Announcement

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 07-13-2015, 09:33 PM

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?18084-Understanding-Ultra-HD-Blu-ray-Disc-and-TV-Technology&p=328226&viewfull=1#post328226

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 07-17-2015, 12:52 AM

Some had corrected that the excellent article above was incorrect about 10 bit 4:2:0 being limit. excluding 12 bit and 422 420.

These are future options as explained here:

4K UHD Blu-ray – Ultra-HD Specification now Complete

May 12, 2015 - Ron Jones 0 4 131
Many owners and potential owners of 4K/UHD projectors are eagerly awaiting the arrival Ultra-HD Blu-ray. I have discussed the new technology in a number of previous blogs and this blog discusses the official announcement of the initial version of the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification is now complete. For this blog, I will dicuss what we now believe to the baseline capabilities of this new UHD optical disc format and what are some of the potential options or extensions to the Ultra-HD Blu-ray that may be coming along over the next few years.

The Ultra HD Blu-ray Specifiation is now Complete

The Blu-ray Disc Association, which controls the Blu-ray related specifications and patent licensing, today (May 12, 2015) announced the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification is now complete. It is often referred to as Blu-ray UHD, or UHD Blu-ray. Below is the essential information from that press release:

LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) today announced completion of the Ultra HD Blu-ray™ specification and released the new logo that will delineate Ultra HD Blu-ray products. The Ultra HD Blu-ray specification, which represents the work of global leaders from the consumer electronics, IT and content creation industries, will enable delivery of Ultra HD content via Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc to the rapidly growing number of UHD TV households.

“For years, Blu-ray Disc™ has set the standard for high definition picture and audio quality in the home. Ultra HD Blu-ray will do the same for UHD home entertainment,” said Victor Matsuda, chair, BDA Promotions Committee. “The technical capabilities of Blu-ray Disc, in particular its significant storage capacity and high data transfer rates, will enable the delivery of an unparalleled, consistent and repeatable UHD experience.”

The completed Ultra HD Blu-ray specification addresses a range of factors, beyond simply increasing resolution, that will significantly enhance the home entertainment experience for consumers. In addition to delivering content in up-to 3840×2160 resolution, the Ultra HD Blu-ray format enables delivery of a significantly expanded color range and allows for the delivery of high dynamic range (HDR) and high frame rate content. Next-generation immersive, object-based sound formats will also be delivered via the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification. Additionally, with the optional digital bridge feature, the specification enhances the value of content ownership by embracing the notion that a content purchase can enable the consumer to view their content across the range of in-home and mobile devices.

The specification also mandates all new Ultra HD Blu-ray players be capable of playing back current Blu-ray Discs, giving consumers access to the vast library of more than 10,000 titles currently available on Blu-ray Disc.

Licensing of Ultra HD Blu-ray is scheduled to begin this Summer. The BDA is working closely with industry leaders in the authoring, testing, certification and replication industries to develop the tools and process needed to ensure interoperability between players and software and to facilitate the development of a robust ecosystem to support the hardware and title launch of Ultra HD Blu-ray.”

Given the above information it appears the consumer electronics manufacturers and movie studios may be able to meet the timetable announced at CES 2015, back in January, to have the first players and movie discs available to consumer later this year.

Editor’s note: Finally! Projector fans its time to start thinking of 4K projectors. With Blu-ray UHD players and content out in time for the holiday season, it’s time to demand projector manufacturers get serious about rolling out 4K projectors. Hopefully more than Sony will have true 4K projectors this year at CEDIA, and hopefully more companies making native 1080p projectors will bring out projectors enhanced to handle Ultra Blu-ray content! -art

What Capabilities Can We Expect

Panasonic 4K Blu-ray Player

So far, only a single manufacture has shown a prototype Ultra-HD Blu-ray player. This was Panasonic whose prototype player that was shown at CES 2015 is pictured above. It is expected that Sony, LG and Samsung will likely also be among the first consumer electronics manufacturers to offer Ultra-HD Blu-ray players. At least some, if not all, of these manufacturers are expected to have their first generation Ultra HD Blu-ray players on dealers shelves before the end of 2015.

Over the past year, there has been a lot of conflicting information offered on the web about what Blu-ray UHD will offer, or not offer. I offer the following information in an attempt to clarify what we really expect to see with Ultra HD Blu-ray. The following combines official information released by spokespersons from the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), officially information derived from manufactures internal documents that have somehow been leaked and posted on the web, and some reading-between-the-lines for what the Ultra-HD Blu-ray capabilities will be. In my previous blogs I have attempted to indicate that the status of what information I have provided. While the Blu-ray Disc Assoication has just announced the specification is now complete, the contents of that spec. has not been made public, so we may need to wait little longer before we learn the specific details.

