A BBC Research & Development collaboration has won an award at the Engineering, Science & Technology Emmys.
The award will be presented to the ITU for recommendation ITU-R BT.2100, the international standard for high dynamic range television production and international programme exchange. The BBC is one of the key developers in the standard, which includes Hybrid Log-Gamma, the BBC’s HDR system used for Ultra High Definition High Dynamic Range programmes, which BBC R&D created and developed alongside Japanese broadcaster NHK.
Its announcement comes ahead of a presentation ceremony later this year.
“When we started the project back in 2013, we had no idea of what it would take to re-invent the way we that make and distribute television,” said Andrew Cotton, principal Technologist, BBC R&D. At the last count, we have ensured that HLG is supported in 31 different standards and guidelines, produced by 11 different standards organisations or associations. Those standards range from compression codecs, such as H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC; through distribution standards such as DVB-DASH and ATSC 3.0; interface standards such as SMPTE’s suite of serial digital SDI (co-ax based) and ST.2110 (IP-based) interface standards; HDMI for set-top boxes; test patterns such as ITU-R Colour Bars and PLUGE; the EBU’s Tech 3320 HDR monitor specification and Tech 3325 monitor test procedure as well as the EBU’s R 153 live programme delivery specification and DPP’s AMWA AS-11 X1 file based specifications for UHD programme delivery based on SMPTE’s IMF.
Cotton added that he was “extremely honoured” to be named as the BBC representative, amongst the four key developers, in the Award, but stressed the inclusion of Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) in the standard, alongside Dolby’s Perceptual Quantizer (PQ), made it a huge team effort.
