HDR Content Needs To Be Delivered ‘Consistently,’ Says ‘UHD Guidebook’ That Dolby Helped Sponsor

At the last CES, several TV makers featured prototype high-dynamic-range (HDR) TVs, “meaning commercial launches will follow shortly,” says a UHD Guidebook just published by the research firm The Diffusion Group, with sponsorship from Dolby Labs and Harmonic. “In fact, the next two years will see a number of screen manufacturers implementing HDR, with luminance performance on consumer screens expected to achieve 1500 nits based on technology viable within the tight cost constraints and stringent power consumption regulations that define the consumer display market,” the guidebook says. The first Dolby Vision TVs introduced last week by Vizio with no pricing or availability details have peak brightness roughly half that level (see 1504130022). The industry needs “a single production workflow” for both standard-dynamic-range and HDR content “so the transition to UHD supports legacy HD televisions and HD network infrastructure,” the guidebook says. “The solution must be compatible with existing file-based and real-time infrastructures to support not only cinematic content, but also live broadcast content.” New HDR TVs “must be capable of mapping the transmitted HDR images to the TV display’s native color volume (defined by the display’s black level, peak white level, color temperature, and color primaries), thereby remaining as true as possible to the original creative intent within the confines of the display’s capabilities,” the guidebook says. HDR content needs to be “delivered consistently,” and so it needs the support of “leading standards organizations,” such as the Blu-ray Disc Association and the Secure Content Storage Association, it says. Both BDA (see 1409170023) and SCSA (see 1501120023) have said they plan to back open HDR standards. The “capabilities” of Ultra HD TVs “will evolve over time as new technologies such as quantum dots allow wider color primaries and brighter displays,” it says. “Systems should thus combine a television’s inherent display characteristics and the HDR solution as metadata to allow any form of display to adapt optimally to incoming HDR images in order to match the display’s characteristics.”