4K UHD: Good to go?
UHD is part of every broadcaster conversation but is it ready for the market – there are plenty of TVs being sold but what about standards, content capture, workflow and transmission? Chris
Forrester chaired a panel of experts brought together by Advanced Television.
Nothing holds a system back like failure to agree on basic standards and UHD doesn’ t have its‘ act together’, yet on issues such as colour gamut, frame rate and High Dynamic range...?
“ It does matter; it is unfortunate we’ re drip feeding the standards in terms of the change from a broadcast HD environment to an IP UHD 4K one, but I think that’ s inevitable and it’ s up to us to manage,” says Ian Trow, senior director of emerging technology, Harmonic.
“ It’ s relatively straightforward to produce a standard for production but much less so for delivery to home,” warns Tim Felstead, head of product marketing at Snell Advanced Media.“ In production, the moment there is a new standard available to us, we adopt it as we are strong believers in
“ The difference for the consumer is incredible.” open and agreed standards.”
“ We have been on air with UHD since last August,” declares Jamie Hindlaugh, chief operating officer for BT Sport.“ I think there’ s a real danger in getting too involved with formats and engineers trying to drive what is consumer behaviour. We made the decision to move into UHD because we have an IP platform. I think it’ s about evolution and we need to be wary of formats for formats sake. We work with what is available, and you can see the difference for the consumer is incredible and that’ s what we need to deliver- a differential the audience can see.”
“ If we look at the last few years, specifically on the production side, the tools for acquisition have been there for four or five years,” explains Peter Sykes, strategic technology manager, Sony Professional.“ Then we had to develop monitoring tools that allow us to get the best out of those pictures but that’ s still evolving. Standards are important because they will allow manufacturers to implement up to those standards but there’ s always an evolution in the market.”
“ I think by bringing a service to market we’ ve become like an R & D department for manufacturers and it was important we did that – I think 4K was in danger of talking itself to death to be frank,” comments Hindlaugh.“ You learn as you go along and the development has ramped up dramatically.”
“ It is, though, in live events like sport where getting standardisation will be important. Equipment has to work right now, every time,” says Felstead.
“ There are two things developing here,” says Trow.“ UHD delivery and IP infrastructure and certainly I don’ t think any manufacturer would get away with a strictly proprietary approach.”
“ The standards approach for an EBU broadcaster is going to be different than for an IPTV or OTT supplier,” comments Felstead.“ On the one hand, you have terrestrial delivery where you don’ t control both ends so you want signals to play on myriad of different manufacturers’ devices.”
“ In terms of production we’ re already capturing more than just sport,” says Sykes,“ and when people see the pictures you immediately get that engagement and it’ s impressive. Making content in UHD now – when there isn’ t a massive audience available – is about the future and about gaining a competitive advantage now. We’ re providing tools to let customers differentiate themselves in a crowded landscape.”
“ It’ s a far different environment than going form SD to HD which was a much smaller incremental increase,” advises Hindlaugh.“ When we down convert from 4K to HD, the quality of the HD is better.”
“ A big challenge is delivery of this very data heavy format,” says George Mikeladze, founder and CEO of Qarva.“ We started
“ Equipment has to work right now, every time.”
developing our open internet solution five years ago. We are able to deliver a 35Mb stream from continent to continent over the open net with almost no latency. OTT is delivering movies and sports events and that trend will continue.”
“ We have 1.5 million homes served over IPTV, for UHD homes need BT Infinity but with that and our UHD box we’ ve encountered less problems than we anticipated,” says Hindlaugh.“ There are some restrictions depending on your speed and use, but as broadband speeds increase that goes hand in hand with us increasing our content output.”
“ Prestige programming – sport, movies, concerts etc. – will showcase the technology. Other content will catch up eventually but there must be backwards compatibility in the content and at the viewer’ s end,” notes Trow.
“ If you’ re producing file content or live content in 4K and you’ re not tying to over crush it, then you instantly have a problem with disc capacity and network bandwidth. On the delivery side we have fantastic compression algorithms that can deliver
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