Rhode & Schwarz Demos Mobile DTV

By Carolyn Braff

According to Rhode & Schwarz, the big news at this year’s NAB Show is mobile digital television (mobile DTV), and the company has released a host of products to help speed its growth.

“Mobile digital television is the next big thing for the broadcast industry,” says Eddy Vanderkerken, director of sales for Rhode & Schwarz. “The dust has not yet begun to settle on the analog-to-digital conversion. but we can already see the enormous potential of mobile DTV.”

To maximize that potential, Rhode & Schwarz (Booth C1933) is providing over-the-air demonstrations of ATSC Mobile TV services and single-frequency network (SFN) capabilities. Throughout the show, the Sinclair Broadcast Group will be broadcasting three mobile-DTV services using the R&S AEM100 Emission Multiplexer and an Ai Quantum IOT transmitter featuring the R&S SX800 Exciter.

NBC Universal will multiplex several mobile programs using the same equipment. Dish Network will distribute that stream over a satellite feed to the KBLR station on Black Mountain, one transmitter on the Stratosphere observation tower, and a third in the Las Vegas Convention Center. The SFN synchronization method is a more cost-effective solution for broadcasters within to implement an ATSC Mobile DTV SFN.

The potential success of mobile DTV potential is perhaps greater for the sports market than any other.

“People are used to sitting on a sofa and watching sports, and they go to a local bar to watch sports, but, while they’re on their way, using whatever transportation method, they’re missing the show,” Vanderkerken says. “The people that are riding in the car or the bus, they should have a device ready that they can carry, either a cellphone or a USB that goes into their laptop, so that they can continue watching their favorite programs. When a big game is on, you don’t want to miss 10 minutes of it.”

Critical to the success of DTV for sports is image quality, since catching the last few minutes of a soccer match on a cellphone is useless if fans cannot see the ball. Luckily, Rhode & Schwarz announced a DVSG update that now supports full-motion video up to 1080p resolution.

“Quality can be difficult on smaller displays, but we have seen a few devices that exist, and the quality is amazingly good,” Vanderkerken says. “Watching a program with a ticker on the bottom, there are now devices where you can actually read all of those characters very easily.”