ATSC 3.0/NextGen TV Broadcast Stream Generator
S&T's ATCaster is an ATSC 3.0 broadcast stream generator. It provides ATSC 3.0 Low Level Signaling (LLS), ROUTE, MMT, NRT and ESG delivery.
The ROUTE (Real-time Object delivery over Unidirectional Transport) protocol is used to deliver content packaged in MPEG DASH Segments. In addition to ROUTE, ATSC 3.0 content can be MPEG Media Transport (MMT) based, in such cases MMT protocol (MMTP) is used to deliver Media Processing Units (MPU).
ATCaster generates the ATSC 3.0 low level signaling (LLS) on the well-known multicast address (224.0.23.60:4937).
ATCaster builds the Service Layer Signaling (SLS) and all related ROUTE and MMTP sessions containing audio, video and Non-Realtime (NRT) data.
Tyipically ATCaster receives MPEG DASH segments pushed to it via WebDAV PUSH. Usually, this data is provided by a HEVC encoder, such as the ATEME TITAN Live, or possibly from a DASH Packager. ATCaster generates the appropriate UDP multicast outputs containing the ROUTE sessions and signaling.
For a broadcast scenario, these multicast transmissions are sent to an ATSC 3.0 Scheduler (such as the Enensys SmartGate scheduler.
ATCaster uses UniSoft's ATSC SFG via streaming service interfcace to allow ATSC 3.0 signaling and applications to be signed at the time of delivery.
See the ATCaster User Interface.
Product Overview
ATCaster includes the following capabilities:
-
Generation of ATSC 3.0 Low Level Signaling (LLS):
- Service List Table (SLT):
- Ratings Region Table (RRT).
- System Time (STT), and
- Advanced Emergency Alert Table (AEAT) and
- Onscreen Message Notification fragments.
- Generation of Service Layer Signaling (SLS) fragments (APD, USBD, S-TSID, HELD, DWD and MPD).
- Creation of ROUTE and MMTP sessions for carriage of video, audio and NRT data for each service.
- Electronic Service Guide delivered via NRT carousel. Currently TitanTV and TVMedia guide feeds are supported.
- Installed on a HP DL 360 Gen10 or similar running CentOS 7.
- Integrated with ATSC SFG for generation of signed signaling and applications as per the A/360 Security and Protection specification.
- Uses Task Model architecture for easy backup and restore.
- Offers 1+1 redundancy and automatic failover.