It appears to me that a lot of the confusion and conflicting information found on the web about what the capabilities of Ultra-HD Blu-ray will be comes from a lack of understanding of what the specification of this next generation format will define. While I have not seen the approved specification, an understanding how the current HD Blu-ray Disc is specified along with information taken with comments by spokespersons from the BDA about the Ultra-HD Blu-ray specification, helps to create what should be an accurate picture of the very high level provisions of this new specification.

First, the spec. will cover both the recorded media (the movie discs you will buy or rent) as well as the hardware that will play these discs. For the UHD discs themselves there will be a baseline set of approved formats and capabilities and a given disc title must use one of these allowed formats. There will be optional features that a given disc may also support if the studio elects to do so.

For the players, the spec. is expected to define a set of baseline, mandatory requirements that all players must satisfy as part of the license agreement. This initial spec. is also expected to define certain optional features/capabilities that manufacturers may elect to implement in their players, or not. Finally, this initial spec. is also expected to include certain extensibility provisions intended to allow future updates to the spec. to define enhance capabilities while retaining backward compatibility with first generation hardware and discs.

The Ultra-HD Blu-ray players will also be required to be backward compatible with HD Blu-ray discs and probably also DVDs.

Since this blog is focused on the UHD (sometimes called 4K) capabilities, I’m not going to discuss playback of the existing 1080p Blu-ray discs. So what will the mandatory requirements be for the UHD capabilities of these new Ultra-HD Blu-ray players? So far, we only have a partial answer to that questions. The most reliable information we have comes from official BDA spokespersons and from leaked Panasonic (Japan) and Sony documents. From this info it appears rather certain that all Ultra HD Blu-ray players will be required to play UHD discs with the following characteristics:

Disc Capacity: 66 GB (dual layer) and 100 GB (3 layer)

Maximum Data Rate: greater than 100 Mbps (probably 128 Mbps max. rate for a 100 GB disc)

Video coding: HEVC (ITU-T H.265)

Video Bit Depth: 10-bits (per color)

Note: use of bit depths greater than 10-bits may be option or perhaps accommoded in a future update to the spec. through an extensibility provision.

UHD Video format: 2160p/24Hz up to 2160p/60Hz

Chroma Sub-Sampling Scheme: 4:2:0

Note: higher fidelity chroma sub-sampling schemes (i.e., 4:2:2, 4:4:4) may be accommoded in a future update to the spec. through an extensibility provision.

Color Gamut: Multiple color spaces (color gamuts) will be supported and delivered within a ITU Rec. 2020 transport format. Most likely Rec. 709 and DCI-P3 color spaces will specifically be identified and the player will be required to map from the color space used for the recording to the color space that can be supported by the connected UHD display.

High Dynamic Range (HDR): Is a feature that the Ultra HD Blu-ray players must support and is a option for use on Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. HDR can be implemented with one or two layers of information on the recording. The SMPTE sfor HDR (ST 2084 and ST 2086) is consider the first or basic data layer for HDR and will be a baseline requirement that all players must support. There will also be a option for a second layer of HDR support and players may optionally support the DolbyVision HDR or the Philip HDR extensions for this second layer. Individual movies released on Ultra HD Blu-ray discs may elect to support the HDR feature or not. If a disc is released that supports, for example, the baseline HDR plus DolbyVision HDR extensions, then this disc will still be compatible even with those players that only support the baseline HDR layer, in which case the DolbyVision extensions would simply be ignored.

Interface: All Ultra HD Blu-ray players will support HDMI 2.0a along with HDCP 2.2 copy protection and the connected UHD display, as well as any intermediate device (e.g, AVR), must also support these standards for their signal connections in order to the display the UHD video coming from the Ultra HD Blu-ray with all of the available features and performance.

Audio: In addition of the standard stereo, 5.1 and 7.1 formats found on today’s HD Blu-ray discs, Ultra HD Blu-ray will also support “next-generation immersive, object-based sound formats.”

Digital Rights Management: A new generation of digital rights management will be used for Ultra HD Blu-ray discs with the introduction of AACS 2.0, replacing AACS 1.x used on current Blu-ray discs. AACS 2.0 comes in a basic and an enhanced version where the enhanced version allows the movie studio to require the Ultra HD Blu-ray player to obtain a security key via the internet the first time a given disc title is played on that player. The player will then store this security key such that internet access will not be required for any future playing of that disc title on that player. At this point there is no indication if any of the movie studios actually intend to use this feature on their future Ultra HD Blu-ray disc releases, but it they do, then that would mean the user’s Ultra=HD Blu-ray player would need to be connected to internet the first time the disc is played, and that would be certain to raise an issue with some potential home theater owners.

