HDR stars at IBC 2016 with first commercial products supporting Ultra HD Forum guidelines
Ultra HDTV (UHDTV) will be a major focus at IBC 2016 for at least the second year running and delegates will be able to see just how far the field has moved on since 2015 even if it is clear that there is much work still to do. Publication of the Ultra HD Forum’s Phase A guidelines in April 2016 appears to have galvanized the industry, with IBC providing the first stage for products that comply with the specifications and that will be deployed during 2017. Operators have also moved fast and we will hear from Sky about its latest HDR (High Dynamic Range) trials at a master class organized by the Forum at IBC. There will be a lot of buzz around the imminent start of the world’s first HDR service on October 4th 2016 by Japan’s satellite operator SKY Perfect JSAT (no relation to the Sky group), which will be available to subscribers of the operator’s dedicated channel, SKY PerfecTV! 4K Experience launched on May 1 this year. Ultra HD Forum President Thierry Fautier seized on this as evidence of how fast the field is moving, with expectations of announcements by other operators of services complying with the Phase A guidelines before the end of the year.
IBC will help prepare the ground for such deployments by staging demonstrations of products compliant with the Forum’s guidelines in various relevant categories, including capture, HDR color grading, encoding/decoding and display, as well perhaps as cameras, switchers, playout servers, origin servers, multiplexers and of course set top boxes. “We will expect products in these areas to be deployed in line with our guidelines during 2017,” said Fautier.
As these products become available many operators and broadcasters will be looking to the long standing Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) that have shaped their industry to come out with clear indications how they will incorporate the Ultra HD Forum’s guidelines within their recommendations. IBC should provide some answers on this front. “On the SDO side, we should see at IBC “positions” in some form being announced by both the DVB and ATSC on what standard they will publish before the end of the year,” said Fautier. “We will know more at the master class organized by the Forum at IBC.”
If you’re interested in this topic and the latest developments of the Ultra HD Forum, register to listen live or catch up on-demand to this pre-IBC webinar recording August 25th at 4pm GMT.
This is still an evolving story though, especially regarding HDR where there are many details still to resolve before it can realize its full potential for improving the picture quality on the screen. This point may be lost in all the euphoria over HDR but will become clear during workshops and discussions at IBC, according to Wade Wan, UHD Forum Board Member and video technologist at Broadcom, whose involvement is focused especially on SoCs (System on Chip) for set top boxes and gateways. “HDR is the main focus of UHD work at the moment as we will see at IBC,” said Wan.
ultra-hd-forum-nab-2016-press-conference-16-638
*At NAB this year the Ultra HD Forum Guidelines document was announced
This is because HDR combined with WCG (Wide Color Gamut) has been recognized as the UHDTV component delivering the biggest gain in user experience with the least impact on bandwidth, but at the same time is the most complex to optimize across the infrastructure. “While 4K and HEVC are very isolated and everything just scales up, HDR is about the content itself and gets complicated,” said Wan. “For example you’ve got video that’s HDR and graphics that’s not HDR, which makes people rethink how you blend them together. You’ve got these combinations you didn’t have to deal with before.”
For this reason HDR will not deliver all its promise in one go but will continue to evolve as other elements of the whole UHD package come together. “Some of the more advanced HDR techniques can’t be done in the first generation,” said Wan. That is one reason why the UHD Forum will follow up its phase A guidelines with future phases.
Over that time, as Wan pointed out, the other components will evolve at different rates. With 4K resolution already effectively in the bag in terms of standardization, attention will switch to next generation object based audio quite quickly as HDR matures, while HFR (High Frame Rate) will probably come last, largely because in the immediate term only a small percentage of TVs would be compatible with the higher frame rates, while HDR-complaint models are now quite widely available. Many of the latest TV sets can be made compatible with the two flavors of HDR specified in the UHD Forum Phase A guidelines just with a software upgrade.
There are also other aspects of UHDTV that will figure prominently at IBC, notably the security elements of the guidelines concerning content encryption and watermarking, but these we discuss in a separate blog.
