UHD Alliance Chief Says Outreach to Broadcasters Includes ATSC 3.0's Framers

ATSC 3.0's framers have said they're still seeking consensus on HDR and they want to “coalesce” HDR around specifications that various standards organizations and industry alliances are working on, including the UHD Alliance (see 1505130058). That lack of consensus means it’s unlikely that HDR will be part of ATSC 3.0 video when it’s elevated to candidate standard status this year, but HDR can be added later, they have said.

“What helps us all here is that we have partners” in organizations like ATSC, said Basse, corporate chief technology officer at Fox. “My specific example is we obviously have a television network” at Fox, he said. Basse’s own background includes a long stint in broadcast systems engineering at DirecTV, where he was the company's technical lead for its introduction of HD and on-demand services, his UHD Alliance bio says. “I worked at DirecTV for 14 years, so I know a lot of people in that industry, especially in North America," he told us. "So we have conversations like that with them.” Looking at the “makeup” of ATSC, “NBC Universal, they have a studio and a television network,” he said. “Disney, with ABC, they have a television network. Fox, with the Fox Network, and so on and so forth. So that’s actually all very straightforward. We’ve known each other for years.”

Outreach to organizations like ATSC “has been key here,” Basse said. “We’re not trying to be an exclusive club. We’re not trying to create something that competes with anything. We want to be out there.” There also have been “a lot of discussions” with CEA “to make sure they understand what we’re doing and we understand what they’re doing in this space," Basse said. "I think we’re all pretty happy with those discussions.”

Content “representation” in the UHD Alliance has “primarily” been through the Hollywood studios, Basse said. “It’s much easier, I think overall, to create 4K and HDR content from a motion picture than from a live broadcast,” he said. “It’s relatively straightforward to make HDR movies. Broadcast is a lot more involved.” When the UHD Alliance was formed at January CES (see 1501050023), Basse said, “the broadcasters weren’t really ready to have those discussions with us yet, but now they are.”

Contrary to popular belief, the UHD Alliance isn't a standards organization, Basse said. “We’re not specifying a format,” he said. “We’re not specifying a bit stream, or something like that. All we care about is performance parameters of the TV -- brightness, contrast, color space, that sort of thing.”

On ways that the consumer testing the alliance has done helped mold its forthcoming compliance and logo programs, “what we’ve tried to figure out” is which performance attributes are most important to consumers, and which aren't, Basse said. “The good news is, consumers clearly prefer the HDR version over what they’re used to today.”

Though consumers in the testing have been shown side-by-side comparison demos to showcase how compelling the HDR picture can be, “I’ve seen demos where you don’t even need it side by side,” he said. “Obviously, it’s a little bit dependent on how the content was created and the capabilities of the display.” On devices that conform to the alliance’s step-up “premium” logo program requirements (see 1509080050), the picture quality will be “very compelling and you might not even need it side by side,” he said. “You’ll just look at it, and you’ll get it. That’s the goal.”

Filmmakers also will need to learn “how to use this new tool,” Basse said of HDR. “It’s a bigger canvas. It’s a new tool in the toolbox. Different creative people use it differently, but that’s good. That’s actually one of the main things that the studios are trying to achieve with their participation in the UHD Alliance.” The studios all want to “maintain the creative intent” of the filmmaker, he said.