Potential Future Enhancements: It is believed that the Ultra HD Blu-ray specification, as well the ITU specification for the HEVC UHD encoding, used by Ultra HD Blu-ray, include extensibility provisions that are intended to allow certain potential future enhancements, such as support for 2160p resolution 3D video, to be added in a future version of the specification. The goal would be to allow future players and discs to support these advanced capabilities while allowing such advanced future disc releases to still be playable on the first generation of Ultra HD Blu-ray players as well as allowing advanced future Ultra HD players to play all pervious and current generation Blu-ray discs.

- See more at: http://www.projectorreviews.com/home-theater-and-projectors-the-technical-side/ultra-hd-blu-ray-specification-now-complete/#sthash.LHeWLpgS.dpuf

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 08-01-2015, 12:49 AM

From tech radar...

Quite Frankly I was kind of saddened by the prospects of not being able to dynamically upconvert to HDR on the fly:

Great news indeed, next year I expect to see an exploding source component ecosystem for high end laser projection, the fact that this is done in standard hevc network architectures make the creation of a pc based set top box for projectors very doable as new pc's get HEVC hardware...

Technicolor's tech could be the HDR TVs have been looking for
By Dave James 2 days agoTelevision

Single-stream and back-rendering are the future of HDR

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High dynamic range (HDR) is the next big thing in both movies and TVs. We've seen 4K in the cinema and ultra HD arrive in our homes, with more and more content for both appearing. Now Technicolor is getting behind the tech, and is offering a way to both back-render standard range (SDR) content as well as stream full HDR video.

HDR is the visually rich step up from UHD fidelity which the move from 1080p to 4K simply hasn't been.

Essentially, HDR is designed to give far more depth to an image, offering more range to colours and more detail to shadows. Imagine a ray of sunlight in a variety of orange and yellow hues rather than just straight white light.

It makes things pop.

I recently checked out Dolby Vision, that company's proprietary HDR tech, at a screening of Pixar's Inside Out and it was stunning. Having seen an SDR version of the movie now, and how flat the iridescent colours look by comparison, I'm sold.

Technicolor, though, is claiming its HDR tech is both open and able to be applied to SDR content for a high dynamic range upscale. It's also planned to be one of the HDR options available to the upcoming Ultra HD Blu-ray specification.

That alone will massively boost the amount of HDR content available.

The upscaling gives content providers real-time access to the colour information in a video, allowing for direct control over both the highlights, lowlights and mid-tones. As well as being able to apply this to existing content there's speculation that it could work for live events, such as sport, too.

Quite how the upscaling will compare with full HDR content, only time will tell.

Stream dream

The most impressive thing about Technicolor's HDR tech, though, is in the way it's being designed to stream across networks, taking advantage of existing HEVC-compatible encoders and decoders.

"Today the option to view HDR content is an either-or scenario depending on screen display, which creates duplicity and inefficiencies in delivering content to the consumer," said Mark Turner, VP of Partnership Relations and Business Development at Technicolor.

"Our single-layer technology looks to address such challenges, dramatically reducing storage and bandwidth costs by eliminating the need for two delivery systems, which will mean more consumers will enjoy the benefits of HDR sooner and on more screens."

In its design the Technicolor pre-processing takes a full HDR source and splits it into a standard dynamic range stream alongside the HDR metadata. This extra HDR information is separated from the SDR video stream to save on bandwidth and allow only a single stream to be needed to send both SDR and HDR content.

At the final stage the TV will then either display the standard version if it has no HDR capabilities – or lacks the Technicolor decoder tech – or display the full HDR video by taking the metadata and recombining the full effect into the standard stream.

Hopefully, with Technicolor's tech being open to all, we won't see any format wars with the introduction of HDR towards the end of the year, but you can never say never…

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 08-11-2015, 12:10 AM

from streaming media.com

Does a higher resolution guarantee the best image quality, or does better contrast and brightness? And can today's limited bandwidth handle all that data?

By Yoel Zanger
Posted on August 7, 2015

There is a controversy taking place between 4K and HDR. For the past few years, 4K has been the poster child for visual innovation in TVs. Now, High Dynamic Range (HDR) as a buzz word is quickly rising in popularity with industry experts. The two types of quality enhancement, associated with the emerging UHD standard, have recently been used as marketing trump cards for industry players, e.g. Netflix currently offers more 4K content. while Amazon started by offering HDR content.

It is hard to say which will win the marketing buzz war. Probably both will eventually become part of the UHD standard, together with other UHD features such as WCG (Wide Color Gamut) and HFR (Higher Frame Rates). The challenge of standardizing is complicated by the fact that OEMs aren’t completely on-board yet with 4K, and current TVs are mostly not HDR-ready.

