Pitfalls of 3DTV. Series Introduction: Market Drivers and Tech Challenges. Sean McCarthy, Ph.D., Fellow of the Technical Staff

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Managing Cable TV Migration to IP – Part 1

Series Introduction: Market Drivers and Tech Challenges

Ultra High Definition TV (UHDTV): Avoiding the

Pitfalls of 3DTV

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Introduction

With advanced capabilities such as higher resolution, faster frame rates, and an extended color space, Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) has captured the attention of television manufacturers, content producers and service providers alike as a means of bringing consumers closer than ever to a lifelike television experience. But for many of these stakeholders, the promise of UHDTV sounds all too familiar. A few short years ago, the entire video delivery industry rallied around the strikingly similar promise of 3DTV. This immersive television experience

generated tremendous buzz and seemed to be on a fast track to widespread success - before the realities of system deployment and consumer adoption overpowered the hype, and 3D’s momentum stalled.

With UHDTV, video service providers have once again found themselves at a critical decision point, where deploying too early could lead to wasted capital investment, but deploying too late will likely result in missed opportunities and increased competitive pressure. This paper examines several considerations for service providers as they contemplate adding UHDTV capabilities to their networks. In it, we will examine the benefits of this new technology, investigate the differences between UHDTV and 3DTV from both the deployment and adoption perspectives, and provide practical steps to help guide service providers as they create phased UHDTV rollout plans.

The Promise of UHDTV

When fully implemented, the UHDTV experience promises to be a more realistic, immersive experience that is significantly better than today’s television, and will be viewed by high-tech consumers as a “must-have” service. It’s been described as viewing the world through a picture window, or even better than 3D, without the glasses. Some even say that viewing UHDTV doesn’t feel like viewing at all, but actually feels like an extension of reality. However it is characterized, the promise of UHDTV is the sum of several attributes that far surpass those of even the best HDTVs today.

The three primary characteristics that differentiate UHDTV from HDTV are

resolution, frame rate, and color space. With a resolution of 3840 x 2160, UHDTV offers four times the pixels of full HDTV for incredibly sharp detail. By allowing up to 120 frames per second, UHDTV can keep up with high motion content or fast

camerawork. And UHDTV covers nearly 40% more of the CIE 1931 color space than HDTV to display colors that have never before been replicated on-screen. Together, these three characteristics will combine to create the unique overall experience of UHDTV.

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Avoiding the Pitfalls of 3DTV

While the promise of UHDTV does sound similar to that of 3DTV, video service providers can leverage several distinct advantages that make UHDTV deployment far more compelling and practical than 3DTV. Today’s portable multimedia devices are already exposing consumers to higher screen resolutions than today’s best HDTVs, driving market demand for a better visual experience in the living room. In addition, deploying UHDTV is not an all or nothing proposition- the attributes of resolution, frame rate and color space can be implemented individually and

incrementally based on consumer demand and network capacity. And unlike 3DTV, the infrastructure needed to deploy UHDTV offers a low cost of entry and provides benefits that service providers can realize with today’s HDTV content.

The Conditions for Widespread UHDTV Adoption

With 3DTV, manufacturers, service providers and programmers took an “if you build it, they will come” approach to technology implementation and investment.

Expectations called for consumers changing their viewing behaviors quickly to experience this compelling new content format. But the expectation of widespread adoption has not been fulfilled. This could be due to several factors, including the cost of 3D televisions, the lack of content options, or those intrusive glasses. Most likely, however, is that the 3DTV revolution has not yet materialized because wide scale consumer demand just isn’t there.

Table 1: Average Diagonal Size of Key Flat Panel Display Applications1

Fortunately for UHDTV, market trends are aligning to stimulate more of an organic demand for better picture quality in the living room. Today’s tablets, for example, are now equipped with flat panel displays that surpass the visual capabilities of most television screens. With well over 300 pixels per inch, tablet displays produce detail that is so sharp; the human eye cannot detect pixels at reasonable viewing distances.

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While the displays in portable devices continue to grow more stunning, those in HDTVs simply continue to grow. From 2010 to 2013, the average LCD TV has grown from 33.2” to 36.1” – or 9% in just four years. And since HDTVs are bound to 1080 horizontal lines of resolution, HDTV pixel density is actually decreasing as TVs get bigger. As portable devices continue to push the limits of visual performance and the average HDTV continues to get larger, this means the living room television is quickly becoming the least appealing screen in the house for rich video content. Consumers will naturally trade-in their old flat panels for newer flat panels over time as the price premium for 4K displays decrease. At first, it will just be a better “HD display” that has HDMI 2.0 inputs and better noise and video enhancement features. But in a few years we’ll hit a tipping point when there is a significant population of 4K TVs, and programmers will have an audience of viewers who can receive a signal in higher quality than conventional HD, especially for highly produced sporting events. At that point, 4K will become the new normal, and we will start down the path of delivering the true “wow factor” of UHDTV by taking advantage of the enhanced dynamic range, color, frame rate and resolution of these new TVs.

