That’s right – High Dynamic Range is coming to Comcast subscribers this summer – and it will be implemented on 1080p video, not UHD video. This possibility has been discussed for some time, but this is the first time we have heard of a company committing to delivering it to consumers.
The news was delivered by Comcast’s CTO Tony Werner at the NCTA/INTX 2016 conference in Boston this week. According to one news report, Werner was said to commit to deliverying Olympics coverage this summer in 1080p HDR. When we checked with another source at Comcast, he confirmed that the new Xi5 set top box set to debut this July will have HDR10 support for 1080p content, but he did not confirm that Comcast would deliver Olympics coverage in the format.
Werner and many others in the industry concede that adding HDR to 1080 content is a bigger improvement than moving to UltraHD resolution without HDR, which may be why they are moving in this direction. Comcast already supports streaming of UHD content but typically in a 8-bit, 709, 30 fps format, so only an increase in resolution.
A new Xi6 set top box is also in development that will support UHD resolution, and most likely HDR, 60 fps and BT 2020 container color data. No details on this project were released so we will have to wait for more. – CC
