High Dynamic Range and Wide Color Gamut video standardization - status and perspectives

With the advent of ultra-high-definition TV services, high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) have become two highly desired image quality improvements for delivering immersive video experiences to the consumer mass market. Capture and rendering technologies have reached a level of maturity that now allows HDR and WCG enhanced video to be deployed across all distribution channels — including: over-the-top providers, broadcasters, and packaged-media distributors (eg, Blu-ray discs). For this reason, standards bodies have made intense efforts to meet aggressive timelines so that the industry may have relevant standards in place for implementation of acceptable, concrete, and future-proof solutions that will work effectively on existing workflows and ecosystems in the short term and mid term. The aim of this chapter is to offer a global snapshot of the status of these standardization activities. This overview includes a specific focus on the High Efficiency Video Coding (aka H.265) standard, which already supports tools and features dedicated to HDR and WCG.