The two “non-standards” have their respective problems and benefits for visual quality. While TV OEMs and streaming video producers lean on buzzwords to market products, many consumers are in the dark about what it really means for them.

So, let's clear up some of the confusion and suggest an outcome for the 4K and HDR wars that could be a win for everyone—consumers, content providers, and consumer electronic device OEMs alike.

Quality Matters with 4K and HDR

4K relates to the horizontal pixel count, and theoretically improves resolution by increasing the number of dots on a screen for a higher quality image.

Usually the assumption is that higher resolution is better, and TV manufacturers are making large 4K screens affordable. But does a large TV make sense for the limited space in a tiny San Francisco or New York City apartment? For the human eye to fully recognize the difference in pixel counts, you have to be within a certain distance of the screen. Most small apartments only have 6 to 8 feet of space between the couch and TV. At that distance, a 65-inch TV screen would be far too large for the space. You would have to sit over 9 feet away for the optimal viewing experience.

The other issue is that more pixels boosts the bandwidth requirements for streaming video. There are technologies for TV sets that improve streaming content capabilities over existing bandwidth speeds, but they have yet to be adopted as a standard on all TV manufacturers and OTT services.

Recently, Netflix stood behind HDR as more important than 4K for higher quality content, despite having been beaten to the punch by Amazon which pitched HDR first. HDR emphasizes strong contrast between light and dark parts of an image, producing a more eye-popping and clear picture without the issues of inconsistency caused by viewer distance from the screen. Essentially, if you're able to take a standard image and make the reds, greens, and blues brighter or darker, then emphasize shadows or highlights, you're able to make an image look less flat.

Many photographers use this technique to improve photo contrast and color, with results that almost look 3D. Pixel luminosity is measured in nits, with each nit equivalent to the brightness of one candle. The majority of today’s TVs peak at 100 nits, with HD TVs topping at about 1000 nits. This means most TV's aren’t ready to handle HDR content.

HDR and more nits puts a strain on internet bandwidth, as well, although not nearly as much as 4K. Thus, if you want to see the brightest white clouds around Lando Calrissian's Cloud City from the Star Wars trilogy, or the depth of contrast in a high-speed action movie, you're going to need more bandwidth.

While HDR could be used on any TV that is bright enough, creating an HDR world is difficult because it requires TV manufacturers and content producers to be on the same page.

Another factor is what's in it for the technology companies leading UHD development. Today, vendors such as Dolby, Technicolor, and Philips have their own competing intellectual property for HDR and ways to improve image quality and streaming speeds. Codec companies like Dolby and Technicolor will continue to push HDR because there is no real intellectual property to be had in 4K (It's hard to patent adding more pixels), but there is a need for HDR licensing. Of course, being able to have both 4K and HDR content would be the goal.

Handicapping the Winner

In the past, increases in resolution happened first in the cinema, then on broadcast, and finally in online content. With 4K we saw this happen in reverse for the simple reason that the cinema experience does not allow each viewer to experience the same image in the intended way (people sit different distances from the movie screen). Despite a lack of early adoption, 4K TVs are becoming affordable enough to be a standard. In 2014, 11 percent of global TV sales were 4K, and in China 25 percent were 4K. A recent report from the CEA said revenue for 4K televisions is projected to reach $5.3 billion in 2015, more than double its 2014 total.

However, HDR has the potential to win the quality war. Dolby recently announced it will create a method to deliver HDR-enabled content to legacy TVs. But, it's likely there will be a significant difference between “fully-HDR” and “HDR-ready” TVs. With consumers purchasing a new TV on average every 5 to 6 years, the potential backwards compatibility of HDR makes it more attractive to content producers.

Of course, the real winner would be a hybrid approach, HDR content on 4K TVs. This would offer the best of both worlds—the best possible clarity and quality with the best possible TV and streaming technologies. But, internet bandwidth limits will likely strangle this approach until we all have a bigger pipe, particularly during primetime hours. Until then, the viewing experience we'll get in the near future from TVs and streaming services will be in incremental improvements.

[Yoel Zanger is the CEO of Giraffic. StreamingMedia.com accepts vendor-contributed articles like this one based solely on their value to our readers.]

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 08-11-2015, 12:32 AM

By Jeff Boccaccio, August 06, 2015

The need for additional bandwidth that HDMI faithfully provides in Rev2.0 HDMI came along even faster than we at DPL Labs predicted. Rev2.0a has been announced and with that comes yet another feature set, HDR.

This is a huge subject and would require thousands of words to thoroughly cover it all, so for now we will at least cover the basics so that integrators can start thinking through what you need to do in order to offer and support this for your customers. First a brief description of what HDR is, and then we will get into the reproduction side.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and as usual you’ll hear it called different things depending on the manufacturer (like Panasonic’s Dynamic Range Re-Master or LG’s Ultra Luminance, for example). At press time there was no set standard developed for HDR, but word is the UHD Alliance is working on it, so at least there will be some control.

