46 TVBEurope The Workflow “I am not sure it will be easy
with satellite broadcasting to change the STB to HEVC, unless the change also brings some significant picture quality such as UHDTV, which persuades the viewer that it is necessary,” suggests Wood. The second iteration of HEVC
(January 2014) will also include 3D tools equivalent to MVC (which is written into the DVB Service Compatible 3DTV Phase 2a system). In the fullness of time, an ‘object wave recording’ system will be developed that will provide, what Wood describes as, “a superb three dimensional image, free of the need for glasses, and which will avoid the ‘vergence/ accommodation’ conflict of today’s 3D systems.” There are several collaborative
projects taking steps toward this though the ITU guesses estimates 20-30 years to make this kind of technology practical. “You have to develop a sensor that records the amplitude, phase, and wavelength of an area of light, and then work out some way to deliver the massive amount of data that comes out of that,” says Wood. “Don’t hold your breath.”
A THREE-YEARmulti-million Euro research programme under the aegis of French consortium 4EVER aims to demonstrate a first complete Ultra HD production and transmission chain by mid- 2013, based on HEVC. Members include Ateme,
Orange Labs, GlobeCast, TeamCast, Technicolor and Doremi, as well as the Télécom ParisTech and INSA-IETR University labs. On the production side, the lead partner will be France Télévisions which is already experimenting with 4K captured content. “4EVER is looking at
applying HEVC to a broad range of use cases including broadcast contribution where bandwidth is really constrained,” explains Benoit Fouchard, chief strategy officer, Ateme. The French presidential election featured a lot of coverage on the streets of Paris which was of dreadful quality.
“It is obvious that compared to current HDTV 1080-i you are much more likely to create a ‘wow!’ effect by increasing the frame rate than by an increase in resolution”
France explores UltraHDTV One obvious candidate for
tests, according to Fouchard, is the 2013 French Open at Roland Garros, coverage which Orange and France Télévisions have jointly produced in recent years. They previously collaborated on experiments including the first trials of HD over DSL in 2006 from the venue. Before then there will be a series of other tests including ‘at a key sporting event in France’. Fouchard is not at liberty to say which, so I will leave you to guess. At any high profile event where France Télévisions is present you can expect to find a team of 4EVER researchers wielding 4K cameras. Orange is even targeting the end of 2012 for end to end 4K test over its IP network.
Challenges ahead include
overcoming a lack of standards for transport of 4K uncompressed video around a production environment and the lack of a standard means of getting 4K onto a TV set itself.
“The 4K consumer sets demoed at CES2012 all used different ways of getting 4K to the TV, by for example, aggregating several HDMI ports,” explains Jérôme Vieron, in charge of advanced research at ATEME and the 4EVER project’s instigator. “There are 3-4 different workarounds while a standard is pending. So in the short term one needs to cool down expectations. Without a standard uncompressed 4K format that is accepted in a production environment and a common way of getting 4K video from STB to TV set, development will be impeded. But it will be overcome.” He adds: “As we progress
further, the industry will realise the full magnitude of the production challenge. Just now the level of noise we get from 4K content and the amount of light that needs to be cast on a scene makes capture very restrictive.” Vieron says 4EVER has tested several 4K cameras on
the market but considers none capable of delivering a true 4K signal that preserves the full bit depth, latitude and colour from the lens. “We need an 8-fold increase in the performance of the sensor cells to be able to produce 4K content,” he says. “4EVER is focussed on assessing the perceived benefit of the video experience,” says Fouchard. “We are not making a final statement about whether this will be achieved by high frame rate or by freeing up bandwidth but if you take the average screen size in homes as 50-inch (and current high end TVs can interpolate that at 120Hz) it is obvious that compared to current HDTV 1080-i you are much more likely to create a ‘wow!’ effect by increasing the frame rate than by an increase in resolution. The industry needs to make sure that the end user experience is there.” — Adrian Pennington
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