Deconstructing UHDTV for Immediate Benefits

While the promise of UHDTV’s “picture window” experience is quite similar to that of 3DTV, there is a distinct difference between the two technologies that gives UHDTV an edge when it comes to implementation. Unlike 3DTV, UHDTV does not need to be fully deployed to begin paying dividends. That is because the individual UHDTV attributes of resolution, frame rate and color space can be implemented individually to enhance the viewing experience for consumers on day one, while sidestepping many of the long-term deployment traps the industry fell into with 3DTV.

By distilling UHDTV down to its individual elements, service providers can work with programmers to enable custom experiences based on one or more UHDTV

“…higher frame rates are appreciated by

the observers, to a significantly greater

extent than increased resolution”

- Preliminary Results from EBU ETF Group Subjective UHDTV Resolution Tests2

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attributes. For example, implementing a higher frame rate for live sports broadcasts or adventure movies can deliver smooth motion when the action is high. The EBU’s ETF Group recently conducted subjective testing that indicates that observers appreciated UHDTV’s higher frame rates even more so than higher resolution. With this in mind, service providers may decide to launch higher frame rates before other UHDTV capabilities to achieve the greatest impact without deploying the full suite of UHDTV features.

Before increasing resolution, service providers may next choose to extend the color space for some or all of their channels. Doing so can provide early UHDTV adopters with a noticeably richer experience than HDTV, where color-rich content such as animation appears to come alive with new, never before seen shades of green, red and blue. This enhanced color space is shown in Figure 1. Once they are ready to increase resolution, service providers may choose to do so incrementally over time, delivering an ever-improving viewer experience, or building a new service tier for consumers with ultra-large screens. One such opportunity is to display four HDTV channels at once on the same large screen, which can drive greater interest in top-tier sports packages.

Figure 1: The Enhanced Color Space of UHDTV

When it comes to deployment, it is important to note that UHDTV is not “a” thing, but a collection of features. These features can be deployed individually in a phased approach that creates a smooth transition from HDTV to UHDTV in support of consumer demand and real revenue. As we move closer to UHDTV deployment, it is clear that we must replace the “if you build it, they will come” mentality of 3DTV with a far more practical “pay as you grow” approach. This is especially true when it comes to infrastructure deployment.

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A Practical Deployment Path for UHDTV Infrastructure

In order to deliver 3DTV, service providers needed to build out an entire ecosystem all at once. That meant 3D glasses, new 3D metadata, new 3D work flows, and new 3D-format handling capabilities for encoders and decoders. All of that expensive capital investment had to happen before consumers could decide that they really cared about 3D. And none of it made bread-and-butter MPEG2 & MPEG4 2D services any better.

With UHDTV, the deployment path is far less complicated – it looks much like the traditional video delivery environment that service providers built for HDTV – but also enables service providers to improve legacy MPEG2 & MPEG4 services while enabling new value-added UHDTV offerings. The new UHDTV-capable encoders that will be needed are an evolution of today’s MPEG-4 encoders, but with significantly upgraded video processing power. Part of that boosted processing power can be put to work to enable High-Efficiency Video Compression (HEVC), the successor to MPEG-4. The rest of the enhanced processing power improves the overall smarts of video encoders so that better compression decisions are made every time a pixel is processed by either MPEG2, MPEG4, or HEVC.

By adopting HEVC for existing HD services, providers can dramatically improve the bandwidth efficiency of their current offerings. With HEVC decoders based on software in IP devices, or new HEVC set top decoders, service providers may choose to extend their channel lineups or offer more HD programming. From there, they can move at their own pace in rolling out new UHDTV- starting with the features that bring the greatest potential for revenue growth or competitive advantage. Even the increased bandwidth needed for UHDTV is significantly mitigated by the highly efficient compression capabilities of HEVC, which can bring the bandwidth requirements for UHDTV in line with today’s system capabilities.

Successful UHDTV Deployment Needs Clear International Standards

While the road to UHDTV deployment is becoming clearer, it does not mean there isn’t more work to be done. The video delivery industry must rally around standards that truly enable the breathtaking promise of UHDTV. That means adding

specifications for an extended dynamic range to enable high contrast and brightness that extends the performance of TVs beyond the limits of today’s standards. It means creating content with increased frame rates, and perfecting televisions that utilize UHDTV’s enhanced color gamut. And perhaps most

importantly, it means evolving the HDMI 2.0 standard to adequately connect these new televisions to UHDTV content sources. While none of these obstacles are insurmountable, they will require the full cooperation and diligence of our industry to bring the promise of UHDTV into reality.

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Conclusion

As service providers evaluate if, when and how to add UHDTV offerings to their networks, it is important to contrast the market dynamics and deployment factors that differentiate this technology from 3DTV. While 3DTV was very much a

technology in search of a market, consumer preferences for higher resolution and larger televisions are combining to signal a strong demand for this new format. By following a phased, practical path to UHDTV deployment that leverages the immediate benefits of HEVC, service providers can increase the quality of

experience for consumers in a way that meets demand without a costly network build out. And when fulfilled, the promise of UHDTV – an immersive, real-life video experience – will likely be worth the wait.

Sources

1_{NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly Worldwide FPD Shipment and Forecast Report} 2_{Preliminary Results from EBU BTF Group Subjective UHDTV Resolution Tests}

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