PBS Hopes to Begin Airing 1080p HDR Content Within 2 Years, Says Point Man

At PBS, “we’re in the midst of trying to figure out how we can do this, and how we can do it on a PBS budget,” Jenkins said of HDR. “For us, we are looking at HD HDR. We are looking at going down the road of enhancing our 1920x1080 content, and how do we do that, and we’re committed to making that happen soon, if we possibly can.” The crucial factor for PBS will be the quality of the content that gets converted to HDR from standard dynamic range, Jenkins said: “What does that look like and how is that going to help us? Those are the things that we really are focused on right now on our side of the world.”

The ambition at PBS to air HD HDR content “doesn’t negate” any plans for the network to produce future content in 4K, “because we are,” Jenkins said. “If you hang around your local public broadcasting station in the fall, you’re going to see some amazing content. And I will just tell you that Big Pacific is one of those things that we shot entirely in 4K,” including portions of the PBS documentary series that were shot at high frame rates, he said.

Jenkins agrees with those who say HDR, when combined with 4K resolution and immersive audio, constitutes “the ultimate experience” in TV viewing, he said. But Jenkins has done focus group research “internally” at PBS, “and we have gotten just as big of a bang for the buck” when showing participants HDR on a 1080p TV as showing them HDR on a 4K display, he said. “The impact of HDR alone is enough to make someone say, ‘Oh wow, that is something very different.’”

As for the 24-month timeline for PBS to begin airing HD HDR content, “we have to be careful how quickly we move, only because we have to move so many things at the same time,” Jenkins told us. “That’s what it comes down to.” What body of content PBS would move to air in HD HDR is the “big question,” he said. “We’ve been talking with a number of our content providers about some of the things that they are doing right now, and that’s why 24 months would give us a better idea of when we can do something.”

In 24 months, “I think streaming would probably be the first way we get something out the door” in HD HDR, Jenkins said. “To do it the way that we want to, we have a number of projects that we are working on internally, changing our plant, but also changing our distribution capabilities. As those things come online, if something like ATSC 3.0 is launched as well, that gives us the infrastructure that we need to do it right.”

PBS is not “favoring” any individual HDR formats over others “right now,” Jenkins said. PBS chose to use the hybrid log-gamma HDR format for its latest transmission tests “simply because it was easiest” to do, he said. That the BBC-NHK format uses no metadata was “the only reason that we went with HLG,” he said. “We learned a lot from that, which was really important for us. But I think, really, seeing what ATSC 3.0 does will decide what we do on the distribution path. What individuals choose to deliver to us as a format, I think that’s still up in the air, and we have to be open to make sure that we don’t interfere with the artist’s intent.”

Whether PBS in the months to come will openly trumpet any HD HDR trials it does or will do those trials more secretly will depend on “who we partner with,” Jenkins said. “A lot of the work that we do, we do it quietly because it’s probably easier for us to just kind of make the mistakes and to kind of figure things out. If it is something that we really believe, that, hey, this is going to move the industry forward, then I think we should be a little bit louder about it, and we should include more partners with us when we do it.”

NAB Show Notebook

The “NextGen TV Hub” pavilion in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center's North Hall is “kind of an executive summary of what’s possible with ATSC 3.0, and it’s not just about standards,” said ATSC President Mark Richer at a Monday ribbon-cutting ceremony to open the exhibit. “This is real stuff now, real hardware and software, real products,” said Richer. “ATSC 3.0 is being implemented in Korea and plans are being made in the United States. We’re really, really moving far and fast.” As ATSC’s chief, “I live and breathe this stuff,” Richer said. “But even I’m just amazed to see this stuff. All I can say to sum up the situation is, wow, we’ve come so far. We’re just putting the finishing touches on the 3.0 suite of standards.” The NAB Show exhibit floor features “real ATSC 3.0 products, or at least the promise that there will be,” Richer said. “So we’ve gone really from writing a standard to re-inventing the industry.” ATSC, CTA and NAB put the NextGen TV Hub together with contributions from about two dozen companies, said Richer.

