High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 Evolution in the Development of Standards and Technology for 8K Ultra High Definition Television 2 (UHDTV2) Dimov Stojce Ilcev Space Science Centre (SSC), Durban University of Technology (DUT), Durban, South Africa, E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: This article is introducing the development and design architecture of new digital 8K TV UHDTV2 or Super High Definition TV (SHDTV) standards as a part of the Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) solutions for the public and household applications. Beyond simply delivering a wider field of view, important factors such as color, tone rendition, and motion portrayal that could be crucial to delivering an enhanced visual experience with Next Generation Television (Next-Gen TV) 8K UHDTV2 system recently renamed as Super-Hi Vision (SHV). This new UHDTV standard and coding system important for the improvement of video quality with parameters will be investigated and the trial of 8K SVH transmission will be described. Keywords: 8K TV UHDTV2, SHV, RGB, SHDTV, Full HDTV, 4K Ultra HDTV, AVC, MPEG-2, OFDM, MIMO 1. Introduction The High Definition Television (HDTV) has become popular all over the world with the spread of digital broadcasting. In fact, Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), which has been developing HDTV for many years, began work on the design and development of Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV) in 1995 and has contributed to International Telecommunications Union-Radiocommunications (ITU) standards such as Recommendation BT.2020. This new format is expected to produce extremely realistic viewing sensations through the use of 4000 scanning line images with integrated Red, Green and Blue (RGB) color model and 22.2-multichannel sound. The latest Super Hi-Vision (SHV) format known as 8K, UHDTV2 or Super High Definition TV (SHDTV) standard is designed, which final target is to achieve a total immersive experience providing realistic visual and aural sensations so that the audience feels they are present at the scene. Beyond simply delivering a wider field of view for the new TV standards, important factors such as color and tone rendition and motion portrayal that could be crucial to delivering an enhanced visual experience with Next-Gen TV systems and their system parameters, including colorimetry and frame frequency. The proposed colorimetry system is based on the real RGB color system and has a color gamut that includes 99.9% of real surface colors while using physically realizable RGB primaries. In addition, a frame frequency of 120 Hz is proposed on the basis of subjective assessments of motion-picture quality. The Japanese NHK Company has been developing the SHV system as part of a project to deliver a viewing experience far beyond that possible with existing systems, which comparison of formats with previous TV standards are shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. Comparisons of Formats for SD, Full HD, Ultra HD (4K) and 8K TV Standards Volume 26, Issue 10, 2020 1037 http://www.gjstx-e.cn/ High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 Figure 2. Total Number of Pixels per Frame Therefore, except the 4K Ultra HDTV (UHDTV) as one of the two Ultra HDTV formats, the worldwide manufacturers are implementing the second newest UHDTV format known as 8K, UHDTV2, SHDTV or simply Super Hi-Vision (SHV) standard. In this article will be used new SHV accepted nomination worldwide, as a more practical term. Technically speaking, current 4K is not the same as 4K UHDTV standard. Namely consumer UHDTV resolution of 3840x2160 (at a 16:9, or 1.78:1 aspect ratio) differs from the industry 4K standard of 4096x2160 (at a 1.9:1 aspect ratio), namely there is small difference in size of TV display. As stated above, the standalone term “4K” was originally used to describe digital cinema (4096×2160 px). Since digital cinema resolution is not available in a consumer television, the term “Ultra HD” (3840×2160 px) and “4K UHDTV” (4096x2160) were invented. However, it has to be noticed that the slight reduction in 4K UHDTV resolution is to achieve a 16×9 aspect ratio. At this point, is important to find out the difference between all current definitions and new standards. The advantage of the 4K gives exactly four times the resolution of Full HDTV, which produces a magnificent image when viewed in person. The consumers will be doing themselves a great injustice if they try to gauge the clarity of a 4K screen using their computer or current Full HDTV, so they will not experience anything near the actual quality of 4K Ultra HDTVD. In the first stage of development, 4K Ultra HDTV displays are