LAS VEGAS—Advanced HDR by Technicolor has made a series of announcements at CES here demonstrating support for its high dynamic range solutions ranging from consumer televisions and receiver devices to broadcasters and streaming services.

Gray Media is among a growing list of ATSC 3.0 broadcasters to support Advanced HDR by Technicolor, it said.

In one CES press announcement, Advanced HDR by Technicolor said: “The growing availability of devices that support the new standard helps explain why a growing number of broadcasters offering NextGen TV broadcasts—such as Gray Media—are supporting Advanced HDR by Technicolor.” Other broadcasters supporting it include Capitol Broadcasting, PBS and Sinclair.

[Also Read: More TV Tech Coverage of News From CES]

“Advanced HDR by Technicolor provides broadcasters with a powerful solution to enhance the viewing experience,” said Rob Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution at Gray Media.

“It offers the flexibility to deliver exceptional HDR content while ensuring compatibility for viewers with SDR TVs. This capability reflects our commitment to delivering the highest-quality digital entertainment experiences.”

Advanced HDR by Technicolor also said at CES that it is collaborating with global streaming media company Plex to enhance the visual quality of ad-supported video-on-demand (VOD) services.

New NextGen TV models from both Hisense and RCA as well as a new Atlanta Direct To Home (ADTH) 3.0 receiver running software from Tolka that support Advanced HDR by Technicolor were also unveiled at the show.

Advanced HDR by Technicolor was collaboratively developed by InterDigital, Philips and Technicolor.

More information is available on the Advanced HDR by Technicolor website.

It’s sometimes said that trying to get a group of broadcasters to do anything is like trying to herd cats, but if 2025 plays out as some broadcasters hope that feline finickiness will take a back seat to a unified push to promote NextGen TV to viewers.

Central to the effort is calling viewer attention to the fact that thanks to high dynamic range (HDR), NextGen TVs display a far higher-quality version of what they are accustomed to watching on legacy digital TVs.

With support for a color gamut (Rec. 2020) that has twice as many colors as television’s predecessor color gamut (Rec. 709) and the ability to display detail in shadows and highlights, HDR produces a noticeable difference—one that broadcasters hope to leverage to entice viewers to adopt NextGen TV.

“One of the things we are doing different is using lower thirds to say ‘HDR only available on NextGen TVs,” says Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, a business alliance of eight major TV station groups dedicated to advancing NextGen TV. “There are over 80 million HDR-enabled households in America, so those tickers will serve a purpose similar to what was done back in the days of transitioning from analog to HD.”

(Editor’s note: The Consumer Technology Association has estimated about 14 million NextGen TVs have been sold to date. The 80 million figure refers to U.S. households with HDR-enabled sets. Many would require an external ATSC 3.0 tuner to receive NextGen TV signals enhanced with HDR.)

Schelle points to Gray Television as one of the industry’s leaders in promoting HDR as well as immersive audio on-air and online to elevate viewer awareness of NextGen TV—not simply by describing what can be done but also by showing viewers these NextGen TV enhancements when they tune in to some stations’ ATSC 3.0 transmissions.

In May, Gray’s WAVE-TV in Louisville, Kentucky, presented NextGen TV coverage of the Kentucky Derby— and the fanfare in the days leading up to the race—to local viewers, enhanced with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio. Since then, eight of its NBC affiliates transmitted the Paris Summer Olympics via NextGen TV with Dolby Vision HDR. Three of those stations also enhanced audio with immersive Dolby Atmos sound.

Recently, Gray has begun running a ticker in its 20 NextGen TV station markets on both its ATSC 1.0 and 3.0 signals to highlight the availability of HDR, so NextGen TV set owners recognize its presence and 1.0 set owners are enticed to learn more.

“Our thought is going back to the future—like in 2005 when you saw bugs that would say “available in high definition” before every football game and how that drove awareness for the last TV transition,” says Gray senior vice president of government relations Robert Folliard.

Sports and HDR
To date, about 200 ATSC 3.0 channels in the U.S. transmit HDR, whether it’s Dolby Vision, Advanced HDR by Technicolor or HDR10+, full-time. In other words, NextGen TV broadcasters don’t flip HDR on for sports and off for the rest of the day, Pearl TV spokesperson Dave Arland said.

