CCM Activity Report 

Chairman: David Holliday, Dolby Laboratories Inc.

Established to define and specify a new Compound Content solution for consumer electronic devices such as televisions, set-top boxes and smart phones, while providing backwards compatibility with today’s devices but ensuring full quality for the next generation of High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wider Colour Gamut (WCG) displays

New production techniques for the creation of film and broadcast content, including HDR (which can produce darker and brighter, more life-like images) and WCG (which extends the colour range displayed), allow greater creative freedom and more realistic images. There is broad acceptance in the content, content distribution and consumer electronics industries that the addition of HDR and WCG will be the enabler for mass market sales of next generation Ultra-HD displays and equipment. 

However, legacy receivers, including tablet devices, will comprise the majority of the installed receivers for many years to come. To ensure a smooth transition between today’s television standards and tomorrow’s, a system is needed which allows backwards compatibility while also providing full performance for the next generation of HDR and WCG televisions.

ETSI’s Industry Specification Group on intelligent Compound Content Management (ISG CCM) is defining a compound content system which allows two or more content qualities or grades to be sent simultaneously and permits the reconstruction of one or more of these in the receiver. ISG CCM’s solution provides a scalable and flexible decoder post-processing system for consumer electronics devices to meet the needs of both existing and next generation receivers and set-top boxes without compromising the quality of either. 

ISG CCM is defining and specifying the additional functionality required in consumer devices to enable the accurate recreation of both today’s television signal and the HDR/WCG signal from content created using the HDR/WCG production standards developed by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE). 

Although working exclusively on the consumer electronics application, the ISG is taking into consideration the diverse needs of the content creation industry, work currently being undertaken in other standards bodies related to HDR/WCG production, the complexity of the solution in silicon and the quality of the signals to be delivered through any distribution system including future Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) or Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards.
 
When published early in 2017, this Compound Content Management specification will be particularly useful to consumer electronics display developers and manufacturers who are keen to support HDR. The full system provides an economic workflow for content creators and distributors while providing consumers with the optimal picture quality on each display device.