Ultra HD Forum releases updated deployment guidelines

Building on successful 2016 UHD launches, Ultra HD Forum Releases updated deployment guidelines at CES 2017

FREMONT, California — The Ultra HD Forum, the global organization defining industry best practices for the introduction of technologies to facilitate the ultra-high-definition (UHD) viewing experience, released today version 1.2 of its Ultra HD Phase A industry guidelines. “Ultra HD Phase A” encompasses practices and technologies that are commercially feasible in UHD services today. This revision builds on best practices and lessons learned in 2016 and feedback on previous versions of the guidelines to better assist operators with real UHD deployments.

Key updates in the new version include information on the following:

• Implementation of channel-based immersive audio for Phase A (e.g. Dolby Atmos),
• Down-converting HDR/WCG to SDR/BT.709 with ETSI TS 103 433 method,
• Carriage of signaling for transfer function, color container and color matrix, including newly added information for file-based video formats,
• A brief summary/comparison of ITU-R BT.709, BT.2020 and BT.2100,
• ACES Workflow for color and dynamic range,
• Dynamic HDR metadata technologies as candidates for the forum’s future work on Phase B.

With representation from service providers, technology providers, consumer electronics manufacturers, sound and video experts, camera makers and more, as well as feedback from early deployments, the Guidelines describes how commercial Ultra HD services can be deployed, taking into account the entire supply chain.

The Ultra HD Forum continues to grow, reaching over 50 members with the recent arrival of key industry leaders such as Google. The Forum will hold a membership meeting during CES 2017 where the future evolutions of the guidelines will be discussed amongst other 2017 projects.

“It’s exciting to work with such a wide variety of experts from across the ecosystem and incorporate lessons from early adopters to bring these Guidelines to the industry,” said Madeleine Noland, who chairs the Guidelines Working Group on behalf of LG Electronics. “This new version will pave the way for the Forum’s ‘Phase B’ guidelines that we’ll start working on in January 2017. We are also very excited about the new members coming on board and look forward to incorporating their important perspective into the work.”

The guidelines already include a security chapter on best practice for content encryption. “Moving forwards the Forum will extend this sharing of know-how and feedback on getting UHD security implementation standards to meet content owner requirements with emphasis on implementing watermarking.” Said Nagra’s Laurent Piron who chairs the Security Working group.