ATSC considers second-generation DTT system

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) board is expected to move forward on plans to develop a new DTT standard for the USA when it meets on the 12th May. During this meeting the board will be given the recommendations of the fact-finding committee responsible for determining what the next generation system could resemble.
If given the go ahead a new technology group will be formed with the aim of developing and deploying a new DTT system in the next 5-10 years.
A second generation DVB system called DVB-T2 is already being deployed in an increasing number of countries around the world and NHK in Japan is also said to be working on a second generation system.
Although it has been less than two years since the US TV broadcasting system switched of its analogue transmitters the 8-VSB DTT system used is already 15 years old and maybe more than 16 years old if you look back at when some of the systems component parts were first developed.
Since then the pace of technology has increased tremendously and many improvements in transmission technologies and compression coding have taken place which would produce a far superior system.
Ironically one option under consideration for the new system is the use a multi-carrier OFDM modulation scheme as used in DVB-T, DVB-T2 and ISDB-T a scheme which was strongly rejected by ATSC previously in favour of the existing single carrier 8-VSB system.
Main source: TV News Check
Item added: 3rd May 2011