However, high-profile sports attract more viewers, and many Americans tend to buy new televisions around these events. So, calling attention to the availability of HDR via NextGen TV has the potential to accelerate uptake.

“The month of January is going to be a lot of fun because of the football playoffs,” Schelle said. “We’re really trying to focus on sports and the Super Bowl.

“Over 50% of all TVs are sold between Black Friday [the day after Thanksgiving] and the Super Bowl. So, the month of January sees a big spike in sales right after the holidays. A lot of people buy TVs for the Super Bowl.”

This year marks the fifth holiday shopping season Pearl TV has promoted NextGen TV on air with commercials and other promos. As of mid-December, member stations had run 6,000 spots. Coinciding with the campaign—Pearl TV’s biggest to date—is the use of lower-thirds to promote HDR on NextGen TVs.

Gray Television is not alone in seeing the potential of tying HDR and sports together to build awareness and momentum for NextGen TV.

NBC Owned Television Stations transmitted NextGen TV coverage of the Paris Olympics with Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos immersive audio from its in 11 markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, the Bay Area, Boston, Washington, D.C., Miami, San Diego and Hartford, Conn.

NBC and Dolby Laboratories worked together to promote how Dolby Vision and Atmos would enhance the viewing experience of NextGen TV viewers both on air and online in the station group’s New York and Bay Area markets.

In March, Sinclair announced it would begin carrying Tennis Channel’s T2 as a broadcast-enabled, streaming television (BEST) channel in all of its ATSC 3.0 markets. T2 programming would be presented using Advanced HDR by Technicolor.

In 2025, Sinclair will launch year-round promotion of NextGen TV—not simply focusing its efforts on tentpole events like the holidays, a Sinclair spokesperson said. However, details about the marketing campaign and whether or not leveraging HDR to call attention to NextGen TV will be part of the effort were not available.

What is known is Gray’s HDR on-screen promos are receiving a thumbs up from other broadcasters. “We’ve showed the [Gray] design to all of the station groups that have turned on HDR, and they're embracing it,” Schelle said.

“These tickers will let consumers know that HDR via NextGen TV is available, and you’ll see it come into play more and more as more stations turn on HDR,” she said.

Now is the right time to begin promoting HDR and other NextGen TV features, Folliard said.

“We think it is important to start promoting the features of NextGen that are available today so consumers know that there is something better out there, start asking questions and buy NextGen TVs,” he said.

This paper discusses the various High Dynamic Range formats in use today and how producers can integrate HDR into the production and distribution of their programming regardless of whether some, all, or none of their production equipment is HDR-ready. The sidebars within this paper discuss various HDR products as well as production companies that have already deployed High Dynamic Range. 

Click here to download the full eBook.

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you can’t help but have heard about HDR (High Dynamic Range) TV. There’s been no end of announcements from manufacturers about how they are (or will be) supporting this phenomenal new technology.

One thing we know to be constant in our industry is that there is always going to be change. We’ve moved from black and white to color, from analog to digital and from SD to HD (now moving on to UHD and up), in the constant desire to bring higher and higher fidelity images to the home. Talk of higher and higher resolutions and frame rates continue to stretch the boundaries of delivery bandwidths—with, some might say, decreasing rates of return as each of these technology advancements comes with a real price tag for the creators and distributors of media.

THE PROOF IS IN THE IMAGE

It’s hard to argue the value of HDR TV, though. Even the least discriminating viewer notices immediately the improvement when they see their first HDR images. Large screen or small, high frame rate or standard, the visible improvement through HDR is immediately apparent and, more importantly, significantly improves customer engagement with the program. The details, though, still appear somewhat veiled—our industry is highly experienced in adopting new technologies and simply expecting those producing, lighting, shooting and distributing the resultant media to adopt it and excel in their various duties without taking the time to really explain the basics. Over the next few postings, I’m going to be examining this topic, with the aim of clearly explaining what it is intended to do, what it is not intended to do, how it works, what the differences are between the various formats are and ultimately (hopefully) answering the question “Why should I care?”

[Is HDR Worth It?]

If we are going to discuss “High Dynamic Range,” we have to also accept the term “Standard Dynamic Range.” As you might expect, these two terms differentiate between different tiers of dynamic range within the media industry. So we should start by understanding the term “Dynamic Range.” With that understanding, we can extend the discussion to cover these tiers of performance.

