Technicolor and Philips partner on HDR

Technicolor and Philips have merged their High Dynamic Range (HDR) development efforts in a bid to accelerate deployment of the technology.

The agreement will see the companies merge their delivery roadmaps for HDR solutions – including content creation tools, encoding and decoding software and implementation support.

Technicolor and Philips said they will offer HDR delivery with “full backwards compatibility” to Standard Dynamic Range displays – meaning distributors who will be able to send one signal to all of their customers, regardless of which TV they have.

“This move is a reflection of how fast the market for HDR is developing, and how important it is to partner and scale up to effectively serve industry demand for high-quality video delivery,” said Jako Eleveld, head of IP licensing for Philips.

Manuele Wahl, senior vice president of technology and trademark licensing at Technicolor added: “Combining the HDR research from two of the most prominent and trusted names in imaging is a significant step in the maturity of HDR technologies.”

“Philips is bringing years of experience in consumer electronics and silicon partnerships. This combined with Technicolor’s heritage in content creation and technology licensing will provide a compelling backwards compatible solution which will accelerate HDR adoption.”

Technicolor and Philips said they will continue to support their respective HDR products and solutions, which are already deployed in the market, and will merge “the best part of these” into the combined solution.

Early results of the firms’ combined HDR offering are due to be shown at NAB 2016 in April, followed by commercial deployments on silicon in late 2016. Both companies will continue to work independently on other solutions for enhancing video and audio technologies.