Photo: ITU/L. Jeitler

[Via Satellite 07-06-2016] The International Telecommunications Union’s Radiocommunications Sector (ITU-R) has announced a new standard for High Dynamic Range (HDR). The recommendation, created in collaboration with experts from the television industry, broadcasting organizations and regulatory institutions in its Study Group 6, complements the ITU’s Ultra-HD TV Recommendation BT.2020.

The HDR-TV Recommendation allows TV programs to take full advantage of new, more luminous display technologies. HDR-TV can bring out more detail in bright or dim scenes, giving TV producers the ability to reveal texture and subtle colors that are usually lost with existing Standard Dynamic Range TV.

The HDR-TV Recommendation details two options for producing High Dynamic Range TV images: Perceptual Quantization (PQ) specification, which achieves a wide range of brightness levels using a transfer function that is finely tuned to match the human visual system, and the Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) specification, which offers a degree of compatibility with legacy displays by more closely matching the previously established television transfer curves. The recommendation also outlines a simple conversion process between the two HDR-TV options.

The ITU-R Recommendation BT.2100 also allows TV producers to choose from three levels of detail or resolution: HDTV (1920 by 1080), 4K (3840 by 2160) and 8K (7680 by 4320) — all of which use the progressive imaging system with extended color gamut and range of frame-rates in ITU’s UHDTV Recommendation BT.2020.