Dynamic Range is a term engineers and physicists use to define the full range of signal that a piece of technology or system is designed to handle (preferably without distortion—dynamic range doesn’t specifically detail that the system should be linear). For example, in film, the dynamic range is the range between the lowest amount of light that a piece of film can capture (if you go any darker, you can’t reproduce the difference when you present it) to the largest amount of light that the film can tolerate before it saturates (go any brighter, and you can’t detect the increase—the film has absorbed as much light as it can). In audio, the dynamic range goes from silence to the loudest level that a piece of equipment can record, tolerate or present (play back).

SYSTEM DESIGN IS CRUCIAL

It’s important to note that different pieces of equipment at different stages in the media production/delivery process could, in theory, have different dynamic ranges. In that case, the true dynamic range of the system will be limited by the performance of the lowest dynamic range component. System design is therefore crucial—there’s little point in putting an HDR component in the middle of an SDR workflow. For now, just remember that in any discussion of dynamic range or HDR, it’s important to specify if you are talking about a system, or an individual component of that system.

[ITU Announces HDR Standard for TV]

In video, it’s often convenient to discuss dynamic range in terms of contrast ratio. As we’ll discuss in a later post, HDR systems can offer up to a 50x increase in contrast ratio in comparison to an SDR system. But—and here’s the really important point—SDR systems could achieve similar gross contrast ratios if the final display can be made bright enough. This is analogous to turning up the amplifier on your stereo: the sound gets louder, not better. The big difference is that an HDR system is cable of reproducing far more of the intermediate values than an SDR system can—ensuring that all of the nuances of the signal make it through to the viewer’s display. This is the most important point—HDR allows you to reproduce images that convey a much more realistic representation of the original scene. Absolute light level plays an important part in that, to be sure—specular highlights can be breathtaking—but it’s the ability to recreate all of the intermedia values that makes HDR material so compelling.

In the next post, we’ll examine the characteristics of light in the natural world and what it takes to reproduce that on TV.

Paul Turner is founder ofTurner Media Consulting and can be reached atpault@turnerconsulting.tv.

LAS VEGAS—The call for better pixels is being heeded. LG Electronics, Technicolor, Amazon, Harmonic, Netflix, Dolby, Philips and broadcasters are among technology developers at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas showcasing high dynamic range, a measure of image brightness.

LG preceded the annual gadgetfest by announcing that it added HDR capability and built-in HDR processing to its 98-inch 8KTV. The 98-incher made its debut at IFA in Berlin in the fall of 2014. The model being demoed at this week’s CES is newly HDR-enhanced.

LG’s organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, TVs also got the HDR treatment. The 2016 OLED line consisting of four models now feature HDR Pro, “assuring a superior HDR viewing experience, with increased contrast ratio and color range.”

The LG OLEDs support HDR formats HDR10 and Dolby Vision, plus they are expected to be among the first displays certified as “Ultra HD Premium,” a set of specifications released this week by the UHD Alliance. These include 3840x2160 resolution,10-bit color depth, BT.2020 color gamut and a high dynamic range of either more than 1,000 nits peak brightness and less than 0.05 nits black level, or more than 540 nits peak brightness and less than 0.0005 nits black level for OLEDs. (See “Ultra HD Defined.”)

TV set makers Vizio and Samsung also are embracing HDR in a bid to fuel the type of demand not seen since high-definition digital TVs were introduced. Stereoscopic 3DTV followed the HDTV trend, but fell flat. The double-HD resolution display type initially refered to as “4KTV” was “rebranded” by the Consumer Technology Association as “Ultra HD” to circumvent any association with 3DTV. Even so, more pixels haven’t been sufficient to start a fire beneath consumers, so set makers are embracing what Dolby’s Pat Griffis coined a couple years ago as “better pixels,” including HDR.

There is, however, very little widely available HDR content. Netflix is on track to stream “Daredevil” mastered in Dolby Vision later this year. LG will run clips of “Daredevil” on its OLED TVs during CES.

YouTube also is on deck with HDR for 2016. LG will demo HDR YouTube content, mastered to meet Google’s own VP9-Profile 2 HDR standard.

Internet streamer Amazon beat Netflix and YouTube to the punch when it rolled out HDR content last summer. Its original series, “Mozart in the Jungle” became available for HDR streaming to Samsung SUHD TVs in July, CNetsaid. LG said it will show that and other Amazon HDR titles at CES.

