Ultra HD Dominant in UK, but BBC Can't Switch to HDR Only, SES Conference Told
Ultra HD is now “unequivocally dominant in the U.K.” and fast becoming the “common coin currency” for European TV, said Nick Simon, account director-consumer electronics for research company GfK, at the SES Ultra HD conference last week in London: Full…
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HD “is so last year.” He estimated U.K. shipments of Ultra HD Blu-ray hardware underwent a “massive increase” since last July, rising by 233 percent. But David Klafkowski, CEO of The Farm Group, a global production company, said he "can’t see the production industry switching fully to UHD for a while,” with the huge storage demands for 4K production and post-production being the biggest impediments. “But I do see a time in two years or so when everything is in HDR, with wider color gamut,” he said of high dynamic range. “It will become the norm.” The BBC “cannot disenfranchise license payers” among the British TV-viewing public, many of whom own sets without HDR, “so compatibility is essential” with standard dynamic range content, said Andy Quested, BBC HD & UHD head of technology. That’s why all the HDR content that BBC “commissions” will be in the hybrid log-gamma (HLG) HDR format that BBC co-developed with NHK, “unless someone pays us a considerable amount of money not to use HLG,” said Quested. He cautioned the creative community not to overdo it with overly bright HDR content. He told BBC engineers and producers: “If it hurts your eyes in the grade, then it will hurt the eyes of the audience, so don’t do it.” He said he thinks the “sweet spot” for HDR peak brightness is around 1,000 nits.