This first release of the Guidelines lets the Forum’s growing membership of 46 organisations target deployments in 2016. Both technical and commercial challenges are addressed such as production, distribution and consumer decoding of UHD programming with both SDR and HDR content. The Guidelines take into account the production workflow in the face of challenging backward compatibility constraints. A future release will target 2017 and beyond.

Thierry Fautier, President of the Ultra HD Forum said, “We are proud of this collective work synthesising contributions from content providers, broadcasters, service providers, professional equipment manufacturers, technology solution providers, CDNs, chipmakers and device manufacturers. This would not have been possible without close collaboration with our colleagues at MPEG, DVB, DASH-IF, ATSC, SCTE, SMPTE, CableLabs, NAB and the UHD Alliance, with whom strong liaisons are being built.”

The full Guidelines document is available only to Ultra HD Forum members. However a summary description is available here.

The Ultra HD Forum will have an extensive presence at NAB 2016. This includes a booth (SU16010), a press conference on Monday, April 18 at 11AM in N262, a Masterclass on Wednesday, April 20 at 9AM in room S225 as well as networking and face-to-face meetings.

About the Ultra HD Forum

Formed in 2015, the Ultra HD Forum is the global organisation responsible for promoting market adoption of Ultra HD by defining industry best practices for the phased introduction of the wide set of technologies facilitating the next-generation television experience. The organization facilitates interoperability testing and collaborates with industry standards bodies to align standard development activities. A list of participating members and additional information about the organization is available at this link.