Ericsson Wins 2015 NAB Best Paper Award for Pioneering Work in HDR Video
Ericsson has been awarded one of the television industry’s highest honors, the NAB Best Paper Award, for its technical paper titled “Implications of High Dynamic Range (HDR) on the Broadcast Chain for High Definition (HD) and Ultra High Definition (UHD) content.” The award, which recognizes the authorship behind NAB Show technical papers displaying exceptional merit, was formally presented at a gala ceremony yesterday by NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith.
This is the second consecutive year Ericsson has been recognized by the NAB, after receiving the 2014 NAB Technology Innovation Award for its visionary work in 4K UHDTV.
The Ericsson paper explores the potential of HDR video, helping address the question of bandwidth required to provide HDR services using existing video-compression technology. This research has helped establish HDR as a groundbreaking new development for next-generation TV services.
HDR video has the capacity to enhance picture quality for 4K/UHD, as well as for HD content, enabling an enhanced viewing experience for services that are unable to support the increased bandwidth required to convey 4K/UHD. The Ericsson paper highlights how HDR delivers a higher contrast ratio than possible with today’s video formats, offering brighter highlights and color depth, while simultaneously enabling deeper blacks, to produce a natural, high-impact, and immersive viewing experience.
“Ericsson continues to demonstrate its technical leadership in the compression space,” says NAB CTO Sam Matheny, “and this year’s NAB Best Paper Award recognizes the company’s leading role in exploring the dynamic capabilities of HDR to deliver the best possible user experiences. HDR has the potential to be the next big evolution for the TV industry, offering a transformative advancement in picture quality. Ericsson’s research has reinforced the importance of increasing video-compression efficiencies for the transmission of content to the end user, and the need for the industry to develop and deliver new standards to enable future distribution.”
Ericsson ConsumerLab research highlights the continued growing demand for high-quality TV experiences, with one in three consumers stating a willingness to pay for 4K/UHD quality. Ericsson’s continued involvement in testing HDR will be instrumental in significantly enhancing the level of detail seen on-screen to meet the demands of today’s viewers.
“HDR has become the talk of the industry at this year’s NAB Show, with its capabilities to deliver next-generation viewing experiences to consumers,” says Dr. Giles Wilson, head of TV compression, Ericsson. “HDR delivers a major improvement on quality without having a detrimental impact on the bandwidth requirements needed to deliver it. For more than two decades, we have been the leading voice in video compression, which has been a critical enabler in the transition to digital and HD and, more recently, UHD. Winning this award is testament to this ongoing work and represents the perfect conclusion to a highly successful NAB Show for Ericsson.”