Technicolor, Sinclair Claim World’s First Live TV Transmission of Ultra HD With HDR

Technicolor teamed with Sinclair to successfully demonstrate the world's first live broadcast transmission of Ultra HD with high dynamic range using technologies that have been proposed for ATSC 3.0, the companies said Thursday in a joint statement. The series of broadcasts, integrated into Sinclair's experimental OFDM transmission system and transmitted under real-world conditions outside a lab, delivered "high-quality" HDR content broadcast at HD and 4K/UHD resolutions in a single-layer with backward-compatible standard dynamic range, they said. Both HDR and legacy devices, including fixed-position TVs and mobile devices, “were all able to receive and display the broadcast signal,” they said. "We're building a path toward new broadcast TV services that are appropriate for UHD and HDR," said Vince Pizzica, Technicolor senior executive vice president-corporate development and technology. "We're excited to reach the first milestone in our testing of real-world, challenging environments. This latest series of over-the-air tests confirms that Technicolor's HDR video solutions support broadcast at HD and 4K resolutions, as well as for standard dynamic range and mobile devices, presenting a whole new world of opportunities for broadcasters." Technicolor is a founding member of the UHD Alliance, which advocates open HDR standards, as is Dolby Labs, which has its proprietary Dolby Vision HDR system. Sinclair has advocated speedy deployment of a next-gen broadcast system, even if it’s a proprietary Sinclair system it thinks can reach market faster than ATSC 3.0 (see 1405080082).