Fox came out of the HDR blocks last summer as well, announcing that it would make UHD HDR visions of “all of its recent movies,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. One notable title, “The Martian” will be on display in HDR at CES in the LG booth. LG will use a Vidity video player from Western Digital to feed “The Martian” into its HDR OLEDs.

The Fox initiative coincided with an announcement from Samsung that it would be releasing the industry’s first Ultra HD Blu-Ray player this year. The UBD-K8500 will have “64 times higher color expression compared to standard Blu-ray and can upscale content to provide UHD resolution for any disc,” according to CNet.

Harmonic is in the HDR mix in a collaboration with NASA. (See “NASA Kicks Off UHD Channel with ‘Out-of-this-World’ Content,” Sept. 18, 2015) Clips from the resulting footage will be on display at LG’s CES booth in a specially designed dark room.

Elsewhere, Dolby Vision made it into new 65-inch TCL 4KTVs, the first of the Chinese electronics company’s X1 series to be launched in the United States. The sets will be on display at CES, and on U.S. retail shelves in the second quarter of the year.

Dolby Vision scored two more Hollywood studios as well. MGM and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment have committed to “deliver new release and catalog titles mastered in Dolby Vision,” Dolby said on Tuesday. No further details were provided.

Technicolor’s contribution to the HDR proliferation includes the content and reception technology being used in demonstrations of HDR broadcasting using the developing ATSC 3.0 standard. Initial tests were conducted in collaboration with Sinclair last month (See, “Sinclair Demos HDR 4KTV Over ATSC 3.0 in Vegas.”) Technicolor’s Alan Stein provided further details.) TV Technology contributor and broadcast veteran James E. O’Neal will file a report on the ATSC 3.0 demonstrations lined up to take place during CES.

LG and Samsung are set to receive and display ATSC 3.0 signals on the exhibit floor, with LG leveraging Technicolor’s HDR color grading on content created by Francis For Coppola. Here’s a quote attributed to the “Godfather” director as provided by Technicolor:

“Since the invention of color film, Technicolor has stood for lustrous, clear, beautiful images. A partnership between Technicolor and LG’s OLED technology will bring the magic of my movies to the home as they were meant to be experienced.”

Technicolor also is throwing in with Royal Philips to “merge their ongoing delivery roadmaps for HDR solutions, including content creation tools, encoding and decoding software and implementation support,” Technicolor said. The goal is to streamline HDR deployment and create full backward compatibility with standard dynamic range displays.

The Consumer Electronics Show, otherwise referred to as “CES,” starts Wednesday and runs through Saturday.

LOS ANGELES —From the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers: SMPTE announced the publication of its study group report on the high-dynamic-range imaging ecosystem. The work of 170 top international experts, the SMPTE SG report summarizes an extensive discussion on the implementation of HDR in professional media workflows and addresses key questions that will arise for industry members as they move forward in using HDR technology. The report also offers recommendations for further HDR standardization efforts by SMPTE and other organizations.

“HDR is a rapidly emerging and much-debated technology with the capacity to make a greater impact on viewer experience than can higher-resolution formats,” said Alan Lambshead, vice president of standards for SMPTE. “Recognizing the remarkable potential of HDR and the media industry.’s growing interest in this technology, SMPTE created an HDR ecosystem study group and—within just 12 months—delivered a valuable consensus report on implementation of HDR and the creation of efficient HDR workflows.”

The SMPTE SG report on the HDR ecosystem provides consensus guidance on HDR terms and definitions and presents detailed and useful information on HDR technologies that, up to this point, has not been readily available to the media industry. The report acknowledges that although HDR technologies, both proprietary and standardized, are available today and already can be implemented for non-real-time workflows, challenges remain in live or real-time applications.

It further recognizes that implementation of HDR will be complex and affect many systems in a professional media workflow. The report catalogs HDR technologies, examines issues in both live and non-live HDR workflows, and describes the role of HDR metadata. Finally, it recommends industry harmonization regarding HDR technologies and parameters, stressing the importance of standardizing new technologies related to HDR and of updating current standards to enable HDR.