available today from several manufacturers, including Sony, Samsung and Seiki. Other known TV producers, like Sharp, Toshiba, Sony and HiSense began offering 4K Ultra HDTV’s from the end of 2013, which products are spread worldwide. On the other hand, if somebody is learning how to get Smart TV, 3D TV, LED TV and other modern TV terms straight, it will be necessary to understand new terms floating around, that UHDTV stands for 4K and 8K, which refers to the different resolution. Thus, UHDTV with its two standards is one of the latest features in new high-end TV standards and different displays. In order to fully understand what 4K is and why it’s an improvement over standard definition and high definition, everybody must first understand how resolution works. Digital pictures, like the one on any television, computer monitor or digital camera, are made up of pixels. Each pixel contains three sub-pixels, one red, one blue and one green. A picture is created by turning these sub-pixels on and off and by adjusting their brightness. In Figure 2 is presented total number of pixels per frame for 5 standards. More pixels will result in better detail and sharper images on the screen. Different resolutions that may come across are: 1. The Standard Definition (SD) is the oldest standard with 852 pixels long and 480 pixels wide, which is in total of 408,960 pixels. 2. The High Definition (HD) standard has 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels long, for a total of 921,600 pixels. This has more than twice as many pixels as SDTV. 3. The Full HD standard has 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels long for a total of 2,073,600 pixels. This has more than twice times as many pixels as HDTV. 4. The Ultra HD standard has 3840 pixels wide and 2160 pixels long for a total of 8,294,400 pixels. This has more than four times as many pixels as a full HDTV. 5. The 4K standard refers to a resolution that is approximately 4K by 2K. In a TV, this is generally 4096 pixels long by 2160 pixels wide, for a total of 8,847,360 pixels. In cinema this may vary slightly, however 4K resolution has more than one time as many pixels as basic UHDTV. Volume 26, Issue 10, 2020 1038 http://www.gjstx-e.cn/ High Technology Letters ISSN NO : 1006-6748 Figure 3. Image Formats Comparison of SHV, Digital Cinema and Ultra HDTV 6. The 8K standard has 7680 pixels long by 4329 pixels wide, for a total of 33,177,600 pixels. It is worth noting that while this technology does exist. However, it will be quite a few years before it is widely available for use. Most cameras are not even capable of capturing footage in this format yet, because most current films are shot in 4K or 5K. 2. Features of 8K Super-Hi Vision (SVH) The SVH test transmissions will be ready to start sometimes in 2020, but because of the incredible rate of progress in TV technique and technology, like the new cameras and displays, means that it could now be a viable format to begin test broadcasts in 2016. This will give time for Japanese viewers to start buying SVH screens, ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which are being targeted as a landmark date for the ultimate 2D TV format. Hopefully, there will be some 8K SVH screens elsewhere as well, and at least a trial satellite service in the UK. The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Forum is also working on a new MPEG-4 High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) system for real-time decoding, which will halve the bit-rate of an SHV stream from 200 Mb/s with MPEG-4 H.264 today. The first HEVC kit is expected to be available next year, with trials of 4K streams at 20 Mb/s. That is the same bit-rate which was achieved for HD TV when commercial test started in 2005. Thus, to address this challenge, the HEVC/H.265 video compression standard, ratified in January 2013, provides an 2x improvement in coding efficiency compared to the Advanced Video Codec (AVC/H.264) video compression standard and a 4x improvement compared to the MPEG-2 video compression standard. Therefore, it will be not yet possible to buy SVH TV, but after test transmission it will hopefully be a catalyst for TV manufacturers to put SHV screens into production, although SHV is unlikely to become the dominant TV format until at least a decade afterwards. The NHK group has been developing the SHV system as part of a project to deliver a viewing experience far beyond that possible with existing systems. In Figure 3 is shown image formats comparison between SHV, 4K Digital Cinema and Ultra HDTV standards, values of picture height and viewing distance. As stated earlier, the SHV frame has 7680 pixels x 4320 lines with a frame rate of 120 frames/sec, which is progressive value.