roundtable_round 24/04/2014 12:16 Page 2
Now some of these companies, particularly
when they focus on one business area, are
getting that down to 18 months.”
“There are some challenges to that with
HEVC, it’s a new and immature standard.
Our focus is on taking the cost out and
reducing the resource in the device that has
together on introductory services – as they
are – that can have an important effect,”
comments Orton-Jay.
“A big announcement from an important
broadcaster will help,” claims Porthouse. “If
you remember, Sky announced 3D without
actually saying when it would be available
to be devoted; reducing the bandwidth and
the power. There is a risk for SoC vendors in
the short term of fixing in ‘strains’ of HEVC
that won’t cover all content in the future. In
the short term that means software solutions
are preferred but in the medium and longer
term high end services are going to need
security and I don’t think they will use
software HEVC for secured services.”
“Yes,” agrees Orton-Jay. “The immaturity
of the standard has already caused a few
pitfalls for some manufacturers, in particular
the variance in bitstream.”
“The approach at Entropic is that HEVC
but that drove the whole industry forward.
Interestingly, the studios we talk to are not
happy with just 4K – some content can
actually look worse than in 1080p depending
on context. They want things like higher
colour gamma and improved dynamic range,
and these are still real challenges in terms of
bandwidth and power with the current
infrastructure.”
That throws up an important question,
what is the minimum bit rate that
should be built into the standard; 8,
10, 12?
“We are going down the 10 bit route,”
declares McKenna. “We feel it gives the best
colour definitions, the best compatibility with
HDMI2, but the chips and SoCs will be
compatible with 8 and 12 bit as well.”
“It’s a very interesting area of contention,”
comments Orton-Jay, “particularly between
the display makers, who would probably be
happy just to get the 4K 8bit to market, but
Hollywood and major operators have other
ideas. We have to sit in the middle and
negotiate some of these situations. We think
10 bit probably represents the right
compromise. Everyone has to realise that 4K
on its own is not the jump people are looking
for.”
“I think 8 and 10 bit will have to coexist.
For TV it will be 10 bit but for mobiles and
tablets there will be major power and
bandwidth challenges; certainly very little
content – games for instance – will be made
in 4K, it will be up scaled,” says Porthouse.
What about up scaling content to
HEVC, can this fill the 4K content gap?
“We’re very interested in this,” declares
McKen