Basically, HDR has the potential for a much larger dynamic of brightness, sometimes referred to as “peak luminance levels” along with an increased color gamut compared with current displays.

Before delving further, here are some associated terms you’ll no doubt be hearing more. Luminous intensity’s defined units of measurements are called candelas. A candela (Latin for candle) is a monochromatic light source in one direction equaling about 7 hundredths of a watt per one square meter (cd/m2). These units of luminance can also be referred to as nits (from Latin nitere, to shine).

For an idea of how much more dynamic we are talking about look at Fig 1. The entire bar spans about 4,000 nits, where Dolby Vision is claiming to go, but check out where current displays are now, down in the 400 ranges.

CE Pro Webinar On Demand: HDMI in 2015: The 2.0a Spec, Your Questions and More

This is huge! And how do we pay for this? You guessed it, bandwidth. How much? Our number crunching estimates in the range of 4K@ 10-to-12 bit color (Deep Color Range), which will put us over 10.2Gbps to near the 18Gbps territory. You can see the difference in image quality in Fig 2.

And now it will be coming to a home theater near you. The buzzword “4K” might be driving display sales, but as everyone knows, seeing is believing. When one gets even a glimpse of an HDR display versus a non-HDR display, the viewer will think something is wrong with the non-HDR system. I think the thirst for HDR will drive the upper bandwidth demand limits hard and fast.

This is where you must be aware what your systems can support now and in the future. For example, we had a cable come in recently for testing whose maker claimed over 30Gbps bandwidth. But Fig 3’s left picture is that cable at only 9Gbps and the one to the right is the same cable at 17.92Gbps (18Gbps) — Houston, we may have a signal transmission problem. Be prudent when reading and understanding these specs.

Manufacturers sending products into DPL for testing in the past six months are demanding 18Gbps testing essentially to find out if their products can or cannot handle these data rates. If they’re curious, shouldn’t you be too?

Attached Files

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 08-11-2015, 12:49 AM

What would motivate you to buy a new TV receiver? 3D? Probably not. 4K resolution? Well maybe, if you can afford an 80 inch display. High dynamic range? Once you see HDR video on an HDR display, yes, that’s the ticket.

HDR and its technology cousin wide color gamut (WCG) are advances in digital video technology that you can really see, unlike 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) resolution. HDR video provides brighter highlights and darker blacks. Side by side with standard dynamic range (SDR), the difference is obvious. WCG delivers more colors, more consistent with the ability of our eyes, than today’s TV displays can reproduce.

First, some technical background.

The candela is the unit of luminous intensity. The unit of luminance is candela per square meter, also known as a “nit.” The majority of TVs today have a peak luminance of perhaps 100-400 nits. The first generation of HDR displays will have a peak luminance of perhaps 1,000 nits. In the real world, for comparison, a fluorescent bulb might have a luminance of 6,000 nits, and a glint of sunlight reflecting off a shiny surface might have a luminance of 100,000 nits or more.

The dynamic range of the human visual system ranges from about 100,000:1 to 1,000,000:1, depending on the scene. Digital TV programming has been created to be consistent with the 100:1 dynamic range of CRT television displays. While flat panel displays could be built with greater dynamic range, today they are matched to the programming, which continues to be produced to align with the capabilities of CRT displays.

Color gamut deals with the differences between the range of physical pure colors (wavelengths), the range of colors that can be perceived by the human eye, and the range of colors that can be reproduced on a TV display. Human color vision response is usually described in terms of the “CIE 1931 color space,” which uses a two dimensional figure that shows all the colors that can be perceived by the human eye. (The CIE is the International Committee on Illumination.)

Digital television uses the specification found in ITU-R Recommendation BT.709 to describe the color components used in digital television today. The range of colors supported by BT.709 is far smaller than the range of colors in the CIE 1931 color space. According to one source, the BT.709 color space covers 35.9 percent of the CIE 1931 color space. Today’s digital televisions are designed to reproduce the BT.709 colors, and might not have the capability to reproduce a wider gamut of colors. But there is a newer ITU-R Recommendation, BT.2020, that provides for a wider color gamut. BT.2020 is said to cover 75.8 percent of the CIE 1931 color space.

Here’s a goal for the next few years: TVs that comply with the BT.2020 color gamut, and have a peak luminance of 4,000 nits. So far as I know, there aren’t any commercially-available TVs today that meet this goal. But in the near term there will be displays with wider color gamut and peak luminosity of 1,000 to 2,000 nits.

