5 HDR Technology ‘Amendments’ Loom for ATSC 3.0 Video Document, Says Richer
The A/341 document on ATSC 3.0 video and high dynamic range will go out in a matter of days for a four-week ATSC membership ballot that, if approved, will elevate the document to the status of a proposed standard, ATSC President Mark Richer told us Thursday. But that hardly will close the door on the contentious HDR saga at ATSC 3.0. Richer said up to five technology “amendments” to A/341 will be floated to the ATSC membership in the next few weeks.
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A/341, as approved by ATSC’s Technology Group 3 in meetings last week, “defines the transfer characteristics” for perceptual quantization and hybrid log-gamma techniques for HDR, Richer said. Those definitions are made largely through “references” to existing standards from ITU and the Society of Motion Picture and TV Engineers, he said.
TG3 also approved additional candidate standards for ballot “that incorporate some other technologies” for HDR, he said: “They are being done as potential amendments to A/341 for the future.” In all, five HDR technologies will be considered as future amendments to A/341, each of which will go out for balloting as a candidate standard, he said. “We continue to look at five other technologies, and it’s likely you’ll see some candidate standards out for those technologies over the coming weeks also. They’ll be out for ballot, and if they get approved, then you’ll see them published. So we’re continuing our work on HDR, but we’ve made some major choices here.”
It’s “a little too early in the process” to disclose what those five technologies are because “they’re still in discussion” within TG3, Richer said. A/341 typifies many other standards that offer “multiple options,” he said. A/341 will make heavy reference to ITU’s BT.2100, which itself specifies HLG and PQ transfer functions but doesn’t explicitly mandate a single technology for HDR deployment, he said.
“Standards are living documents, generally,” said Richer. “They get revised, they get amended. They get clarified. That’s true for A/341. But it’s true for all standards, unless they’re really mature. So we expect all our standards to be revised and amended and corrected and clarified. That’s very typical. So what I’m saying here in the case of A/341, we know that there’s a number of amendments, and those amendments are to add additional functionality and options and capabilities.” Some of those five approaches are competitive in nature, but others are “complementary,” he said.
Despite three delays since July in approving A/341 with HDR for balloting as a proposed standard, Richer wouldn’t go so far as to say he thinks HDR has been the most contentious issue yet in the framing of ATSC 3.0. “There may be some ties, I don’t know,” he said with a chuckle. “There are different issues for different technologies,” and HDR “has been one of the harder ones to crack,” he said. “But when we first started ATSC 3.0, there was hardly any talk about HDR.”
The technologies for HDR have “progressed as we’ve moved forward,” Richer said. “Issues have changed and capabilities and understandings about what the options are have changed. It’s a challenging topic. Wherever you’re dealing with complex technologies and competition, things take a while. But I think we’ve ended up in the right place, not dissimilar from what other organizations are doing.” Richer thinks “the more important point” to make about HDR is that “there’s going to continue to be progress in the industry, and other technologies and other options, and we’ll add those as it makes sense.”