Section Meetings

Abstract

The Ohio Section meeting on 27 July was combined with the local Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) Chapter 52 and took place at the new Sinclair Broadcast Television transmitter plant in Columbus. Included within that plant are both Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 “Lighthouse” TV transmitters as well as radio transmission operations. The ATSC 3.0 TV broadcast transmitter is radically different in that it uses the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signal standard rather than the 1.0 Zenith 8VSB type. On the air since 7 January 2021, their new TV transmitter can accommodate/passthrough up to five complete ATSC 3.0 stations’ signals, including those from other TV stations within the Columbus market, part of a temporary channel-sharing arrangement scenario. The sole purpose of this “Lighthouse” TV station is to broadcast all of the Columbus area TV stations’ ATSC 3.0 signals for up to five years after first launching their 3.0 broadcasts. After that initial five-year period, each station will continue their ATSC 3.0 broadcast services from their individual towers/antennas, and so on, after shutting down their legacy ATSC 1.0 broadcast signal operations.