sofien72tu
15-09-2008, 11:24 PM
World standard for Super HDTV?
Chris Forrester, on 15-09-2008
Super HDTV, NHK’s “next generation” broadcast technology, and on display at IBC, could be the industry’s “big technology jump,” said Hans Hoffmann, the EBU’s senior engineer.
“Broadcasters around the world are now migrating to HDTV. We know HD has two standards, at 720p or 1080i. The next step is 1080p at 50 or 60Hz. Then the industry has to look at the next big technology jump. Investment is all-important, while we must also remember that there are other interested parties in what we are doing. Broadcasting is our focus, but look at the Gaming sector, or the role broadband and a home storage device might play. The prospects are marvelous, but we need to see that we don’t have too many options that hamper adoption.”
Peter Symes, SMPTE’s director/standards & engineering, agreed that Super HDTV is a very forward-looking development from NHK. “In some ways we are at the same point today’s high-definition was in the late 1970’s. But it is progressing rather more rapidly than that technology, and we are perhaps already at the same position HD was in the mid-1980’s. They are now talking of Super HD being 12-15 years away, but have already brought the basic parameters of the system to SMPTE and the main point here is that people are now looking at developing applications based on these emerging standards. Having access to these core standards is an important part of ensuring that companies don’t go investing in slightly different version. In fact the HDTV we know today might have progressed much faster had we not the missteps of 5:3 needing changing to 16:9, or 1035 to 1080. Even if - and I do not anticipate this - we do make some mistakes in the future, at least we are on a road where everyone is working to the same goal, and consensus would emerge. Everyone has the same common set of values to deal with, and this makes development efficient.”
Asked whether a “World Standard” for Super HD might now emerge, Symes replied “But don’t ask me if it will!” He added that NHK’s demonstration was wonderful and it showed what is possible even with today’s technology.
“Today’s efforts demand 140Mb/s for distribution to the home. In other words it is not practical. But 10 to 15 years is a long time and there will be considerable improvements to compression in that time-frame. We have now seen, and ratified in our work at SMPTE and the ITU a base-line standard. From our position at the EBU we see a couple of very important parameters here. First, it is a Progressive standard. However, for the moment it concentrates only on spatial enhancements. This is an area where we do believe that in the coming years we will see some trends emerging where we will also be taking into account the potential offered by higher frame-rate systems. We might also see the enhancement of temporal resolution, for example, and this might result in us taking the frame rate up to 100 or 200 or even 300 fps, but not at 8k but using a 4k system in order to keep the bandwidth manageable.
Symes agreed: “There’s another huge potential advantage of a 200 or 300Hz frame rate: while you are clearly expanding the number of Gigabytes at one end of the chain, the compression prediction becomes almost trivial and much more efficient at the transmission and reception end of the chain. And with this 10-15 year timeframe there is plenty of room for technology developments, but we start with the strong baseline of a fundamental standard, and this is a real advantage.”
Chris Forrester, on 15-09-2008
Super HDTV, NHK’s “next generation” broadcast technology, and on display at IBC, could be the industry’s “big technology jump,” said Hans Hoffmann, the EBU’s senior engineer.
“Broadcasters around the world are now migrating to HDTV. We know HD has two standards, at 720p or 1080i. The next step is 1080p at 50 or 60Hz. Then the industry has to look at the next big technology jump. Investment is all-important, while we must also remember that there are other interested parties in what we are doing. Broadcasting is our focus, but look at the Gaming sector, or the role broadband and a home storage device might play. The prospects are marvelous, but we need to see that we don’t have too many options that hamper adoption.”
Peter Symes, SMPTE’s director/standards & engineering, agreed that Super HDTV is a very forward-looking development from NHK. “In some ways we are at the same point today’s high-definition was in the late 1970’s. But it is progressing rather more rapidly than that technology, and we are perhaps already at the same position HD was in the mid-1980’s. They are now talking of Super HD being 12-15 years away, but have already brought the basic parameters of the system to SMPTE and the main point here is that people are now looking at developing applications based on these emerging standards. Having access to these core standards is an important part of ensuring that companies don’t go investing in slightly different version. In fact the HDTV we know today might have progressed much faster had we not the missteps of 5:3 needing changing to 16:9, or 1035 to 1080. Even if - and I do not anticipate this - we do make some mistakes in the future, at least we are on a road where everyone is working to the same goal, and consensus would emerge. Everyone has the same common set of values to deal with, and this makes development efficient.”
Asked whether a “World Standard” for Super HD might now emerge, Symes replied “But don’t ask me if it will!” He added that NHK’s demonstration was wonderful and it showed what is possible even with today’s technology.
“Today’s efforts demand 140Mb/s for distribution to the home. In other words it is not practical. But 10 to 15 years is a long time and there will be considerable improvements to compression in that time-frame. We have now seen, and ratified in our work at SMPTE and the ITU a base-line standard. From our position at the EBU we see a couple of very important parameters here. First, it is a Progressive standard. However, for the moment it concentrates only on spatial enhancements. This is an area where we do believe that in the coming years we will see some trends emerging where we will also be taking into account the potential offered by higher frame-rate systems. We might also see the enhancement of temporal resolution, for example, and this might result in us taking the frame rate up to 100 or 200 or even 300 fps, but not at 8k but using a 4k system in order to keep the bandwidth manageable.
Symes agreed: “There’s another huge potential advantage of a 200 or 300Hz frame rate: while you are clearly expanding the number of Gigabytes at one end of the chain, the compression prediction becomes almost trivial and much more efficient at the transmission and reception end of the chain. And with this 10-15 year timeframe there is plenty of room for technology developments, but we start with the strong baseline of a fundamental standard, and this is a real advantage.”