Technicolor Exec: HDR More Significant For Broadcasters Than UHD In U.S., For Now

January 29, 2018

Technicolor continues to make strides with the implementation of its High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology, as U.S. broadcasters continue to embrace HDR in general more widely than Ultra High-Def (UHD) — at least for the time being, according to Kirk Barker, SVP of emerging products at the company.

The transition to 4K is happening “slowly right now” among broadcasters, he told the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) in a recent phone interview. “If you looked at the truck vendors” that handle sports broadcasts right now, each of them may have “a couple of 4K trucks, but they have 40 normal HD trucks,” he said. While “certain isolated events” are being photographed in 4K, “the cost of re-outfitting the trucks and doing all that kind of stuff is really limiting that to be the premiere events” only, he explained. As a result, he said: “I think all of the college games [and] most of the baseball games” as just two example “are going to continue” to be shot in HD “for a while” — at least through 2018.

“The nice thing about HDR is that it doesn’t care. It can be HD HDR or 4K HDR, and the practicality of deploying HDR on top of an HD signal” just makes it more logical for now because the overhead is “miniscule,” and so “it’s a much easier thing to move directly into HDR than it is to move to 4K” for broadcasters, he said.

Read More:
http://www.mesalliance.org/2018/01/29/technicolor-exec-hdr-significant-broadcasters-uhd-u-s-now/