February 26, 2018
The 2018 Winter Olympics was definitely one for the record books! Set in the pristine mountainous areas of our South Korean headquarter’s backyard, athletes thrilled spectators and definitely kept us on the edge of our seat! But, the athletic prowess wasn’t the only “WOW” factor of these games - the future of our technology was definitely on full display.
If you watched any of the Olympic broadcast,
you were immersed in the action through a “ghost skier”, 360-degree virtual reality, athlete
helmet cameras, drones and more.
Even if you couldn’t be at this year’s games, you felt like you were.
If you attended the games, most likely robots equipped with AI and voice recognition helped you around the city and at the airport, answering
questions about upcoming games schedules, and giving travel tips.
Aside from the “fun” things at the Olympics, a
behind-the-scenes, much anticipated broadcast transmission standard, ATSC 3.0, was visible. Officially dubbed the "next-generation TV standard", South
Korea fully adopted this standard in January of last year and had the world’s
first deployment when all commercial stations launched services in May. South Korean TV manufacturer, LG,
introduced the first 3.0-enabled 4K Ultra HD TV to support this nationwide
rollout.
To show the world the benefits of this standard, The
Electronic & Telecomm Research government fund set up ATSC 3.0 on receivers
in shuttle buses carrying international reporters to venues throughout
PyeongChang. 4K video feeds of the events taking place in real-time were
streaming on these receivers and received without cable. Immersive sound, and
the ability for interactive feeds, allowed bus riders to feel that they were
part of the action…even if the bus was late to the venue!
In November, the FCC
voted unanimously to allow broadcasters to voluntarily roll out the “next-gen”
television transmission standard in the US. The only IP-based TV standard, the
US viewer will slowly begin to see what South Korean’s have had for a while
now…programs being delivered in UHD, immersive audio, datacasting, interactive
emergency notifications and more.
We have mentioned before that our Asian counterparts are
leading the way both in technological feats and in the broadcasting arena. The
2018 Olympics proved that Asia, and South Korea in particular, is living up to
its reputation as the booming tech hub of the world.
Posted by Jill OToole at 1:40 AM