HDR Adoption Gets A Boost From Technicolor Hardware

• Technicolor & MStar partner together to bring critical support to HDR rollout.

Consumers will be quick to appreciate advanced HDR video, and service providers will be eager to deliver it to them. Technicolor is working with semiconductor manufacturers to enable advanced HDR set-top-boxes to be produced in volume at low cost, according Brian Jentz, Senior Director of Product Management at Technicolor Connected Home.

Jentz explains that Advanced HDR by Technicolor offers the market a big improvement on the basic HDR technology that is already in the market, “Advanced HDR enables a consumer to play back any HDR content on existing Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) TVs, or, if they have a new HDR TV, they can take full advantage of the content. This is done by sending one single content stream that includes standard dynamic range data plus HDR, through the use of metadata. In addition, Advanced HDR technology creates the ability to up-convert SDR to HDR in the home, on a set-top-box. In so doing, viewers have uninterrupted HDR capability displayed to their TVs.”

However, Advanced HDR requires additional hardware in set-top-boxes, and to enable these to be produced cost effectively in large volumes, the necessary hardware functions will have to be embedded in silicon. Technicolor is working closely with system-on-a-chip (SoC) makers to help them develop SoC products able to process advanced HDR video. At IBC 2016 in Amsterdam, Technicolor demonstrated the results of its collaboration with one SoC manufacturer, MStar.

“We worked with MStar early on to integrate our intellectual property into their silicon,” Jentz says. “We worked closely with them in their labs to make sure the video quality was high and up to expectations. And throughout this year we have worked closely with service providers in real-world environments to test out the end-to-end ecosystem. Now we have set-top-boxes available that integrate SoCs like MStar’s that we will be rolling out for live testing.”

To access the complete Q&A with Jentz and learn about Technicolor's view on the entertainment technology marketplace, click here.