than does a drawn-out war of attrition. As I reported last month via my NAB show coverage series, and in follow-up to a February-and-March two-part print article series, the companies spearheaded two of the three mobility-focused digital TV augmentation schemes being considered by the ATSC. However, as BetaNews recently reported (and Gizmodo also subsequently picked up), the dueling standards-bearers have decided to combine the best elements of their respective technologies, in the hopes of increasing the likelihood of a finalized standard by next February’s NTSC sunset date.

And, as BetaNews also reported one day later, the Open Mobile Video Coalition has concluded its field testing, with positive results cited for the blended ATSC-M/H-plus-MPH approach…suggesting that the two technology camps had actually been privately pursuing synergy since prior to NAB. What this means for the third mobile ATSC proposal, from Micronas and Thomson, is unclear…though that camp’s late entry into the evaluation process had frankly left me feeling skeptical of its practical ability to substantially influence the final standard, in spite of its interesting technical ideas such as "staggercasting" and an embrace of MPEG-4’s scaleable video coding option.