The high dynamic range (HDR) divisions of both Philips and Technicolor are merging in order to bring the HDR technology to our homes faster than they could separately.
It's great news if it can accelerate the dissemination of the Technicolor HDR tech we first heard about last year. When it was first announced it was an open standard, unlike the proprietary Dolby Vision standard LG has just announced is going to be part of all its OLED panels in 2016, but whether that will change as a result of the new partnership we don't yet know.
It is though a seemingly very convenient solution for the content distributors because of its full backwards compatibility with standard dynamic range (SDR) TVs. That means only one signal need be sent out regardless of the TV it's going to and if you can ease the transition for the content guys HDR is going to come around a lot quicker across the board.
Taking the lead
It's Technicolor who will be taking the lead in developing the combined solution while Philips will bring its experience with consumer electronics and silicon to the partnership.
"This move is a reflection of how fast the market for HDR is developing, and how important it is to partner and scale up to effectively serve industry demand for high-quality video delivery," said Jako Eleveld, Head of IP Licensing for Philips.
Dolby is likewise buddying up with manufacturers to get its HDR technology into the wild, licensing it out to LG for its OLED displays as well as Vizio for its first high-end TVs.
We're likely to see the first fruits of this collaboration in the Spring of this year, with a touted commercial deployment of the first silicon happening towards the end of 2016.
