If you’ve been following the global HDR ecosystem the past few years you’ll be aware there are quite a few standards for HDR video. You may be shocked then to learn we’re about to see the advent of yet another standard. Why, you may ask, does the world need yet another HDR format? Because China. The country prefers to use its own IP for a combination of reasons, probably including not having to pay royalties to western companies if it can be avoided, and likely also shielding its own market in terms of hardware and content. We’ve seen the same with earlier formats like HDTV, Blu-ray Disc (China Blu), AV encoding (AVS2, AVS3), China DRM, etc. Be prepared then for the arrival of what’s commercially called
HDR Vivid
. It’s also referred to as the
CUVA
HDR format, named after the China UHD Video Industry Alliance, and ‘China HDR’.
The CUVA HDR standard, published officially as ‘CUVA 005-2020’ was ceremonially
announced
in September 2020 and will likely be officially adopted by SARFT, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television. It was developed to a large extent by Huawei and describes metadata and tone mapping for high dynamic range video and seems to cover HLG as well as PQ HDR. The metadata is dynamic. As of
this week
, the CUVA will begin accepting applications for certification.
If you’re a consumer in the west concerned with what HDR TV to buy you need not worry about this new format. If you are in the industry however and regard China as part of your target market you’ll need to prepare for adoption of one more standard. One public mention of such readiness came this week by way of MediaTek, the chipset maker, which announced ‘preliminary support’ for ‘China HDR’ on their new MT9638 ‘Premium 4KTV SoC’ in the
high-level spec
, though interesting not in the
press release
, at least not the international English-language one. Also
HiSilicon
has pledged support for CUVA HDR.
You can expect other chipset makers to follow suit quickly, not only because this is the part of the ecosystem that is most converged on multi-format HDR support but also because the new format presumably does not bring about much change in terms of new silicon requirements, only in software.
Other parts of the ecosystem will also be impacted, notably video encoding software/services vendors, streaming services such as Tencent Video and naturally TV sets from manufactures like Konka, but only for the China market. I will keep you posted.