“Interest in HDR has begun to explode, and this report on the HDR ecosystem has been eagerly anticipated by engineers and technologists across the media industry,” said Thomas Bause Mason, chair of the SMPTE Technical Committee 10E SG on HDR Ecosystem. “We are confident that this timely SMPTE publication will answer many of the questions that emerge as HDR is discussed and implemented.”

SMPTE is actively working on the recommendations contained in the report and encourages industry participants to join the effort by contacting 10e-hdr@lists.smpte.org. The report is available for download at https://www.smpte.org/standards/reports.

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Global HDR TV Shipments to Exceed 32 Million in 2019

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Is HDR Worth It?

October 7, 2015
Rogers to Offer 4KTV with HDR in 2016

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Vizio Launches $130,000 HDR 4KTV Set

September 1, 2015
ATEME and NexGuard Launch Watermark for Pre-Release HDR Content

August 28, 2015
CEA Defines ‘HDR Compatible’ Displays

August 25, 2015
Thomson Video Network to Demo UHD Broadcasting of HDR Content

June 25, 2015
Amazon Instant Video Adds HDR for Prime Members

June 24, 2015
Technicolor HDR Single-Stream System Available for Testing

May 21, 2015
What the Public Gets About 4K, HDR and More Color

April 11, 2015
NAB Labs to Demo Super Hi-Vision, LDM, HDR HFR

April 9, 2015
Technicolor and Sinclair Demo HDR UHD Live Over-the-Air Broadcast

February 12, 2015
Updated: OTT, HDR, 4K and Last Rites for 4:3

January 30, 2015
HDR Video With Stephan Ukas-Bradley

October 22, 2014
SMPTE 2014: Doing HDR With HEVC

July 8, 2014
EBU’s David Wood Pitches HDR

February 20, 2014
DFT to Unveil Scanity HDR Scanner at the 2014 NAB Show

December 26, 2012
University researchers make real-time HDR encoding reality

June 22, 2012
Sony Sinks Nearly $1 Billion Into HDR-Capable Stacked CMOS Sensors

September 13, 2006
Sony rolls out HDR-FX7 1080i HDV camcorder

March 1, 2006
Sony introduces HDR-HC3 Handycam

SEATTLE – With Ultra High Definition continuing to be a hot button topic among the broadcast industry, Amazon has announced that it will offer High Dynamic Range episodes of its original series “Mozart in the Jungle” exclusively for Prime members in the U.S. at no additional cost. The entire first season of “Mozart” is now available in HDR, with more of Amazon’s original series coming soon.

HDR brings greater contrast to the screen with brighter colors, enhanced shadow details and distinct highlights for more vivid, rich and lifelike images. Prime members will be able to watch the HDR version of “Mozart in the Jungle” through the Amazon Video app on Samsung SUHD TVs.

The value of HDR was discussed at the 10th annual IEEE Broadband Multimedia Systems and Broadcasting Symposium, where Adi Kouadio, senior project manager for EBU’s technology and innovation department, presented a paper on HDR and high frame rates.

Kouadio’s tests revealed that when it comes to high definition images, HDR and higher frame rates are superior to higher resolution.

“The tests showed that quality improvement is noticed every time the frame rate is doubled,” said Kouadio. “What we believe at EBU is that broadcasters need to go to better pixels; not more pixels.”

Amazon believes that too, as the company plans to add additional titles in HDR and expanded device compatibility later this year.

LOS ANGELES – As part of its commitment to enabling High Dynamic Range for all aspects of content creation and distribution, Technicolor has announced that its new HDR single-layer technology is now available for testing by key ecosystem partners. The system creates a video which benefits from improved compression efficiency over unprocessed HDR files. It is compatible with MPEG HVEC standards, as well as backwards compatible with legacy SDR displays.

Technicolor’s HDR single-layer technology enables the coding and delivery of HDR content in a single stream to accurately display the content regardless of display type. It allows broadcasters, pay TV operators and OTT services to store and deliver one video file, which plays back on both legacy SDR TVs and new HDR TVs. Additionally, it contains a HDR pre-processing step that will work with any HEVC compatible video encoder and post-processor on devices after video decoding.

The single-stream system provides a universal method to support delivery of HDR content without the need of consumer adoption of HDR-ready devices.

Technicolor has submitted the technology for standardization to the Motion Pictures Expert Group, and testing is underway with Marvell Technology Group, MStar Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics.