Technicolor today announced that a growing number of leading TV and Set Top Box (STB) System-on-Chip (SoC) manufacturers are integrating Technicolor’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) Delivery Solution into their offerings, including: Marvell, MStar Semiconductor, Sigma Designs and STMicroelectronics.
The news paves the way for consumer electronics manufacturers to integrate Technicolor’s suite of HDR enhancement technologies into their 2016 offerings. As a result, new consumer devices will be able to access the wave of next-generation of HDR content that will become available this year.
Technicolor also announced the availability of the “Technicolor HDR Intelligent Tone Management (ITM)” solution for silicon. Consumer equipment (CE) devices that feature SoCs containing Technicolor HDR ITM capabilities will be able to automatically up-convert all legacy SDR content to powerful HDR imagery.
Technicolor HDR ITM enhances millions of hours of movies, TV shows, video games, home videos and photos by adding the contrast, wide color palette, realistic highlights and deep shadow details of native HDR content. The solution is based on the Technicolor Hollywood production technology that was honored with the 2015 Lumière Award from the Advanced Imaging Society for “outstanding technologies that advance the entertainment industry.”
“ITM on devices will allow consumers to revisit and enjoy their libraries of video content, gaming and even personal media – quite literally, in a brand new light – as existing content is reintroduced in vivid and vibrant HDR,” said Mark Turner, Technicolor’s vice president of business development and strategic partnerships. “In so doing, manufacturers of TVs, STBs, tablets, laptops and PCs will be able to offer a premium viewing experience that will differentiate their products from competitors, and allow consumers to make full use of their new HDR displays.”
The integration of HDR up-conversion capabilities into the SoC environment offers major advantages to CE, chipset and STB manufacturers, as well as to retailers and consumers. It circumvents the dilemma of introducing new HDR display capabilities before native HDR content is broadly available.
Technicolor’s Connected Home division has already committed to rolling out Technicolor’s HDR decoder technology to its global community of Pay-TV partners. The division is also now offering Technicolor’s HDR ITM technology in reference HDR set-top boxes. It is making the technology available for extensive testing so that providers can see how HDR ITM upscaling integrates with STBs to offer every show on every network in an up-converted HDR format to consumers. The launch of Technicolor’s HDR ITM solution adds to the technology licensing options available to CE companies.
The rollout and acceptance of Technicolor’s HDR Delivery Solution, along with the launch of Technicolor’s HDR ITM solution, are the most recent examples of how Technicolor is collaborating with partners to deliver the best possible content experiences to consumers on any device.
Executives from SoC manufacturers offered the following perspectives on the Technicolor HDR solutions:
- “Enabling high performance, immersive experience solutions at affordable price points has always been the key focus for Marvell. Implementing Technicolor’s HDR ITM technology in our SOCs allows us to enable an additional dimension to our offerings for our Digital Entertainment platform solutions.” — Philip Poulidis, Vice President and General Manager, IoT, Automotive and Multimedia Business Units at Marvell.
- “HDR is the next big milestone toward UHD phase 2. Mstar have been working with the entire ecosystem for years to bring solutions to the market and their customers through HDR compatible DTV and STB chipsets. Technicolor HDR Intelligent Tone Management (ITM) technology extends the HDR user experience to non HDR legacy contents and enable those users to take full advantage of their latest CE equipment.” — Stanley Chen, Marketing Director DTV Division.
- “Sigma Designs is happy to collaborate with Technicolor on ITM to further expand its business in HDR by also offering HDR solutions for native SDR content.” — Alfred Chan, Vice President, product marketing, Sigma Designs Multimedia Business Unit.
