It was a bit unexpected. And the programming isn’t exactly a showcase of what NextGen TV can deliver. But at long last the Bay Area has an ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV) broadcast compliments of KBKF! After spending a couple years trekking to Phoenix, Santa Barbara and Las Vegas to go to the emissions it’s nice to have one in our own backyard. And we’re pleased to add ATSC 3.0 monitoring support at SFBayATSC!
KBKF is operated by Venture Technologies Group, LLC and broadcasts on VHF 6 from Mt. Loma Prieta. At the time of writing the 3.0 emission consists of a single PLP utilizing 64 QAM and an 8/15 code rate. This is a bit more robust than other 3.0 emissions, which often utilize 256 QAM, though at the expense of a lower capacity (~14 Mbit/s). In mid June two ROUTE/DASH services were being transmitted – a barker channel as 6-1 and UChan as 6-2. At the moment UChan has taken the 6-1 VC and the barker has signed off. Interestingly the services are using AAC audio. While this was prevalent in early 3.0 phases when AC-4 support for receivers and encoders was still under development, commercial deployments in the US are required to use AC-4. (The ATSC 3.0 specification provides for multiple audio codecs, but only a single codec is allowed in a region. In North America that codec is AC-4.)
Continue reading “NextGen TV Arrives in the Bay Area!”