ATSC 3.0 “has the potential to be a game-changer for the broadcasting industry,” Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology, told the opening session Sunday of the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology conference. From an “engineering standpoint,” what makes ATSC 3.0 “so different for the broadcasting industry is that it’s based on” internet protocol, Knapp said. “That opens up a world of possibilities.” ATSC 3.0 is “not the first voluntary transition that we’ve had,” Knapp said in Q&A with NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny. “The TV has evolved voluntarily through the years,” he said. “A part of the early introduction of ATSC 1.0 was done through a voluntary transition.” The FCC has “a lot of work to do yet” on the next-gen broadcast system, said Knapp, noting comments are due May 9 and replies June 8 on the commission’s ATSC 3.0 NPRM (see 1703100040). “We’ll see what the comments have to say and what the commission ultimately decides.” Asked by Matheny what ATSC 3.0 technical issues the FCC expects to address after NPRM comments and replies are in, Knapp said, “It’s a normal thing when you are developing policy or a set of rules to just confirm that the things you think you understand are actually that way.” Among other things, the commission wants to be sure ATSC 3.0's “coverage is what people expect,” he said. “I know the broadcast industry has perhaps more of a stake and interest in that than even we do,” he said. “But in the end, it’s about consumers, because if they lose signals, they tend to call us first.”

Having recognized the PQ10 and HDR10 HDR formats in its “Phase A” guidelines last year, the Ultra HD Forum, in drafting its “Phase B” guidelines, is “considering stuff that a lot of people believe can actually allow us to gain a lot more from high dynamic range and realize its benefits more,” said Matthew Goldman, Ericsson senior vice president-technology, Saturday at the forum’s MasterClass session on HDR developments expected in 2017. “Now there’s always debate in the industry about how you would do that, but as a general rule we are looking at adding a dynamic metadata system or systems” to the guidelines, along the lines of the “HDR10+” system that Samsung announced last week (see 1704200043), he said. “We haven’t made up our mind yet how we’re going to do this. It’s a work in progress.”

The “minute you start introducing HDR, it doesn’t really matter to some degree if in the home you are somewhat limited by the resolution that’s actually coming through the pipe,” said Michael Zink, Warner Bros. vice president-technology, at the Ultra HD Forum’s MasterClass session. “You’re still getting some better quality by the sheer fact that it will be HDR nonetheless,” said Zink, a founding board member of the UHD Alliance, who was at the session to make the case that the Ultra HD Forum and UHD Alliance are cooperating in the complementary work they do. “So even if Netflix is streaming at UHD resolution, and you had some bandwidth limitations, it would scale down the resolution, but still maintain the HDR aspects in that. I think that is a pretty good user experience.” Zink thinks it’s a “generational thing” whether consumers will draw satisfaction from watching HDR on a smartphone, he said of the UHD Alliance’s recent debut of its “Mobile HDR Premium” certification logo for battery-operated devices (see 1702280045). When the UHD Alliance first began discussing the Mobile HDR Premium logo, Zink was skeptical that anyone would want to watch “even short-form material” in HDR on a smartphone, he said. “I certainly wouldn’t necessarily want to do that,” he said. “But I was convinced that a lot of younger people, actually, that’s how they spend their time.” In the end, “having a great quality” in HDR-viewing on a smartphone “I think is something really important,” he said.

South Korea will be first in the world to deploy ATSC 3.0 when it officially begins terrestrial Ultra HD broadcasts May 31, said Heung Mook Kim, managing director of the Korean government-funded Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), at the Global TV Tech conference Saturday. Kim estimates ATSC 3.0 signals will be within reach of 40 percent of the country’s population at launch, expanding to 80 percent coverage in time for the February Olympics in PyeongChang, he said. ATSC will reach all South Korean homes by 2021, he said. ETRI expects a hard cutoff of the existing DTV service to happen in 2027, he said. "Now in Korea, people willing to watch UHD programming can buy ATSC 3.0 UHD TVs at a store nearby," said Sungho Jeon, a research engineer at the Korean Broadcasting System. ATSC 3.0-ready TVs from LG and Samsung have gone on sale in many stores, he said. The sets have dual "antenna ports" -- one for the existing ATSC 1.0 service, the other for ATSC 3.0, he said. At present, ATSC 3.0 programming can be viewed "only through direct reception through the antenna," he said.