With the rise in streaming services releasing both their own content as well as older TV series and films, there is an ongoing challenge of delivering content to viewers in both SDR and HDR.
In a briefing report for Advanced HDR by Technicolor, InterDigital’s Nick Mitchell shares his perspective on how to address the challenge and the new strategies that are available for streaming service providers to differentiate themselves by deploying HDR content.
“There has been a significant increase in the amount of HDR content now available for streaming. This is good news because HDR provides an undeniably enhanced viewing experience consumers have come to appreciate and expect,” said Mitchell. “The trick for the streaming industry revolves around seamlessly integrating a wide array of SDR and HDR content and delivering the best possible experience to the installed base of devices that only support SDR while simultaneously addressing the rapidly growing HDR market.”
Mitchell adds that HDR is likely to play a significant role in helping consumers justify increased subscription costs or support their willingness to tolerate commercial interruptions. One key to elevating the attractiveness of advertising-supported business models will be to deliver ads in HDR.
Setting the Stage for the HDR Streaming Era
The pandemic helped to fuel a huge growth spurt for the video-on-demand industry, but providers have struggled to hold onto their base as the overall market contracted to approximately 203 million in 2022, according to analysts at Statista. While demand appears to be slowly rebounding, analysts do not expect the market to recapture its 2021 highs until 2026 or early 2027.
“As a result, the video streaming service provider market is among the most competitive entertainment technology segments, prompting leaders to seek ways to control costs while introducing new compelling viewing experiences,” said Mitchell.
“When consumers see HDR content, they simply can’t deny that what they are looking at is better,” he added. “At a time when streaming service providers are beginning to raise subscription prices or explore ad-supported business models, meeting consumer expectations for high-quality services must be a priority.”
Strategies for Meeting Demand for HDR
The challenge now is how does the video streaming market effectively delivers HDR to consumers while supporting the significant presence of SDR-only devices still in the market and leveraging legacy libraries of SDR content.
“Even though HDR has become a baseline requirement for content creators and consumers, many video streaming providers must determine what to do with their legacy SDR content while ensuring that they serve viewers the best possible picture quality regardless of whether their devices support HDR or SDR,” explained Mitchell. “Given the contraction that occurred from 2021 to 2022, every subscriber counts. Leaders in the sector must, therefore, create a roadmap that develops the full potential of HDR while serving all current viewers.”
For video streaming providers with large SDR libraries, this means determining how to convert the content to HDR in an effective manner while preserving original creative intent.
This can be achieved by either going through SDR files manually and converting the content to HDR, or harnessing intelligent technologies and dynamic workflows to perform the conversion automatically. “The second approach is the only scalable and economically viable strategy,” stated Mitchell.
Single Workflow and Distribution Strategy for HDR and SDR Streaming
Once files are converted, streaming providers’ next major consideration is determining how best to manage and distribute HDR and SDR content. The most significant peril to avoid, warned Mitchell, is managing these content categories separately.
“That is precisely the problem statement we wanted to address when we developed Advanced HDR by Technicolor. Indeed, our focus on this issue has prompted us to zig while the rest of the industry zagged. Until Advanced HDR by Technicolor, all efforts to develop HDR formats worked with static look-up tables (known as ‘static LUTs’). Separate workflows and distributions were required when working with HDR and SDR content,” he said.
The Advanced HDR by Technicolor team determined that it would be more effective over the long run to leverage intelligent meta-data technology attached to SDR content for conversion to HDR when the receiving device can display HDR.
“As a result, video streaming providers do not have to allocate extra space to their storage. The meta-data strategy employed by Advanced HDR by Technicolor also means that video streaming providers do not have to support separate distribution streams for their SDR and HDR content,” added Mitchell.
