High Dynamic Range (HDR) is not dependent on having a 4K video. HDR can be used to improve the picture quality of 1080p and lower resolutions. What does that mean? Existing wireline pay TV services and cellcos could greatly improve their picture quality without having to make enormous and very costly upgrades to their networks.
If HDR is as good as promised, operators could offer picture quality that approaches, even equals or surpasses, 4K – and needing only around 25% more bandwidth. HDR viewing does require HDR content, which means HDR-capable cameras, production gear and TV sets are required – which means HDR could be soon be available for sports and other live events such as live broadcasts and news.
Pay TV’s use of HDR, which could take another year just to begin, requires that its subscribers have an HDR capable TV set – and all HDR-capable sets are also 4K sets. The more HDR/4K sets their subscribers buy, the more those subscribers will want to watch 4K plus HDR content, virtually the full UHD spec. That benefits OTT services that will for a long time offer more 4K and HDR content than pay TV. It’s a battle for eyeballs and viewing hours. Linear pay TV is the likely loser – although its broadband operations will flourish.
Technicolor has been pioneering one flavor of HDR for some time. In anticipation of the upcoming NAB trade show where HDR will be a bright star, Technicolor’s VP of partnership relations and business development Mark Turner said that OTT services threaten pay TV companies because they have been able to offer HDR content much faster than pay TV services (as they have with 4K). Unlike pay TV services, OTT services are largely software-based, without set tops and DVRs to buy and deploy in subscriber homes. OTT services don’t have large and expensive networks to build, upgrade and maintain. Consequently, OTT services have been able to offer HDR content in a matter of months.
Viewers need HDR-capable TV sets to watch HDR content, but most don’t have because HDR TV sets are so new that almost none have been sold, with the earliest ones being launched at IFA last autumn. Most of the installed base of 4K TV sets, even the newest, cannot handle HDR – and cannot be upgraded to handle it. In fact, most entry-level, mass-market 4K TVs in stores today are not HDR capable, just a few top end models.
Technicolor is currently working with pay TV operators to use existing networks to provide “just some” HDR content – the big shows – and enable them to offer it to subscribers, who have an HDR capable TV set. Turner said those HDR TV buyers are more affluent and so pay extra for sports and movie packages – the most profitable subscribers that pay TV services want to keep happy. He said the company is talking to them about how to deploy its HDR technology and expects to have HDR services in either closed testing or consumer beta tests that are on pay TV in HDR. That, he said, is far ahead of where 4K is at the pay TV services.
Turner made several points about the current state of HDR and its availability to pay TV services; Technicolor’s HDR technology is what it calls an upscaler, which it defines as a chip-based HDR upscaling solution that upscales in real-time, standard dynamic range to HDR. The chip can be used in the TV set or set top. It can be used as a plug-in for color grading equipment and creating shows. At NAB, Technicolor will announce when that upscaling technology will be available.
Technicolor has an HDR partnership with Phillips, and the two will talk about what it means at NAB. There are a number of different HDR “standards” that are headed in slightly different directions – broadcasters, content producers and pay TV services, which will have to deliver both live and recorded content.
Technicolor does not expect an HDR standard soon from MPEG. HEVC can compress HDR content but in many cases may not be optimized for it.
Finally, the CE-maker’s industry is embracing HDR, as it usually does for new technologies, but the content industry, which did not embrace 4K, is getting excited about HDR. It’s creating HDR content and putting it into the vaults until broadcasters are ready for it. It’s being used now for everything – big and small budget movies and broadcast shows.
Technicolor is a founder and board member of the UHD Alliance and says its HDR technology was developed for the widest range of applications: blockbuster movies and games, live sports, TV dramas, comedies, and local news programing. It works with the entire content distribution chain: content creators, owners, pay TV services, broadcasters and makers of TVs. It said its HDR ecosystem “is unconstrained by proprietary and closed ecosystems.” No doubt a dig at rival Dolby and its Dolby Vision.
Technicolor’s point is that to stimulate fast and successful consumer adoption of HDR, it is “essential to have high-quality cooperation and coordination across the entertainment technology value-chain.” That, it said, is best done with its open and collaborative approach to HDR, which “ensures seamless integration across networks and devices, while enabling innovation and differentiation at each stage of the ecosystem.” It said it has developed a suite of end to end HDR solutions that solve real-world media industry challenges and deliver to consumers the full promise of HDR.” Which it said will free viewers from “an incredibly constrained visual spectrum that is defined by outdated display technologies.” HDR capable TV sets provide more vivid colors, richer contrast, deeper shadows and brighter highlights, which is what the human eye sees in nature.
Technicolor said its UHD/HDR capable set tops for pay TV services are “the world’s first UHD, High Frame Rate (p60), HDR set tops.” They decode both HDR and SDR versions of the same content using Technicolor’s backwards-compatible, single-stream HEVC solution for HDR delivery. It has also developed technology that it said enables the world’s first UHD and HDR FTA broadcasts. It is based on the proposed ATSC 3.0 technologies. It is testing that with Sinclair’s experimental OFDM transmission system under real-world conditions outside of a laboratory. It delivers “high quality HDR content broadcast at HD and 4K/UHD resolutions” to both HDR and legacy devices. It’s based on the open standards from MPEG (HEVC, SHVC, 3D Audio from MPEG-H) plus HDR, with MMT and DASH transport streaming standards, and Technicolor’s Staggercast and Fast Channel Change technologies.
Last December, Technicolor and Sinclair’s One Media said they had successfully broadcast OTA 4K TV signals content with HDR using the proposed ATSC 3.0 standard and a prototype reception device. Scalable HEVC encoding from French compression specialist Ateme was also used in the transmission, which also included 3D audio, sometimes called immersive audio. The distance from the transmitter, a Technicolor Teamcast modulator, to a prototype receiver, developed jointly by One Media and Technicolor, was 15 miles.
The transmission used MPEG Media Transport (MMT), which supports HEVC that compresses video and audio by about twice as much as the older industry standard H.264/MPEG-4 without affecting picture quality. Here’s the kicker: Stations currently broadcast TV signals that are encoded into MPEG-2, which has roughly half of the compression power of MPEG-4. HEVC provides broadcasters with 4K signals in the same bandwidth. That will allow broadcasters to include in the same signal: HDR 4KTV, interactivity, multiple audio tracks (for different languages or from different locations at an event), immersive (3D) audio, simultaneous data transmissions and broadcasts for mobile devices. 4KTV signals contain four times the picture information as 1080p HD.
TVs will need the same capabilities to receive and play all of those picture and audio enhancements, which means that makers of TV sets are looking for a sales increase if and when broadcasters start broadcasting 4K and the related technologies, which have been defined by the UHD Alliance which Technicolor helped start.
One of the main things driving the development of the ATSC 3.0 standard, in addition to retaining viewers and fighting off OTT services, is the FCC’s impending retaking of some of the spectrum that TV broadcasters use.
The first 4KTV-over-ATSC 3.0 test was conducted in South Korea in September 2015. Eleven South Korean broadcasters watched the demonstration, because they are interested in ATSC 3.0 for 4K for the 2018 Korean Winter Olympics.
This first ran in Rider Research’s Online Reporter.