Enjoying a premium, full-featured Ultra High Definition in-home experience has been simplified for consumers as the UHD Alliance (UHDA), the inter-industry group charged with fostering the Ultra HD ecosystem and promoting the benefits of Ultra HD entertainment technology, today unveiled a consumer-facing logo to identify devices, content and services capable of delivering a premium experience to an exploding Ultra HD market that is expected to grow eightfold by 2019. The UHDA also announced the start of licensing of its ULTRA HD PREMIUM logo.
Developed through the collaborative efforts of leading film studios, consumer electronics manufacturers, content distributors and technology companies, the Ultra HD Premium specifications reflect collective expertise from across the Ultra HD ecosystem, as well as significant input gleaned from experiential consumer testing.
The UHDA’s ULTRA HD PREMIUM logo is reserved for products and services that comply with performance metrics for resolution, high dynamic range (HDR), peak luminance, black levels and wide colour gamut among others. The specifications also make recommendations for immersive audio and other features. These advances in resolution, contrast, brightness, colour and audio will enable certified displays and content to replicate the richness of life’s sights and sounds and allow in-home viewers to more fully and accurately experience the content creator’s vision.
“The diverse group of UHDA companies agreed that to realize the full potential of Ultra HD the specs need to go beyond resolution and address enhancements like HDR expanded colour and ultimately even immersive audio. Consumer testing confirmed this,” said UHD Alliance President Hanno Basse. “The criteria established by this broad cross-section of the Ultra HD ecosystem enables the delivery of revolutionary in-home experience, and the ULTRA HD PREMIUM logo gives consumers a single, identifying mark to seek out so they can purchase with confidence.”
To ensure products bearing the ULTRA HD PREMIUM logo are certified and conform to the organization’s specifications, the UHDA has designated multiple, independent centres around the globe to handle testing. Companies throughout the ecosystem will work directly with these centres to have their products tested and certified.
The UHDA’s new ULTRA HD PREMIUM specifications cover multiple display technologies and reference established industry standards and recommended practices from the Consumer Technology Association, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the International Telecommunications Union and others.
“Ever-rising consumer adoption of Ultra HD TV sets will fuel strong growth for the entire Ultra HD ecosystem over the next few years,” noted Paul Erickson, senior analyst at IHS Technology. “Annual worldwide shipments of Ultra HD TVs are expected to grow nearly 719% over the next several years according to IHS’ forecasts, from nearly 12 million in 2014 to nearly 96 million in 2019, with over 300 million in use by the end of 2019. For the many mainstream consumers looking to make sense of the various terminologies, acronyms and feature descriptions at retail, standardization efforts such as the UHDA’s “ULTRA HD PREMIUM” can reduce consumer confusion and help ensure consistency of both buyer expectations and the delivery of the end experience – benefiting not only consumers, but also the industry as a whole.”
Founded in January 2015, the UHDA has grown to more than 35 companies in two membership categories – Board and Contributor. In 2016, the UHDA will add a third member category, Adopter, for those who wish to license the Ultra HD Premium specifications. Collectively, the UHDA member companies will continue to lead the charge into this new era of home entertainment through advances in resolution, brightness, contrast, dynamic range, colour and audio.
Companies interested in the UHDA specification and the associated licensing terms can obtain the UHDA Information Agreement and/or licensing terms by going through www.uhdalliance.org.
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Ultra HD Premium Specifications
Content (4K Blu-ray discs) and devices (4K TVs/4K Blu-ray players) must meet or exceed a 4K resolution (3840 x 2160), up to 60 frames per second and support 10-bit colour depth, BT.2020 colour space representation and HDR.
The video is encoded under the High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard, and use 10-bit colour depth and the Rec. 2020 colour space.
TVs must also be capable of producing more than 90 per cent of the DCI P3 colour standard and meet a certain brightness level (measured in nits).
4K TVs must have either a 1000-nit peak brightness and less than 0.05 nits black level (to cater for the high brightness of LCD TVs), or a 540-nit peak brightness and less than 0.0005 nits black level (to include the generally dimmer, yet stonking black depth, of OLEDs).
HDR pictures can be delivered in one of two ways: either using the BDA-developed “BD HDR” section of the new specification or via compatible HDR formats such as Dolby Vision.
The disc specifications allows for discs in three sizes: 50GB with 82 Mbit/s, 66GB with 108 Mbit/s, and 100GB with 128 Mbit/s.
The discs support an optional digital bridge feature, which will allow the copying of Ultra HD Blu-ray content to an external hard disk drive and to portable devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The spec also mandates that all Ultra HD Blu-ray players will be able to play legacy Blu-ray discs.
The benefits of Ultra HD Premium
While a standard Blu-ray offers 8-bit colour depth, producing a total of 16.78 million colours, an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc with 10-bit colour depth will offer 1.07 billion colours, a significant upgrade.
BT.2020, which applies to 4K (3840 x 2160) and 8K (7680 x 4320) resolutions, is also all about colour gamut, meaning a wider range of colours and greater saturation than the Rec.709 space that applies to Full HD TV standards.
UHD Premium does recommend support for formats such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.
TVs, 4K Blu-ray players and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs that meet the standard will be stamped with the UHD Premium logo.
