Dolby Touts Growing Dolby Vision HDR SoC Support at IFA
BERLIN -- Philips, one of two proprietary options with Dolby Vision on high dynamic range for the Ultra HD Blu-ray format, is “very, very close” to landing a “commitment” from “a very big,” well-known system-on-a-chip (SoC) supplier, Joop Talstra, HDR standardization manager at Philips Intellectual Property & Standards, told us at IFA. The demonstrations Philips ran at IFA still used the field-programmable gate array chip solutions Philips showed us at the last CES (see 1501090025).
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Philips hopes to nail down its first SoC commitment “in the next two months, maybe even earlier,” Talstra said. Philips has no HDR commitments among the TV makers, “that we can announce,” he said. “TVs can’t do anything without a chip, so the chip announcement that I spoke about is key in this.”
Philips is talking with many over-the-top providers about adopting its HDR system, “and what we offer has to be better than open HDR, right, because otherwise why would they do it?” Talstra said. “We’re working through that. Of course, initially, the thing you’re working against, battling against, is the chicken-and-egg problem. They’re saying show us the silicon first.” Philips, “of course, would’ve preferred to be in the SoC realm sooner,” Talstra conceded. “On the other hand, I understand this is a learning experience for the whole industry,” he said of HDR. “Everybody’s learning what the hell it is, and how do you get the most out of this new tool.”
At latest count, its Dolby Vision rival has four SoC suppliers in its arsenal, having announced HiSilicon, Realtek and MediaTek chip support at IFA, in addition to the Sigma Designs support announced at IFA a year ago (see 1409040067). Different types of SoCs are available for Dolby Vision, Roland Vlaicu, Dolby vice president-consumer imaging, told us at IFA. HiSilicon’s is a Dolby Vision set-top-box chip, while Realtek’s is a TV chip, Vlaicu said.
But MediaTek’s SoC is an all-in-one device for bringing Dolby Vision to TVs and to Ultra HD Blu-ray players and digital media adapters, Vlaicu said. “So the piece about the Ultra HD Blu-ray chip from MediaTek with Dolby Vision is key, because this is the key enabler for future Ultra HD Blu-ray players,” he said. “This is the main item manufacturers have been asking about -- how can I build a player if there’s no chipset support? So now there’s chipset support, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
Though Dolby will continue pursuing more SoC support for Dolby Vision, those additional suppliers are “coming to us” as a result of the IFA announcements of HiSilicon, Realtek and MediaTek chip support, Vlaicu said. The reaction to those announcements at IFA has been “interesting,” he said. “Some of the chip companies that we’ve been working with were not quite ready yet” to make a Dolby Vision commitment, he said. “Now, they’re more motivated to hurry things up” because of the competitive situation, he said.
Dolby now thinks SoC support for Dolby Vision is “going in the right direction,” Vlaicu said. But the TV SoC design cycle takes a long time, so you have to think about this early on to make the decision, yes, I’m putting this technology in because it’s integrated in silicon. It’s not just software that runs on a chip that already exists that you could in general just put on after the fact. It’s something that you design into the hardware. The circuitry is in there, then the chip goes into samples and mass production and the software side needs to be written. All this takes a long time.”