July 18, 2021—For mass adoption of high dynamic range (HDR) to take place, all key stakeholders across the ecosystem — consumer electronics, content creation, production and broadcasting — will have to be aligned and in sync to deliver the rich experiences today’s consumers are demanding. Among the most critical players in this value chain are the system-on-chip (SoC) manufacturers. This community provides the underlying components upon which rich, immersive experiences can be delivered to consumer devices as the industry makes the transition from a current installed base of standard dynamic range (SDR) to a future that is dominated by HDR. 

 

“HDR has become an essential feature for TV manufacturers today that want to bring impactful innovations to consumers and households around the world. That is why the top-performing — and often the most expensive — TVs today are HDR TVs,” says Alfred Chan, vice president of TV BU, Smart Home Business Group at MediaTek. MediaTek currently sells TV SoCs to 95% of all retail TV brands — those sold at stores like Best Buy and Costco, as well as major retailers all around the world. 

 

“It has been encouraging to see how the rest of the industry is rising to the challenge of making HDR content available for these next-generation TV sets. Broadcasters — like Sinclair Broadcast Group in the United States — are bringing over-the-air content, especially live sports, to consumers in HDR. MediaTek is committed to ensuring that HDR is presented correctly on TV sets that support this immersive viewing experience,” he says.

 

HDR Momentum Is Building in the Broadcast Community

 

The past year and a half has seen a tremendous amount of progress take place as broadcasters seeking to compete more effectively with streaming providers embraced — and deployed — the ATSC 3.0 standards that support HDR. In fact, in April of 2021, the first affiliate NBC station to broadcast in HDR — a Sinclair Broadcast Group affiliate in Las Vegas — went live. Based on its success, Sinclair has already expanded HDR broadcasts to 28 stations across the U.S., with plans to double the number of HDR-capable stations by the end of 2022. 

 

“They are moving forward in response to consumer demand,” says Tony Bozzini, head of business development for Advanced HDR by Technicolor, a suite of HDR production, distribution and display solutions that is supported in the ATSC 3.0 standard. The solutions leverage machine learning (ML) technology to maximize image quality and enhance the HDR consumer viewing experience. A collaboration between Philips, InterDigital and Technicolor, Advanced HDR by Technicolor is composed of two key elements:

 

• The Intelligent Tone Management (ITM) tool, which provides a dynamic, tunable, real-time solution to up-convert SDR content to HDR with full freedom and flexibility to manage contrast, brightness and color saturation, and

• Single-layer HDR (SL-HDR), a dynamic and tunable real-time tool that implements the ETSI SL-HDR standards to generate and deliver a single, consistent, high-quality broadcast stream. SL-HDR1 transforms HDR input streams into SDR-plus-metadata streams.

“Consumers who buy new TV sets that contain the embedded technologies provided by companies like MediaTek are very much aware of the elevated viewing experience offered by HDR. They get frustrated when they don’t have the content to support this experience. Thanks to the work of broadcasters like Sinclair, the demand for HDR content is beginning to be met,” explains Bozzini. 

 

On the other hand, broadcasters must still meet the needs of the large installed base of TVs that only support SDR. The backward compatibility features of Advanced HDR by Technicolor make it possible for consumers who do not have HDR devices to enjoy the highest-quality SDR experience. 

 

“Sinclair is one of the most active and assertive players to bring Advanced HDR by Technicolor to market. By embracing Advanced HDR by Technicolor, Sinclair is implementing a strategy across the country that provides a path to an HDR future while supporting the current embedded presence of SDR-only capable TVs that are still in the market,” says Bozzini. 

 

HDR and Live Sporting Events Are a Match Made in Heaven 

 

Live outdoor sporting events — an area that still is mostly dominated by the broadcast community — represent an excellent opportunity for HDR application. 

 

“Sinclair recently announced that Bally Sports Network and the Tennis Channel will be broadcast live in Advanced HDR by Technicolor,” says Bozzini. 

 

There are practical reasons for this decision. One of the most frustrating aspects of broadcasting live outdoor events is that lighting shifts over the course of the day, casting shadows that create challenges for conventional SDR technology to clearly capture the action on the field. 

 

Adaptive solutions embedded in Advanced HDR by Technicolor optimize images in real time. It automatically adjusts and corrects large shifts in lighting over the course of outdoor broadcasts. The adaptive features also remove limitations imposed by static converters that restrict the creative options available to video engineers. 

 

Sinclair has incorporated Advanced HDR by Technicolor into production-truck equipment offered by companies like Cobalt Digital, which leverages ML to automatically sense light quality changes to then deliver a single seamless and consistent stream of SDR and HDR images. 

 

“We expect these types of consumer viewing experiences to drive sales of HDR TVs,” says Bozzini. 

 

MediaTek’s Chan concurs. 

 

“It is an exciting time because SoC manufacturers are in a critical position to bridge the gap between broadcasters and device manufacturers in ensuring that viewers receive the experience intended by the production teams,” says Chan. 

 

“MediaTek is working to ensure that the Advanced HDR by Technicolor solution is properly incorporated into our chipsets so that images are properly displayed on TVs. This requires a huge amount of coordination. The good news is that the ecosystem is working very closely together, and these efforts are paying off. We are bringing HDR to market at an increasingly rapid pace.”  

 

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