Film/TV

Technicolor’s HDR Technology to Enhance the Brazilian Broadcast Experience (MESA)

Technicolor SL-HDR1 (also known as Technicolor HDR) was selected by the SBTVD Forum to be included in the ISDB-Tb specifications. This will allow millions of Brazilian consumers to enjoy a superior TV experience. SL-HDR1 technology allows broadcasters to deliver a signal that can be rendered either as SDR or HDR. The bitstream is SDR and contains the SL-HDR1 metadata that enables the HDR reconstruction.

This allows broadcasters to send a single signal that can be received by audiences that have access to SDR-only TV sets, while providing households with more advanced TVs to receive high-quality HDR images.

Earlier in October, Technicolor’s advanced HDR technologies were among the innovations showcased by Globo – the leading communications company in Brazil – during the Rock in Rio music festival held from September 27 through October 6, 2019 in Rio de Janeiro.

The company used the event as an opportunity to demonstrate a broad array of technologies that will enhance the broadcast experience for Brazilian consumers. Globo broadcasted the event over a terrestrial ISDB-Tb network in AVC as well as a local 5G network in HEVC, delivering high dynamic range (HDR) images as well as immersive audio experiences at the Globo and Globoplay booth located in the festival venue.

Globo successfully demonstrated a complete end-to-end transmission chain that captured video natively in HDR from the Rock in Rio concert stages. The video feeds were encoded directly in SL-HDR1 at the Globosat transmission center and received over ISDB-Tb and 5G at the Globo and Globoplay booth, where music lovers were able to enjoy high-quality SDR and HDR videos on two commercially available TV sets.

Globo chose Advanced HDR by Technicolor – including SL-HDR1 – to manage and distribute both HDR and standard dynamic range (SDR) signals to test and validate the ability to bring new high-quality experiences to Brazilian audiences in a cost-effective manner.

“Rock in Rio was an opportunity for Globo to continue testing the latest video and audio technologies to always deliver the best experiences to our consumers in all kinds of platforms. Technicolor’s advanced HDR technologies have proven to suit our needs in providing backwards compatibility for legacy TV sets while simultaneously enabling picture quality enhancements for regular HDR displays available in the market. According to the results, we concluded that the flexibility and efficiency of SL-HDR1 will help us in our journey towards the future of TV,” says Leonardo Chaves, Head of New Transmission Technologies.