ENENSYS announces ATSC 3.0 head end for hybrid delivery

ENENSYS Technologies announces the new version of its ATSC 3.0 head end solution

RENNES — ENENSYS Technologies is proud to announce the new version of its ATSC 3.0 head-end solution that allows broadcasters to implement the delivery of NextGen TV over hybrid delivery networks. The services can be delivered simultaneously on the Digital Terrestrial TV Over-The-Air network (OTA) and on the broadband network (OTT), with a seamless transition from OTA to OTT – and vice versa – at receiver level according to service availability.

OTA/OTT convergence offers almost unlimited flexibility to enrich the user experience, supporting one of the essential characteristics of the ATSC 3.0 system. In parallel to a linear service broadcast in OTA, OTT could also be used to personalize the user experience (‘catch-up-to-live’ for sports, watch key highlights of other games mid-stream, …). SHVC mode is also another possibility of this solution to allow broadcasting the core layer over OTA and Enhance layer over OTT.

The ENENSYS ATSC3.0 head-end solution relies on its virtualized software products MediaCast ATSC (Delivery and Signalling server) and SmartGate ATSC (Broadcast Gateway). The experience acquired during the Convergence TV project – awarded for Technological Innovation at the NAB 2018 show for its ATSC 3.0 SHVC based HD/UHD hybrid delivery demonstration – helped on enabling OTA/OTT convergence on ATSC3.0.

“This summer, we took part in field tests before deployment on the delivery of ATSC3.0 services over hybrid networks”, says Gilles TOQUET, Terrestrial Product Manager. “The ATSC3.0 receivers had to switch over OTT for OTA missing DASH segments or when the service was temporarily unavailable on OTA. We implemented an innovative and suitable OTA/OTT synchronization mechanism based ATSC 3.0 signalling layer in order to solve the synchronization issue between the broadcast and the broadband links”.