NAB 2018: Ultra HD Forum releases UHD Phase B guidelines
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Joseph O'Halloran
| 07 April 2018

Aiming to pave the way for the next wave of UHD technologies, the Ultra HD Forum has published its Phase B guidelines covering dynamic metadata, higher refresh rates, lower bandwidth requirement and next generation audio.

The association's Phase A guidelines addressed technologies that were solidified in 2015 and 2016, then in the summer of 2017 it ran a survey with operators to guide the choice of the next phase of technologies. The Phase B Guidelines that are published in a 80-page technical document, are intended to introduce and de-mystify five areas for the future of UHD, namely: content aware encoding; dual-layer HDR technologies; dynamic HDR metadata systems (Dolby Vision and SL-HDR1); high frame rate (100/120 FPS); next generation audio (Dolby AC-4 Audio and MPEG-H Audio).

Commenting on the release of Phase B guidelines, Madeleine Noland, Chair of the Guidelines Work group at the Ultra HD Forum said: "Our guidelines are regularly updated, and further technologies will be addressed. Also, as with the Phase A guidelines, we remain strongly focussed on backwards compatibility so that the introduction of new solutions doesn't break what's already in place. Phase B Guidelines will soon include end-to-end workflows for all distribution systems including OTA, MVPD and OTT, which is a hallmark of the Forum's work."