The chips really are down for the DVB UHD Phase II effort in terms of what it contains and when it ratifies. The wait for ITU-R RG 24 to settle the HDR standard is far from over. The latter – essentially SMPTE PQ and the NHK/BBC Log DASH Gamma system – became three when Philips put up a late system proposal that resembles the PQ system.
Can the industry Merlin David Wood, DVB UHB module chairman, cut through these barriers?
“We have two groups of members. One wants to start services that include HDR in 2017. Can that target be achieved? The other believe we need something more to be commercially successful, and that is HFR,” said Wood.
“But to make HFR work we need decoder chips that are more complex than what we have, and they will take time to develop,” he added. “Nevertheless group two believes it is worth waiting and they are betting on 2019 or later for their services.”
The next generation audio system (NGA) is the second hot topic. “We hope that can be developed technically fairly quickly, but within the DVB there has always been three proponent groups. How that plays out is aquestion for the technical module next year,” said Wood.
On the issue of toolbox or set of tools and ITU-R G 24, he said: “Sometimes you may not have a choice because it is too difficult to reconcile the different commercial interests.
“OOTF (opto optical transfer function) came up in ITU discussions as a way of allowing different systems to fit in the same framework,” he added. “But within that would still be many system differences around OETF (opto electrical transfer function) and EOTF( electro optical transfer function) between the SMPTE, NHK/BBC, and Philips systems.”
www.philips.co.uk, 1.D81