So what happens when an HDR signal is delivered to an SDR display, or a WCG signal is delivered to a BT.709 display? Things get ugly. That’s why the Blu-ray Disc Association asked the Consumer Electronics Association to define a way to signal across the HDMI interface when the content is HDR. Blu-ray discs with HDR and WCG content are expected to be on the market later this year, as well as disc players and displays that are compatible

**Peter CINERAMAX** · 08-11-2015, 02:39 AM

In the interest of getting an update on the decision-making going on now within various industry standards groups on the future of 4K Ultra HDTV systems that will present picture improvements including inclusion of high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG), we caught up with Pat Griffis, Dolby Laboratories office of the CTO executive director, to better understand what Dolby is proposing.

In a recent interview with Technicolor’s business development VP, we learned that Dolby Labs was pursuing a closed system, which it calls Dolby Vision, for content development, encoding and display technologies supporting HDR and WCG, which Technicolor and others believe should be open for broadbased development and use.

But Griffis said that it was Dolby that led the charge for HDR and WCG systems in next-generation displays and that several of the technologies it has submitted have already been adopted as standards for industry use.

Read more of our interview with Dolby Labs’ Pat Griffis after the jump:

Q: We’ve heard from Technicolor that Dolby is pursuing a system for HDR that isn’t open to collaboration and designed to work within a closed ecosystem of manufacturers and content providers. How would you describe the HDR formats and systems you would like to see passed within the Ultra HD Alliance (UHDA) and other industry standards setting bodies?

A: Dolby was the first to reintroduce the possibilities of high dynamic range with wider color gamut (or “better pixels”) to the attention of the technical community and industry at large several years ago. Dolby led the effort to create a new set of standards in The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), which define a new HDR Electro-Optic Transfer Function (EOTF) [the process by which digital code words are transferred into visible light] based on how the human eye sees, called the “Perceptual Quantizer” or “PQ” (SMPTE ST-2084), as well as a standard to define the characteristics of the HDR mastering environment ( SMPTE ST-2086).

These standards have been embraced by a number of standards bodies including Blu-ray, MPEG, and now UHDA. Dolby Vision builds on these standards to provide the best possible experience today. We continue to standardize other components of the Dolby Vision technology including our technology to capture and deliver content-scene-based information to improve the mapping of HDR to SDR. As an invited founding member of the UHD Alliance, recognized for our leadership in both audio and imaging technologies, Dolby is working in concert with the Alliance to ensure these technologies, coupled with performance metrics, will deliver a premium entertainment experience throughout the Ultra HD ecosystem from content creation to consumer enjoyment.

Q: What would you like to see approved as an industry standard for HDR, and why is that superior to the solutions sought by others?

A: We would like to see Dolby Vision approved as an industry standard for HDR. We recognized the need for HDR and wider color gamut as key features for the next generation entertainment experience. After years of research and development, investigating the requirements in the market, close cooperation with all six Hollywood studios to define the necessary precision and then spec a future-proof approach, we developed Dolby Vision as an end-to-end ecosystem solution focusing on the best end-consumer experience. Dolby Vision was developed as the highest quality solution capable of up to full 12-bit dynamic range performance and as such, is a super set of all other approaches in the market. As requirements have evolved, Dolby Vision has been refined into a universal playback solution that embraces SDR as well as other HDR formats such as HDR10, which is a base layer format for next generation Blu-ray.

Q: How is Dolby Vision superior to other HDR format proposals being considered for industry adoption?

A: We developed Dolby Vision as a complete end-to-end ecosystem solution while focusing on the best end-consumer experience across a variety of devices and use cases. Dolby Vision is the highest quality HDR solution available capable of up to full 12 bit dynamic range performance with full color capability and as such, is a super set of all other approaches in the market. For stakeholders across the ecosystem, Dolby Vision provides an accurate, compatible, flexible, scalable and future-proof solution.

It also offers a variety of implementation approaches based on use case, bit budget, and market. Specifically, Dolby Vision works with any spatial resolution including 720P, HD, 4K, etc., any video codec (AVC or HEVC), provides a backwards compatible dual-layer, or a non-backwards compatible high-efficiency single-layer option, state of the art tone mapping from HDR to SDR, and, a fully blended HDR to SDR scaling, all of which is being implemented by numerous system-on a- chip (SoC) suppliers. A Dolby Vision solution just works.

Q: Once an HDR format or formats are selected for broad-based distribution, what tools will Dolby have available for postproduction, encoding etc. Can you explain what these tools are, how they will work and how quickly they can be brought up to speed to begin content production processes?

A: Dolby has worked with technology leaders in all parts of the entertainment content ecosystem to enable the necessary technology to create, master, distribute and enjoy Dolby Vision content. The good news is that for scripted workflow, the process remains largely the same, the major changes were to expand the dynamic range in the color suite through new generation of HDR mastering displays which Dolby has developed and enabling the color editing tools to capture and preserve the higher dynamic range information.

