NewsBriefs

Disinfecting Cinema Air with UV Light

As the exhibition industry struggles to find ways to re-open and make customers comfortable in the process, projector manufacturer Christie has announced a tool it hopes will help. According to a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter, Christie has announced the debut of new fixtures called CounterAct, designed to emit a disinfecting, filtered ultraviolet light in movie theaters that is both safe for use around humans and capable of reducing pathogens in the air in facilities like cinemas, museums, and theme parks. Christie is using Care22 excimer lamps manufactured by the company’s parent company, Ushio, which emit far-UVC 222nm light in particular patterns. Christie expects to start mass-producing the fixtures in January. Christie has produced a white paper to explain the technology further.

  ATSC 3.0 Update

In late October, the virtual NAB New York conference offered a comprehensive look at the status of the ATSC 3.0 rollout, which TV Technology recently summarized in-depth. The show featured eight sessions dealing with the next-generation TV standard, including a presentation from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. In another session, Madeleine Noland, president of Advanced Television Systems Committee, discussed the importance of the ATSC 3.0’s so-called “bootstrap,” which she called central to enabling the new system to “evolve in a backward-compatible way” by offering a seamless method of allowing new frames to be recognized while at the same time allowing legacy receivers to plug into the system. Another panel discussed the possibilities for a broadcasting “Core Network”—sort of an “anchoring point” for base stations to enable nationwide IP delivery, and much more. Meanwhile, TV Technology also ran a recent update listing all the markets around the country that have deployed ATSC 3.0, or are planning to, so that by early 2021, more than 60 “first markets” will have plugged in, reaching approximately 70 percent of all viewers in the U.S.