Name
Standards Session: Video and Audio Interoperability in Today’s 4K UHD Home Entertainment Environment
Date & Time
Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 3:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Timezone
UTC
Session Type
Virtual
Juan Reyes
Description

 


Interoperability is defined as a characteristic of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems, at present or in the future, in either implementation or access, without any restrictions. The 4K UHD home entertainment ecosystem and environment consists of 4K UHD displays, source devices (e.g. UHD Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, media players, gaming consoles, etc.), A/V Receivers and sound bars. Proper interoperability within this ecosystem would effectively mean that all devices would properly connect together and result in a proper image and proper sound. With today’s home entertainment technologies, there are many conveniences. However, with the conveniences there also come more complexities. The days of the red-white-yellow RCA cables are no more. Today there is the HDMI cable for handling all of the audio, video and other data that is used to communicate between devices. It should make things simple. However, the devices don’t always speak the same language or have the same interpretation for signals or data, thus resulting in a ‘miscommunication’ or ‘interoperability issue.’ Because of the additional complexities, there exists many interoperability issues affecting the video and audio signals being sent to receiving devices (e.g. 4K UHD display, sound bar, A/V receiver). This paper will provide details on the types of issues that have been identified to exist so far. It will also go into details as to why some of these issues may be occurring including the technologies involved in the interoperability. It will also identify limitations in device capabilities and other issues that are part of the issues creating interoperability scenarios. Ultimately these interoperability issues result in a poor consumer experience that not only impacts the consumer but also impacts all of the stakeholders that make up the 4K UHD ecosystem. In conclusion, the paper will describe improvements that have been seen and what steps need to be taken to further reduce and ultimately eliminate interoperability issues. The paper being proposed is a case study on the interoperability work performed by the UHD Alliance.

Technical Depth of Presentation
The presentation will go into some of the underlying technologies and issues involved in the interoperability between content, source devices and displays when delivering content to displays. It will be a mixture of basic fundamentals and some advanced details.
What Attendees will Benefit Most from this Presentation
The ideal audience would be anyone involved in the 4K home entertainment ecosystem. This includes content owners, device manufacturers (e.g. TV, media players, A/V receivers, sound bars, gaming consoles, UHD Blu-ray players, etc.), technology companies (e.g. audio codec companies, HDMI, CTA, etc.) and streaming companies at the executive, manager, engineer and technologist levels. Basically anyone involved in getting content delivered to a consumer’s display.
Take-Aways from this Presentation
What interoperability issues exist? Why are they occurring? How can they be reduced or eliminated?