Dolby has worked with most of the major color editing tools vendors such as FilmLight, Black Magic, AutoDesk, Digital Vision, etc. to enable Dolby Vision content creation and their solutions are in deployment to create content for major studios like Warner Brothers today. We have also partnered with Deluxe which can provide full-service Dolby Vision mastering. Our approach is to master in the largest color volume possible . From that highest quality master, we can derive any needed output version including International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Rec.709 standard dynamic range (SDR) as well as HDR10 and anything in between providing maximum flexibility for the content owner. Dolby Vision uses existing standards such as H.264 and HEVC for distribution which we have already implemented and are deploying with over-the-top (OTT) Internet streaming providers such as VUDU this year. We are also working with all the major compression companies to implement additional commercial solution offerings and are concentrating now on the challenges of real time live HDR distribution.

Q: How will your HDR systems work with wide color gamut material?

A: The Dolby Vision solution is agnostic regarding color primaries and will work with XYZ, ITU Rec. 2020, Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) P3 Cinema primaries, Rec. 709 or any color primaries the content creator may choose. Of course Dolby Vision also works for Cinema and there are already several movies that have been graded and presented in Dolby Vision including “Tomorrowland” from Disney. As mentioned, our grading process uses high-dynamic range and wide color gamut displays allowing creative professionals to fulfill their artistic intent through the use of a large color palette. Currently, our best displays have a 4000 Cd/M2 (or “Nits”) Cinema Primary (P3) color volume, which 40x brighter than conventional 100 nit CRT’s, and our cinema projector uses a six primary color volume which subsumes nearly 100 percent of the Rec 2020 primary colors.

The resulting files have 12-bit precision across the full pallet of available colors so nothing needs to be “added” to the file. Dolby Vision-enabled Color Grading systems provide features to preserve the artistic intent by capturing metadata to aid in effective mapping to various lower level outputs such as HDR10 or Rec. 709 SDR. This metadata is then preserved throughout the Dolby Vision encoding system for post-produced content, and ultimately decoded in the Dolby Vision-enabled device to maintain artistic intent from the creative to the consumer, while providing the best experience possible for the pedigree of the consumer display device. Such metadata is not required for natural content such as live broadcasts.

Q: What’s Dolby’s position on the dual-layer approach devised for HDR content with backward compatibility? Why is this preferable to some of the other systems being considered?

A: Dolby Vision’s high dynamic range and wide color gamut technology uses a base-layer and an enhancement layer for backward compatibility, or a single-layer offering improved coding efficiency performance when backward compatibility is not necessary. With this approach, some existing infrastructures and encoder/decoder technology may easily adopt Dolby Vision while retaining backward compatibility. In the case of OTT, where there may be petabytes of legacy SDR material already in the cloud with a large installed base of customers, the benefit of backwards compatibility is that content can be sent with an enhancement layer to both legacy and new Dolby Vision-enabled TV’s and the legacy TV will play the SDR layer just like it does today and ignore the HDR layer. The Dolby Vision-enabled TV can take both layers and produce a full quality image. The key benefit is that the enhancement layer only requires on the order of 20-25 percent additional bit-rate over the SDR base layer. For the OTT provider, the ability to repurpose nearly 80 percent of their SDR content for HDR is a huge benefit particularly when you consider the fact that adaptive streaming profiles increase the number of versions of content that must be encoded. Further, the Dolby Vision single layer solution offers improved coding efficiency and will play back on any dual layer enabled Dolby Vision TV, so it offers a future proof migration path as the installed base transitions. Dolby Vision also offers flexibility in precision, for noise free images like animation, CGI and graphics; 12 bits are available to prevent artifacts. For natural content such as live broadcast, we also offer a single layer 10bit solution which is sufficient precision, due to camera noise, to ensure artifacts are below the visible threshold.

Q: How many HDR formats do you ultimately expect to be approved for broad-based use and with which delivery methods?

A: As HDR technology content comes to market, there could be several possible HDR content types available, including Dolby Vision. What’s important to note is that when mastering in Dolby Vision, creatives can master once to the highest quality and can then derive all other industry approved grades from this single distribution master. Therefore, in order to create a simple playback solution, Dolby Vision will support playback from all of these content types, to ensure the best quality experience with Dolby Vision. There is an industry desire for a single-layer HDR solution that works with the existing HEVC Main 10 profile. The new Dolby Vision Single-Layer profile allows for perceived 12-bit fidelity by providing metadata within a 10-bit profile which is used to provide state of the art tone mapping. As a result, Dolby Vision can deliver the best quality compression, quantization and 420 conversion using industry-standard 10-bit HEVC codecs for maximum compatibility. Dolby Vision is an option in Blu-ray offering the highest quality and is being deployed this year via OTT with a full 12-bit backwards compatible dual-layer approach.

