LG and Technicolor are collaborating on new high-dynamic-range content experiences that “push the boundaries of video imaging” to the home and will showcase “early elements” of their initiative for the first time this week at CES. The companies will screen HDR-graded content from director/producer Francis Ford Coppola that meets new UHD Alliance content and display specifications, they said. Technicolor-created HDR content and content that was encoded using Technicolor’s HDR delivery solution will be on display at LG’s booth. At Technicolor’s private meeting suites in the Venetian Hotel, the companies will show LG’s 2016 HDR OLED 4K TVs, among the first displays to be certified by the UHD Alliance as Ultra HD Premium devices. The companies will expand their strategic alliance to optimize Technicolor’s video enhancement and HDR delivery technologies for LG devices and displays with the goal of achieving “excellence” at each stage of the delivery chain -- from content creation to distribution and rendering, they said. Under the goals of the initiative, LG OLED TVs will meet the “high quality standards of the creative content community” and can act as Technicolor’s consumer HDR reference model, they said. LG OLED TVs will be used in Technicolor’s post-production facilities around the world, where movie makers and TV show producers create, view and approve content before distribution.

The “Future of Cinema” technical conference at April’s NAB Show will have a “refocused” theme, “with an emphasis on the work and inspiration of the industry's newest generation of filmmakers,” said conference producer Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers Monday. The conference has gone by a series of different names in past years, most recently as the Technology Summit on Cinema event on days one and two of the NAB Show. For 2016, the Future of Cinema conference will be April 16-17 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, SMPTE said. The conference will include sessions on the “creative use” of high dynamic range and HDR mastering and delivery to the home, among other topics, SMPTE said.

Quarterly revenue doubled in the smart TV segment at Sigma Designs, CEO Thinh Tran said on a Tuesday earnings call. For Sigma, which was the first system-on-a-chip (SoC) supplier to “natively” support Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) in 2014 (see 1409040067), the smart TV business “is continuing to show strength as our ecosystem of partners continue[s] to expand,” Tran said. In response, “we are designing to twice the number of TV models for next year that our smart TV SoC will ship into,” he said. But Sigma also has lingering doubts that 4K content delivery will develop quickly into a meaningful business, Chief Financial Officer Elias Nader said in Q&A. The “deployment infrastructure required for 4K is still going through its infancy,” Nader said. There “certainly” are “plenty of TV sets at dramatically lower prices for 4K, and certainly there is a wide array of 4K set-top boxes prepared to deploy and being deployed at this point in time,” he said. But “really the holdup comes back to” content providers, and their inability “to not only encode 4K content efficiently, but also then to distribute it on their networks,” he said. “And frankly I think the latter is the part that will take a little bit of time. So I would say it’s probably not going to be this coming year that we see any major rollouts, so maybe the end of next year, in 4K content.” Nevertheless, in TVs, as Sigma moves into 2016, it sees 4K growing to account for 60 percent of its SoC business, Nader said. Moreover, “nearly all” the 4K SoCs Sigma sells will be "HDR-enabled, I think, for next year,” he said.

Vudu customers can watch Warner titles remastered for Dolby Vision and mixed in Dolby Atmos, Dolby Labs and Warner said Tuesday. The content can be seen, for now, only on Dolby Vision-enabled Vizio Reference Series 4K Ultra HD TVs with additional compatible TVs due to be announced at CES. Numerous audio playback options are on the market that can decode Dolby Atmos, including AV receivers, speakers and soundbars. Scott Blanksteen, Vudu vice president-product management, said the streaming service is giving customers the chance to “be the first to enjoy a premium visual and audio experience.” Warner 4K titles available in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos include Mad Max: Fury Road, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Gallows, San Andreas, American Sniper, Man of Steel, Jupiter Ascending, Edge of Tomorrow and Into the Storm. Vudu also streams Dolby Vision titles, without Dolby Atmos sound, including Vacation, Focus, Get Hard, Run All Night, The Lego Movie, The Great Gatsby, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, The Hangover trilogy and Magic Mike XXL, said Vudu.

