The Bottom Line on HDR

Like many other innovations, high-dynamic-range (HDR) imaging can bring benefits but will require work to implement. And then there’s the bottom line. HDR’s biggest benefit is that it offers the greatest perceptual image improvement per bit. Different researchers have independently verified the improvement, and it theoretically requires no increase in bitrate whatsoever. In practice, to allow both standard-dynamic-range (SDR) TVs and HDR TVs to be accommodated with the same signal (and because not everyone keeps the appropriate amount of noise), the bitrate might increase a small amount — perhaps 20%. That’s the good news.

Getting everyone to agree on how HDR images should be converted to video signals, how those signals should be encoded for transmission, and how SDR and HDR TV sets should deal with the a single transmission are among the issues being worked out. They’ll be discussed at next month’s HPA Tech Retreat in Palm Springs. Click here to read a quick primer on the bottom line concerning the move to HDR.