Ahead of this week’s NAB show in Las Vegas, the Ultra HD Forum said it has released the Phase B Guidelines for UHD, spanning areas such as dynamic metadata, higher refresh rates, lower bandwidth requirements and next-gen audio. 

The Phase B Guidelines, covered in an 80-page technical document, aim to “de-mystify” five areas involving the future of UHD: Content-aware encoding, dual-layer HDR technologies, Dynamic HDR Metadata Systems (Dolby Vision and SL-HDR1), high-frame rate (100/120 frames per second0, and next-gen audio (Dolby AC-4 Audio and SL-HDR1).  

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“Phase A Guidelines address technologies that were solidified in 2015 and 2016, then in the summer of 2017 we ran a survey with Operators to guide the choice of the next phase of technologies,” Madeleine Noland, chair of the Guidelines Work group, said in a statement.  

She added that the aim is to “remain strongly focused on backwards compatibility,” and that Phase B will soon add workflows for all distribution systems, including over-the-air, MVPD and OTT.  

The Ultra HD forum will show Phase B technologies in action at NAB at the Futures Park, located in the North Hall (booth N1131FP) at the Las Vegas Convention Center.