Vizio is debuting its 65- and 120-inch Dolby Vision TVs as “special-order” products, “and quantities are limited,” the company said in a notice posted Tuesday at its website. The posting invites shoppers to submit their names and contact information, and a Vizio representative or authorized reseller “will contact you shortly.” We inquired about the 65-inch set, hit the "submit" button and immediately received a Vizio email thanking us for our interest. "We will keep you posted on additional details as they become available closer to market availability," Vizio said. "In the mean time, we are offering prospective owners of the all-new 65" assistance in connecting you with any supporting services you may need, such as custom integration or installation, to bring home this special model. If you are interested in discussing further, please reply with your interest and where you are planning to install this unit (i.e. Home or commercial space)." Introduced in April on the eve of the NAB Show after much fanfare from Dolby Labs (see 1504130022), Vizio priced the 65-inch at $5,999 and the 120-inch at $129,999, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. Marketed under Vizio’s Reference Series, the sets feature “the industry's first-ever complete High Dynamic Range solution,” Vizio said.

Sony Electronics will add open-spec high dynamic range support to its X850C, X900C and X910C models of 4K Ultra HD TVs through a firmware update, in addition to previously announced HDR support on its X930C and X940C models, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. Consumers who buy any of those models for a “limited time” this fall will qualify to receive up to $100 of HDR content from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment through the Amazon Video app, it said. Streaming 4K content from Amazon requires at least a 20 Mbps Internet connection, Sony said. The announcement on adding open-spec HDR support to more TV models seemed to dash media speculation that Sony Electronics would soon adopt proprietary Dolby Vision solutions in its TVs (see 1509110051).

“There is no comment from Sony Electronics on this issue,” spokesman John Dolak emailed us Friday on our question whether there’s a Dolby Vision high-dynamic-range TV in Sony’s future. The Sony Pictures Home Entertainment announcement Thursday that the studio will use the Dolby Vision mastering process in its production of 4K Ultra HD titles for a “variety of home entertainment distribution partners” and content platforms (see 1509100037) raised media speculation that Sony Electronics would soon follow suit with a Dolby Vision TV. But Sony Electronics, like most other major TV set makers, thus far has shunned proprietary HDR systems like Dolby Vision in its TVs in favor of technologies compliant with open HDR specs SMPTE-2084 and SMPTE-2086 from the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers.

Ericsson and Intelsat will jointly debut a high dynamic range video contribution feed for the IBC show in Amsterdam, the companies said in a news release Wednesday. Using the DVB-SX2 satellite broadcasting standard opens the door to better quality HD contribution feeds with HDR while avoiding bandwidth losses, they said.

Dolby Labs announced availability of Dolby Vision-enabled system-on-a-chip (SoC) technologies for digital TVs from Realtek Semiconductor. Realtek also committed to delivering Dolby Vision enabled SoCs for set-top boxes “in the near future,” said Dolby Thursday. The Dolby Vision VS10 universal high-dynamic-range (HDR) playback supports dual-layer and single-layer Dolby Vision streams and other HDR profiles based on the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers ST 2084 standard, said Dolby. Displays with the HDR playback can take full advantage of a combination of peak brightness, local contrast and wider color gamut for an enhanced viewing experience, said the company.

A TV, monitor or projector may be designated “HDR-Compatible” if it includes at least one interface that supports high-dynamic-range signaling as defined in the CEA-861-F standard, “as extended by CEA-861.3,” CEA said in voluntary guidelines approved by the CEA video board and released Thursday. To carry that designation, the display should also receive and process static HDR metadata compliant with CEA-861.3 for uncompressed video, it said. It also should be capable of receiving and processing the “HDR10 Media Profile” from IP, HDMI or other video delivery sources, though additional media profiles may also be supported, it said. The HDR10 Media Profile means compliance with the SMPTE-2084 electro-optical transfer function standard with 4:2:0 color sub-sampling for compressed video sources, CEA said. The 10-bit HDR10 Media Profile also includes compatibility with BT.2020 colorimetry and SMPTE-2086, MaxFALL and MaxCLL metadata standards, CEA said. “HDR provides a significant step-up in delivering an incredible viewing experience for the consumer,” said Brian Markwalter, CEA senior vice president-research and standards. “We encourage manufacturers and our industry partners to use this voluntary compatibility guideline to provide greater consistency and clarity while ensuring compatibility and interoperability across the full content development to display ecosystem.”