Complete Coverage: IBC 2016
The Ultra HD Forum—a cross-industry coalition that’s focused on delivering 4K linear services—unveiled its first set of industry guidelines at IBC, covering everything from frames per second to wider color gamut.
The forum’s guidelines for services and technologies delivering 4K content include video frame rates up to 60 fps, cover HEVC, Main 10 and Level 5.1 video codecs, and color gamut recommendations of BT.709 and BT.2020. For live 4K content, a mix of both high dynamic range (HDR) and standard dynamic range (SDR) source content is addressed, while the baseline HDR 10 standard has been accepted.
A number of industry standards groups were consulted before the guidelines were released, including the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), CableLabs, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the DASH Industry Forum, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), the HDMI Forum, MovieLabs, SCTE/ISBE, the UHD Alliance, the Video Services Forum (VSF) and others.
Next, the forum will look to address security—including forensic watermarking—and the inclusion of object-based and personalized audio with 4K content.
“Making our UHD guidelines public just before IBC 2016 was an important milestone,” said Sony’s Don Eklund, co-chair of the Ultra HD Forum’s guidelines working group. “There are already several products displayed at the show that implement our recommendations.”
The forum also announced that it had added several new members (including Brightcove, TNO, KPN and SCTE/ISBE) to bring its ranks to 55.
