Just last week, CEA announced its minimum requirements for “HDR Compatible” TVs. The UHD Alliance wants to build on that by defining a “premium” or “quality” specification that will separate the wheat from the chaff. We spoke to some of the members at IFA.

An update on UHD Alliance 
The UHD Alliance, consisting of manufacturers, film studios, distributors and technology companies, is not ready to talk specifics but we caught Nandhu Nandhakumar from LG, a board member of UHD Alliance, at IFA 2015 for a talk. We also spoke to Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer at Netflix about the alliance’s work.


In essence, the UHD Alliance wants to define “premium quality specifications” for “next-generation entertainment experiences”. This will be accompanied by an official certification program and a logo for TVs. This is great news considering the recent dilution of HDR (high dynamic range). With the new premium specifications we think it is safe to assume that mid-range TVs (such as those from Sony and Samsung that will receive an update for “HDR”) will not make the cut.

- “The Alliance believes that the most compelling next-generation experience delivers 4K resolution, high dynamic range, wide color gamut, high frame rate, immersive audio and other features that create a dramatic new experience for consumers,” UHD Alliance President Hanno Basse wrote in a press release during IFA.

UHDA is currently focused on hardware such as TVs and streaming content providers and will later turn its attention to certification programs for distribution via broadcast, satellite and cable.

We received the following guidelines during our talks with UHDA at CES 2015 earlier this year. Based on our talks at IFA we expect these to still be pretty accurate but be aware that things might change. At IFA, UHDA said that the organization is “close to” finalizing the specifications.