UHD Forum releases Phase B guidelines

The Forum will showcase the Phase B technologies which follow on from the Phase A baseline by “providing an evolutionary path to enhance the viewer experience.” 

Its Phase B guidelines include dynamic metadata, next-generation audio (NGA) and high frame rate (HFR) to enhance viewing experiences. 

The UHD Forum explained the concerns raised within the industry about the perceived technological risks and changing goalposts for operators in pursuing the development of UHD and HDR formats. 

The UHD Forum Chair of the Guidelines Work group Madeleine Noland said the organisation doesn’t agree with that point of view.

She said: “Our Guidelines are regularly updated, and further technologies will be addressed. Also, as with the Phase A guidelines, we remain strongly focussed on backwards compatibility so that the introduction of new solutions doesn’t break what’s already in place.

”Phase B Guidelines will soon include end-to-end workflows for all distribution systems including OTA, MVPD and OTT, which is a hallmark of the Forum’s work”.

During IBC2017 the UHD Forum Chairperson and President Thierry Fautier told delegates the industry is moving at different paces from OTT and traditional broadcasting with the possibilities of UHD shifting into different architectures with new technologies employed across the content lifecycle. 

Netflix and Amazon are leading the way with supporting HDR and 4K UHD TV programmes, including Marvel’s Jessica Jones as well as new release and older films on Amazon.  

The Forum has set the guidelines as an indication of what improvements and enhanced video content can be expected from the increasing 4K video content.

The Forum will showcase the phase B technologies first hand for delegates in the Futures Park of NAB in North Hall.