Harris Puts ATSC Mobile DTV Front and Center at NAB

Harris Corporation heads to the 2010 NAB Show with the broadcast industry’s most comprehensive product portfolio and more than 40 sales of ATSC Mobile DTV systems confirmed to date.

“This is a new era that is providing terrestrial broadcasters with exciting opportunities to monetize their valuable spectrum, expand their viewer reach and benefit their stations’ bottom lines,” says Jay Adrick, vice president of broadcast technology for Harris Broadcast Communications. “By combining our experience in the technology and standards development with collaborative industry relationships, Harris now leads the market in enabling broadcasters to launch new, revenue-generating mobile DTV businesses today.”

Harris has been involved in all development phases of the ATSC Mobile DTV standard since day one, including two years of co-development work on the physical layer of the standard with LG Electronics and Zenith Corp. During this period, Harris also developed its MPH system for ATSC Mobile DTV, the industry’s most complete solution for fast deployment of mobile DTV services. Featuring Harris networking and exciter technology, the MPH platform is designed for easy integration into virtually any ATSC digital transmission system — with typical installations taking four hours or less.

Harris offers the industry’s broadest, most-deployed over-the-air transmission portfolio, including its Maxiva UHF and Platinum VHF series transmitters. They are available in high-power, liquid-cooled and low-power, air-cooled models. Both series enable new transmission customers to implement a single system for DTV, HDTV and ATSC Mobile DTV. The MPH platform’s Apex M2X exciter is designed to easily drop into existing Harris transmitters, enabling current customers to easily launch an ATSC Mobile DTV service in less than one day’s work.

Harris also collaborates with mobile broadcast software leader Roundbox to integrate signal generation, announcement and future Non-Real Time (NRT) content features into the digital program stream, giving consumers rich detail about the stations and programs they are viewing. Harris and Roundbox will demonstrate these features at NAB.