View Single Post
Old 17th March 2023, 17:47   #107  |  Link
FranceBB
Broadcast Encoder
 
FranceBB's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, UK
Posts: 2,883
Quote:
Originally Posted by DTL View Post
So when I see 'premium' digital video content I think it must be internally based on linear float (lets half precision 16bit) RGB. Not on ugly old 4:2:0 many-distortive compressions (additionally extra bugged with extra-non-linear HDR range compression transfer). Even if it is wrapped in some modern-named MPEG and have +2 bits to old 8.
Eh, I think the 4:4:4 time will eventually come one day.
I mean, sure, we're still using 4:2:0 and sure enough when you watch a "modern" UHD content it will still be 4:2:0 with the chroma upscaled from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 to match the luma, but think about it this way (and I'm talking about linear broadcasting around the world):

- at least we're no longer using 8bit and we moved to 10bit
- at least we're no longer using 25i and 29,970i but rather 50p and 60p


going forward, there will be 8K and H.266 VVC with the same specs, so still 10bit and 50p / 60p as standard (although some people were calling for the standard to be bumped to 12bit).

Sure, considering that we're still using 4:2:0 chroma subsampling is a bit of a pain, but in the long distant future I don't really see the world (content producers & broadcasters included) going any further than 16K.
By then, we will probably have 12bit as a standard at 50p/60p.

At that point, raising resolution further wouldn't make much sense for a consumer TV watched from the couch inside an apartment, so they will probably bump the standard to 100p/120p ('cause there are some contents that would benefit from it like sports). At that point, it would be hard to find benefits on raising from 12bit to something more like 14bit or 16bit (forget 32bit float), so probably we'll move to either 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.

So, my forecast for the distant future is:

16K 100p 4:4:4 HDR PQ BT2020 12bit H.268 for PAL
16K 120p 4:4:4 HDR PQ BT2020 12bit H.268 for NTSC

(Yes, H.268 and not H.267 probably 'cause H.266 VVC will be used for 8K, while 267 will be used for the first implementation of 16K which will probably still be 50p/60p, while 268 will probably be used for the second high frame rate 4:4:4 implementation of 16K).


Of course there's absolutely nothing official and those are just wild guesses / speculations from my side.

I could be terribly wrong and I have been in the past, so who knows... I guess we'll have to wait and see what the future holds for us.

Last edited by FranceBB; 17th March 2023 at 17:50.
FranceBB is offline   Reply With Quote