The Ultra HD Forum, the global organisation defining industry best practices for the introduction of technologies to facilitate the ultra-HD viewing experience, has released version 1.2 of its Ultra HD Phase A industry guidelines. Ultra HD Phase A encompasses practices and technologies that are commercially feasible in UHD services today. This revision builds on best practices and lessons learned in 2016 and feedback on previous versions of the guidelines to better assist operators with real UHD deployments. Key updates in the new version include information on the following:
• Implementation of channel-based immersive audio for Phase A( e. g. Dolby Atmos),
• Down-converting HDR / WCG to SDR / BT. 709 with ETSI TS 103 433 method,
• Carriage of signalling for transfer function, colour container and colour matrix, including newly added information for filebased video formats,
Ultra HD Forum updates deployment guidelines
• A brief summary / comparison of ITU-R BT. 709, BT. 2020 and BT. 2100,
• ACES Workflow for colour and dynamic range,
• Dynamic HDR metadata technologies as candidates for the forum’ s future work on Phase B.
• With representation from service providers, technology providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, sound and video experts, camera makers and more, as well as feedback from early deployments, the Guidelines describes how commercial Ultra HD services can be deployed, taking into account the entire supply chain. The Ultra HD Forum continues to grow, reaching over 50 members with the recent arrival of key industry leaders such as Google.
“ It’ s exciting to work with such a wide variety of experts from across the ecosystem and incorporate lessons from early adopters to bring these Guidelines to the industry,” said Madeleine Noland, who chairs the Guidelines Working Group on behalf of LG Electronics.“ This new version will pave the way for the Forum’ s‘ Phase B’ guidelines. We are also very excited about the new members coming on board and look forward to incorporating their important perspective into the work.”
The guidelines already include a security chapter on best practice for content encryption.“ Moving forward the Forum will extend this sharing of know-how and feedback on getting UHD security implementation standards to meet content-owner requirements, with emphasis on implementing watermarking,” said NAGRA’ s Laurent Piron, who chairs the Ultra HD Forum’ s Security Working Group.
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Netflix, Amazon backing UHD
Amazon and Netflix are not only acquiring documentaries and films, but are also heavily involved in producing their own content using UHD technologies, according to a white paper – 4K TV and UHD: the whole picture.
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Subscription Video on Demand( SVoD) services have among the lowest revenue per hour of content viewed and of paid content services, making premium content a greater investment. While films comprise the largest number of UHD titles, TV series offer a better return on hours of content viewed per dollar |
invested, the IHS Markit white paper said.
In the UK, Netflix offers 63 UHD titles. Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant have 28 and Sky has 26.“ Online video producers generally offer a broader range of UHD genres than traditional pay TV platforms,” said Jonathan Broughton, senior home entertainment analyst,
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IHS Markit.“ To compete, the budgets have grown dramatically to fulfil their‘ blockbuster’ needs. We are now seeing TV drama budgets around the same levels as major theatrical releases. This means that more expensive production methods involved in UHD make up a smaller proportion of the total budget.” |
Marco Pellegrinato, Director R & D & Innovation at Italy’ s RTI – Mediaset Group, has suggested that the country could adopt an interim HD HDR phase between 2018 and 2022 over digital terrestrial television prior to moving to Ultra HD HDR.
Speaking during a panel session on‘ Italy is Busy with Ultra HD’ in the Sony 4K Ultra HD Theatre at MIPTV, Pellegrinato noted that capacity on the DTT platform and the ability to broadcast in higher resolution is currently limited as a result of the use of the DVB-T1 standard.
“ So, the question of the standard is very important in order to allow the broadcaster to broadcast every day in Ultra HD HDR for
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Mediaset mulls Italian HD HDR transition
everybody,” he declared, confirming that the Italian HD Forum was committed to including the Ultra HD HDR standard in 2017 to enable
industry to manufacture the right TV set for the market and to allow broadcasters“ to begin the Ultra HD era”.
“ In the meanwhile, we are acquiring a knowledge base for Ultra HD HDR shooting... but broadcast in HD. We have a big opportunity in Italy because in 2018 to
2022 we will work in a four-year timeframe to introduce new technology like DVB-T2 and the HEVC codec. That means much better quality and much less bandwidth as possible. So maybe we find in that new efficiency some extra bandwidth to allow broadcasting of HD HDR in a new progressive form. So, what we invest to produce content in full Ultra HD HDR could be downscaled to HD HDR and broadcast in a period from 2018 to 2022 on a new channel in DVB-T2 in order to attract people to enter in the dimension of new TV set and new screen. Beyond 2022, we envisage a replacement of legacy equipment with new in households,” he concluded.