Q: Would Dolby consider subsidizing manufacturers or content distributors to see that its system gains market support?

A: Dolby is working directly with the studios to ensure that distribution channels receive content that is already in a Dolby Vision format. We provide distribution-specific encoder technology, depending on whether the distribution is through packaged media, OTT, broadcast, or cinema. The rest of the infrastructure stays the same.

Q: Will streaming or UHD Blu-ray make for better HDR delivery platforms or will it be delivery platform agnostic?

A: The next generation Blu-ray format uses a 10- bit PQ base- layer profile which provides good performance. Dolby Vision builds on this base layer to provide 12-bit precision and increased performance. Both are played out from the disk at bit rates much higher than typical OTT. Some are considering using this Blu-ray HDR base layer as a streaming profile and if so, Dolby Vision can also be added on top of this as base layer in the dual-layer approach as I’ve described. Another method is to provide Dolby Vision as a backwards compatible enhancement layer on top of an SDR base layer as described above. Dolby Vision works fine for either use case. Dolby intends to provide a solution to its partners that can handle any of these use cases and support a single- layer 10-bit approach, which provides significant coding efficiency versus the Blu-ray HDR base layer, an important consideration for bit-rate constrained OTT channels. Also, unlike the Blu-ray HDR base layer, Dolby Vision can also work with the H.264 codec which is an important consideration for portable and cost constrained use cases.

Q: How many camera stops do you expect the final home-delivered HDR solution to support? Are there any particular camera solutions Dolby endorses for HDR capture?

A: In the real world from sunlight to starlight, human beings deal with over 42 f-stops of dynamic range. Our reported scientific research has shown that for both large screen ( i.e. cinematic) as well as small screen (e.g. TV) , the useful dynamic range needed for entertainment content purposes is on the order of 22 f-stops to satisfy the most demanding viewers. Note this is the full end-to-end range for capture purposes and when we consider a specific scene with high peak brightness, the simultaneous contrast needed can generally be lower. Since the majority of movies today are digital, the current trend is to use digital film cameras. Most digital film cameras today will do at least 14 f-stops and some are entering the market with up 18 f-stops of dynamic range.

We have evaluated many cameras but prefer not to make recommendations at this point. What is important to note is that the cameras aren’t the limiting factor; rather, the downstream processing for an 8-bit, 4:2:0, 100 nit max, gamma–based legacy ecosystem is. Our goal is to deliver the largest color volume content possible and we support the SMPTE ST-2084 container which goes from 0 to 10,000 nits in 12-bits with a step-size precision that is below the threshold of visibility anywhere in that end-to-end range. The Dolby Vision ecosystem is designed to enable this level of quality all the way to the end display and then allow the final display to effectively map that content to its native capabilities to provide the best experience possible. This is true for all device classes such as TV’s, tablets, mobile devices etc.

Q: When should we expect to see Dolby Vision content in the marketplace, and do you know if current sets on the market from Sony, Samsung, LG, Panasonic, Philips and others will be able to support it with firmware updates, or do we have to wait for next-generation products including Vizio’s Dolby Vision-supporting Reference Series TVs?

As an end-to-end solution, we have the ecosystem in place to make it easy for new and catalog titles to be mastered in Dolby Vision. We are working with all major studios to deliver Dolby Vision content to the consumer. At CES 2015, we announced several key partnerships. First, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment announced a commitment to creating Dolby Vision content. Warner Bros. has been working with Dolby to re-master library titles and is mastering new home releases in Dolby Vision and the available titles will continue to grow by OTT service launch.

Netflix also publicly committed to delivering Dolby Vision content to the home in 2015. We are excited to be working with Netflix to make this happen, and are especially focused on Netflix original content. Further, our partners in the content creation ecosystem continue to expand in response to growing interest and now include AVID, Digital Vision, Film Light, Autodesk, and Adobe. Those partners demoed Dolby Vision at NAB. Finally, Deluxe, a leading post production facility, is fully up to speed creating Dolby Vision masters for customers. Content mastered using Dolby Vision will also be available via OTT from service providers such as VUDU and eventually via video on demand (VoD).

As for devices, purchasing a new TV or other device will be required, as new models enabled with Dolby Vision will be coming to market throughout the year.

By Greg Tarr

Announcement

4K Sport & Gaming, HDR , Streming 4K , 4K HDR, Dolby Vision Omnibus Thread

4K Sport & Gaming, HDR , Streming 4K , 4K HDR, Dolby Vision Omnibus Thread

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