Hardware
Fox-Samsung to licence metadata for HDR to content cos & STB makers
MUMBAI: 20th Century Fox, the parent company of Star India, Panasonic Corporation and Samsung Electronics have announced a new partnership to create an open, royalty-free dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range (HDR) through an associated certification and logo program, tentatively called HDR10+.
Together, the three companies will form a licensing entity that will begin licensing the HDR10+ platform in January 2018. The entity will license the metadata broadly to content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as SoC vendors, royalty-free with only a nominal administrative fee.
“As leaders in home entertainment content and hardware, the three companies are ideal partners for bringing HDR10+ into the homes of consumers everywhere,” said Jongsuk Chu, Senior Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are committed to making the latest technology available in our TVs and are confident that HDR10+ will deliver premium quality content and enhance the way you experience television programs and movies in the home.”
HDR10+ is a cutting-edge technology, building upon the benefits of HDR televisions, which offers the best possible viewing experience for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides unprecedented picture quality on all displays with brightness, color, and contrast automatically optimized for each scene. In previous iterations, static tone mapping applied a fixed enhancement across an entire piece of content. With HDR10+ dynamic tone mapping, every scene is individually enhanced to bring to life vibrant visuals and achieve unprecedented picture quality. This new enhanced visual experience will allow consumers to see pictures that match the intention of filmmakers.
“HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimizes picture quality for next generation displays,” said Danny Kaye, Executive Vice President at 20th Century Fox and Managing Director of the Fox Innovation Lab. “HDR10+ provides dynamic metadata, which precisely describes every scene to deliver unprecedented picture quality. Working in partnership with Panasonic and Samsung through the Fox Innovation Lab, we are able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market that more accurately realize the vision of our filmmakers beyond the theater.”
There are several key benefits for partners who wish to adopt the platform for their HDR10+ compliant products. HDR10+ offers system flexibility, allowing a variety of partners, including content creators, content distributors, TV manufacturers and device makers, to incorporate this platform and improve the viewing experience for audiences. The HDR10+ platform was designed to allow for future development and innovation in order to deliver a more powerful technology in the years to come.
“Panasonic has a long history of working with industry leaders to develop lasting technical formats. We are delighted to work together with 20th Century Fox and Samsung to develop a new HDR format, which will bring consumers so many benefits,” said Yuki Kusumi, Executive Officer at Panasonic. “By offering considerable HDR picture quality improvements across a wider range of TVs while accelerating the amount of premium HDR content available, we expect HDR10+ to quickly become the defacto HDR format.”
Hardware
Specs Inc. partners with Qualcomm for next-generation smart glasses
Snap subsidiary to power future Specs with Snapdragon XR platforms.
MUMBAI: Snap’s Specs are about to get a serious upgrade and this time, they’re teaming up with Qualcomm to make sure the future looks crystal clear. Specs Inc., a Snap subsidiary, has announced a multi-year strategic agreement with Qualcomm Technologies to power future generations of its advanced smart eyewear with Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC) technology.
This marks the first flagship engagement for Specs Inc., which is preparing to launch its standalone, see-through smart glasses for consumers later this year. The Specs are designed to seamlessly blend digital experiences into the physical world, allowing users to see, hear, and interact with digital content as if it were part of their real surroundings.
By integrating Snapdragon XR platforms, the glasses will benefit from edge AI and high-performance, low-power computing. This combination enables intelligent, context-aware experiences to run directly on the device, delivering faster and more private interactions.
The partnership builds on more than five years of collaboration between Snap and Qualcomm, during which Snapdragon platforms have powered multiple generations of Snap’s Spectacles.
Snap Inc., co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said, “We believe the future of computing will be more human and grounded in the real world. Our work with Qualcomm provides a strong foundation for the future of Specs, bringing advanced technology and performance that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.”
Qualcomm Incorporated president and CEO Cristiano Amon added, “The next era of computing will be defined by devices that understand what you see, hear and say, and respond instantly to the world around you. Our collaboration on Specs will enable power-efficient interactive AR devices that feel natural and intuitive.”
The agreement establishes a scalable foundation for developers and partners building experiences for Specs, supporting a predictable product roadmap and increasingly sophisticated digital interactions over time.
In a world racing toward augmented reality, Specs Inc. and Qualcomm are ensuring that the next pair of smart glasses doesn’t just look good on paper, they perform brilliantly in real life. The future of wearable computing just got a powerful new lens.
