NAB 2017: Ultra HD Forum Sets Demos

The Ultra HD Forum, a group that sets best practices for the pixel-packed video format, said it will support more than a dozen 4K and High Dynamic Range demos at NAB 2017 in Las Vegas.

The demos, at booth N1131FP, will include “Deployable Phase A” technologies that represent current challenges, including broadcaster HDR video delivery, SDR and HDR mixing and delivering quality HDR video.

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For a glimpse future implementations, the “Phase B” tech demos will be comprised of three stations dedicated to dynamic HDR metadata; HDR and SDR improvements; and High Frame Rate Video.

Ultra HD Forum members that are on tap for the demos include BBright, Beamr, DirecTV, Dolby, Harmonic, Huawei, LG Electronics, NeuLion, PBS, Sigma Designs, Sony and Technicolor.

“The 2017 NAB Show sees the Forum’s most ambitious initiative to date of demonstrating UHD capabilities in public. It’s been an exciting challenge to work with our active members to get so many demonstrations up and running for NAB,” Thierry Fautier, a Harmonic exec and the Forum’s recently reelected president, said in a statement. “The Phase A demonstrations show what is really operationally ready today, while our phase B demonstrations show what UHD still has in store.”

Separately, the Ultra HD Forum said it has released the 1.3 version of the UHD Forum Guidelines, which include the additions dedicated to forensic watermarking.

It said several member companies initiated the creation of those security guidelines, including ContentArmor, Irdeto, MarkAny, NexGuard, and Verimatrix. Those guidelines, the Forum added, take the MovieLabs specification for Enhanced Content Protection “to the next level”, and have been vetted or reviewed by orgs such as MovieLabs, the Digital Watermarking Alliance, and the Streaming Video Alliance.