Thierry Fautier: “the challenge of 4K will be the money necessary to invest in production and how to recover the investment”

At the 4K Summit, the president of the Ultra HD Forum shares some data from the observatory he has launched to learn about all the commercial services that 4K is offering.

Thierry Fautier, president of Ultra HD Forum and vice president of video strategy at Harmonic, has been in charge of opening the third, and final day, of the world summit dedicated to Ultra High Definition, 4K Summit, which Medina Media with Panorama Audiovisual as a media partner has organized from November 7 to 9 at the Digital Content Pole in Malaga.

“The challenge of 4K will be the money necessary to invest in production and how to recover that investment,” he highlighted at the beginning of his speech. Fautier recalled that in this transition phase (between Phase A and Phase B of UHD) that we are experiencing when talking about 4K we must consider key aspects such as WCG (Wide Color Gamut), HDR (High Dynamic Range), HFR (high frame rate), NGA (next generation audio) and CAE (Content Aware Encoding).

The forum, created in 2015 and in which fifty members participate, has developed an observatory to learn about all the commercial services that 4K are offering.

Fautier has shared with the participants in the 4K Summit some of the empirical data from the observatory.

Currently, 39% of 4K services come from direct satellite broadcast (DTH); while 29% come from IPTV; 16%, OTT; 10%, cable; and 6%, DTT. A third of these services (27%) have HDR, the vast majority under the HDR10 and HLG standard. Regarding audio, only 8% have new generation audio

Fautier has reviewed the impressions derived from the celebration of the World Cup in Russia. “The World Cup, with HBS and FIFA, has been a year of transition.” The World Cup in HDR worked, only broadcasters that prepared beforehand were successful in offering HDR. It is noteworthy that in total, 24 broadcasters out of 270 subscribed to the UHD HDR signal provided by FIFA.

"HDR allows us to represent a clear and contrasted image in any lighting conditions, as is usually the case in football stadiums, as has been evident in the World Cup, but to consider it a true success there is still a long way to go."