Ultra HD Forum's guidelines show what to expect from future 4K broadcasts

[midian182]

4K TVs are becoming an increasingly popular choice among buyers of new televisions. As such, broadcasters and streaming services are offering more UHD content. But the Ultra HD Forum is already looking toward the future and has released the first version of its Phase B Guidelines, which it hopes will help the industry “navigate the complex UHD landscape.”

“UHD Phase B Guidelines introduce and demystify next-generation UHD technologies that operators are exploring for future enhanced UHD services,” writes the forum.

One of the technologies covered in the 80-page document is high frame rates. The group is aiming for 4K at 100fps and 120fps, or 60fps as a fallback. It did add that these high higher frame rates “would exceed the capabilities of some portions of the end-to-end ecosystem.”

“For example, while HDMI 2.1 supports 4K 120fps or 8K 60fps, most production environment transport systems currently support only 2K with 100/120 fps,” it states.

Dynamic HDR metadata systems, including Dolby Vision and SL-HDR1, are also a focus. Dolby vision is praised for the way it “preserves artistic intent across a wide variety of distribution systems and displays.” The forum also hopes that next-generation audio like Dolby AC-4 and MPEG-H, which offer benefits such as immersive 3D sound, will make watching 4K content an even more enjoyable experience.

All this new tech is going to increase bandwidth demands, of course, but this issue could be addressed through Content Aware Encoding, which intelligently exploits properties of the content to reduce bitrate. This means “simple” content, such as scenes where little motion takes place, is encoded using fewer bits.

The forum is set to show Phase B technologies at the NAB show in Las Vegas, which starts tomorrow. While these are only guidelines, they give an indication of what improvements we can expect to see as 4K becomes ever more common.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/74065-ultra-hd-forum-guidelines-show-what-expect-future.html

 

[cuerdc]

Expect broadband price hikes...

 

[alabama man]

I don't know if I can get anything beyond 720p without paying so I'm happy with my 1080p TV. I will start buying 4k blurays when they drop to 2€ like bluray movies so 5 to 10 years from now I might get 4K TV if they manage to get better input lag than my current TV has. The bfd g'sync stuff looks promising and at that point there might be cheaper older models and I will have ps5 so I can actually play them on something. Shame they ruined 4K for PC with intel monopoly.

 

[fktech]

My eyes are only 1080P and my wallet is 720P.

I can't afford another technological upgrade for incremental improvement.

 

[wiyosaya]

At least HDMI 2.1 will be good for a few years once UHD becomes more popular. As well, ATSC 3.0, when it finally gets to the US, will support this and beyond. Personally, I am looking forward to it, however, at present, I am simply waiting to upgrade as this constant cycle of chasing TV/display technology is tiring and costly. Each year, something new comes out and last year's tech is outdated. Yes, I get it, technology is advancing, but as I see it, the state of this technology is just churn at the moment. When HDMI 2.1 gets into products, I expect things will stabilize somewhat - at least no one who buys an HDMI 2.1 equipped device will have to upgrade just because of that for several years to come.