Technicolor had their usual suite in the Venetian where they showcased a number of technologies they are working on. These are primarily related to VR and HDR.
One area they highlighted was their partnership with LG Electronics. Here, they are developing a Technicolor Expert mode for the LG OLED TVs as well as the Super LCD TVs in 2017. Technicolor said their expert mode goes way beyond what consumers can do with the visible menus options, or even what calibrators can do with some of the advanced user menu options. “We are working down at the TCON level to develop a calibration mode that is more accurate than even a skilled calibrator can achieve,” said Technicolor’s Josh Limor.
LG is also planning on integrating support for Advanced HDR by Technicolor into their OLED and Super LCD TVs. This is a production and distribution format that allows cameras to capture content in HDR using HLG, PQ or even camera-specific gamma curves that are optimized for those sensors, like Sony sLog3. A production can even mix in SDR cameras. These are all converted to a common format for production and at the final encoder, they are formatted as a single stream with metadata that can playout on HDR or SDR sets.
In the Technicolor suite, they described this format as a “universal HDR delivery scheme.” It has already been standardized in ETSI and will be part of the new HDMI 2.1 specification as well.
They showed an example of a recent live production demonstration of the Dodgers baseball game using Advanced HDR by Technicolor, as shown in the graphic below. For this production, all the cameras were SDR and the full production in El Segundo was done in SDR. Just prior to the final distribution encoder, the Advanced HDR by Technicolor process was implemented. This essentially does an automated conversion of the SDR to HDR, but does not preserve the HDR version. Only the metadata about the conversion is retained. This metadata is then transmitted through distribution with the SDR version. SDR TVs will ignore the metadata, but TVs with Advanced HDR by Technicolor can reconstruct the HDR image.
Technicolor told us that at the end of January they will be doing a new test with Spectrum Sportsnet and the NBA. This will include a mixture of Slog3 HDR (Sony) and SDR sources.
Advanced HDR by Technicolor is intended to also be able to support content coming in with a Dolby Vision, HDR10, HLG or other camera format, as well. It is an open platform, but decoding must be supported by end devices (TV, STB, Blu-ray player, etc.) Technicolor noted that these decoders are already designed into SoCs from 12 providers including Mstar, AM Logic, RealTek, MediaTek, Broadcom, Marvel, Sigma Design and HiSilicon. TV or STB makers would pay Technicolor a royalty if the decoding is used.
Technicolor is also active in VR and they showed a VR demo they made for retailer John Lewis in the UK over the Christmas period. This was used by about 300 people a day, they said. Several other VR demos were on display as well. – CC