Ultra HDTV (UHDTV) will be a major focus at IBC 2016 for at least the second year running and delegates will be able to see just how far the field has moved on since 2015 even if it is clear that there is much work still to do. Publication of the Ultra HD Forum’s Phase A guidelines in April 2016 appears to have galvanized the industry, with IBC providing the first stage for products that comply with the specifications and that will be deployed during 2017. Operators have also moved fast and we will hear from Sky about its latest HDR (High Dynamic Range) trials at a master class organized by the Forum at IBC. There will be a lot of buzz around the imminent start of the world’s first HDR service on October 4th 2016 by Japan’s satellite operator SKY Perfect JSAT (no relation to the Sky group), which will be available to subscribers of the operator’s dedicated channel, SKY PerfecTV! 4K Experience launched on May 1 this year. Ultra HD Forum President Thierry Fautier seized on this as evidence of how fast the field is moving, with expectations of announcements by other operators of services complying with the Phase A guidelines before the end of the year.
IBC will help prepare the ground for such deployments by staging demonstrations of products compliant with the Forum’s guidelines in various relevant categories, including capture, HDR color grading, encoding/decoding and display, as well perhaps as cameras, switchers, playout servers, origin servers, multiplexers and of course set top boxes. “We will expect products in these areas to be deployed in line with our guidelines during 2017,” said Fautier.
As these products become available many operators and broadcasters will be looking to the long standing Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) that have shaped their industry to come out with clear indications how they will incorporate the Ultra HD Forum’s guidelines within their recommendations. IBC should provide some answers on this front. “On the SDO side, we should see at IBC “positions” in some form being announced by both the DVB and ATSC on what standard they will publish before the end of the year,” said Fautier. “We will know more at the master class organized by the Forum at IBC.”
If you’re interested in this topic and the latest developments of the Ultra HD Forum, register to listen live or catch up on-demand to this pre-IBC webinar recording August 25th at 4pm GMT.
This is still an evolving story though, especially regarding HDR where there are many details still to resolve before it can realize its full potential for improving the picture quality on the screen. This point may be lost in all the euphoria over HDR but will become clear during workshops and discussions at IBC, according to Wade Wan, UHD Forum Board Member and video technologist at Broadcom, whose involvement is focused especially on SoCs (System on Chip) for set top boxes and gateways. “HDR is the main focus of UHD work at the moment as we will see at IBC,” said Wan.
ultra-hd-forum-nab-2016-press-conference-16-638
*At NAB this year the Ultra HD Forum Guidelines document was announced
This is because HDR combined with WCG (Wide Color Gamut) has been recognized as the UHDTV component delivering the biggest gain in user experience with the least impact on bandwidth, but at the same time is the most complex to optimize across the infrastructure. “While 4K and HEVC are very isolated and everything just scales up, HDR is about the content itself and gets complicated,” said Wan. “For example you’ve got video that’s HDR and graphics that’s not HDR, which makes people rethink how you blend them together. You’ve got these combinations you didn’t have to deal with before.”
For this reason HDR will not deliver all its promise in one go but will continue to evolve as other elements of the whole UHD package come together. “Some of the more advanced HDR techniques can’t be done in the first generation,” said Wan. That is one reason why the UHD Forum will follow up its phase A guidelines with future phases.
Over that time, as Wan pointed out, the other components will evolve at different rates. With 4K resolution already effectively in the bag in terms of standardization, attention will switch to next generation object based audio quite quickly as HDR matures, while HFR (High Frame Rate) will probably come last, largely because in the immediate term only a small percentage of TVs would be compatible with the higher frame rates, while HDR-complaint models are now quite widely available. Many of the latest TV sets can be made compatible with the two flavors of HDR specified in the UHD Forum Phase A guidelines just with a software upgrade.
There are also other aspects of UHDTV that will figure prominently at IBC, notably the security elements of the guidelines concerning content encryption and watermarking, but these we discuss in a separate blog.
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