Ultra HD

Fox says today that it’s teaming with Panasonic and Samsung Electronics to create what they call “an open, royalty-free dynamic metadata platform,” tentatively called HDR10+. Translation: They want the industry to have a common communications standard that would enable ultra-HD TVs, Blu-ray disc players, and set top boxes to dynamically adjust he brightness, color and contrast of a movie or show scene-by-scene — not just once for the entire production. The process is known as tone-mapping.

At this year’s media tech compendium in Amsterdam, there was greater cooperation among vendors to ensure IP interoperability. On the business front, there was talk of zoned advertising and hyperlocal content delivery over the air with OFDM-based transmission systems such as ATSC 3.0. And on the technology frontier, all of the work to make Ultra HD a reality has begun to pay off with real-world applications, novel 360-degree acquisition (see the Nokia Ozo camera above) and new 8K implementations of OLED display technology.

Broadcasters from around the world will converge next month on Amsterdam for IBC 2016 where they will find the latest developments in the technology and business transitions confronting the industry. Whether it’s the shift from baseband to IP video transport, the rollout of 4K and 8K Ultra HD production or the growing role of OTT and future advertising opportunities, IBC 2016 promises to offer a fresh perspective on where the television industry is headed.

In a couple of weeks, Sinclair Broadcast Group will open an upgraded ATSC 3.0 testing lab in Baltimore to design and test a national network based on the next-generation standard and the services that will run on it.

Sony plans to launch a 4K streaming service in the U.S. aimed at providing purchasers of its 4K Bravia TVs with some content to play on them. The transactional service will provide users of Sony’s new HDR TVs streams in the high-resolution Ultra HD format, complemented by High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology.

Technicolor, a worldwide media and entertainment technology supplier, and Elemental Technologies, a supplier of software-defined video solutions for multiscreen content delivery, announced Thursday they will demonstrate the world’s first broadcast […]

Japan’s government and NHK are bullish about giving Japan a broadcast system that supports ultra-sharp 8K — 16 times the resolution of HD — in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. And now, Japan’s public broadcaster is not ruling out virtual reality as a possible future use of the format.

TOKYO (AP) — At a humble Tokyo laboratory, Godzilla, including the 1954 black-and-white original, is stomping back with a digital makeover that delivers four times the image quality of high […]

The world’s largest electronics chain has teamed up with Samsung and Sony to open in-store showrooms staffed with Blue Shirts trained to tout the merits of ultra-high-definition, or 4K, technology, which generates a picture four times sharper than existing HDTVs. The question for Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly is whether the pricey innovation will jump-start a wave of home-theater upgrades the way flat-panel TVs did last decade — or wind up a flop like 3D sets.

A group at the International Telecommunication Union is reviewing proposals from Dolby, Technicolor, Philips and the BBC.

It’s the first TV format to be driven by the Internet video-streaming phenomenon, and at the International CES gadget show this week, major streaming players Netflix and Amazon said they’ll offer movies and TV shows in the format, and Sharp introduced a relatively inexpensive TV with near-Ultra HD quality.

The PXW-Z100 Ultra HD handheld will be available toward the end of the year.

Sony and FIFA TV will test run the Ultra HD technology at three matches, to help decide whether it will be employed at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.

Starting this weekend, broadcasters will be tempted with new ways of producing, managing, storing and airing programming with promises of better quality and greater efficiency. Prominent among those new ways will be cloud technology, mobile DTV and next-generation transmission standards.

Shooting series in the new Ultra HD format is being tested, and so far it’s not proving to add time — or too much expense — to the process. Another major advantage: having a 4K master should pay dividends when the format becomes standard.

The early-stage format offering resolution four times greater then HD will carry an industry-wide moniker of Ultra High-Definition or Ultra HD. The less flashy 4K will be shunted aside as a consumer term, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.