International. For years Cedia has worked with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) — the organization that holds the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) each year in Las Vegas — on a joint residential systems standards body, called R10 and accredited by the American National Standards Institute. ANSI).
The R10 depends on working groups of volunteer subject matter experts, whose efforts are currently in evaluating or developing various best practices. There are three key documents that influence most technology integrators and should therefore be considered important reference tools. They are related to sound design, video design and Verification Systems of the High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI). Let's look at each of them:
Recommended Practice for CTA/Cedia-ceb22 Home Theater: Sound Design
First developed in 2009, the CEB22 was specifically dedicated to home theaters — and high-end theaters, in addition. In fact, it is considered very ambitious and applicable to less than 1% of teams, which means that it was not directly applicable to most integrators and/or projects.
The review currently being conducted addresses this by proposing four levels of performance and shifting the focus, specifically from home theater, to home entertainment spaces. The entry level allows for some flexibility and will be very affordable, while also providing great performance. Then, the scrolling through the levels culminates in the reference audio system with features including: floor with sound control, acoustics, bass management, partition, and row seating. Importantly, the best practice also adds immersive speaker designs, such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X.
CEB22 is on the way; keep an eye out for its launch in early 2020.
Best Practice for CTA/Cedia-CEB23 Home Theater: Video Design
The CEB23 was first published in 2010 as the video companion for the CEB22. It was revised in 2012 as CEB23-A and then, in 2017, as CEB23-B. However, there have been many changes as far as video is concerned only in these last two years, including the introduction of wide color gamut, High Dynamic Range (HDR), 8K, among other things. This warrants another major overhaul. CEB23 has also traditionally focused on home theater, but as with CEB22, its scope can be expanded to address the diversity of video equipment.
CTA/Cedia-CEB28: verification methods for the interoperability of HDMI systems
Everyone who works with HDMI recognizes the challenge it often presents, and new audiovisual features (Audiovisual, AV), such as HDR, only aggravate it. In fact, Joel Silver, founder of the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF) and chair of the working group that is developing CEB28, told me at the start of this project, "The biggest challenge with HDR is getting it to turn on!" He was referring, of course, to what can go wrong in the HDMI system, and this is just one of the many problems.
The CEB28 is a new best practice that will introduce verification and troubleshooting methods to ensure that the HDMI system is doing what it is supposed to do. It will also serve as an informative reference for features and protocols that work via HDMI, with a supplement for system design considerations, making it a highly valuable versatile document for all integrators.
The effort is well advanced, but it is still underway. We are targeting the end of 2019 for the comments and the beginning of 2020 for its formal release.
It's not too late to participate! If you are a member of Cedia or CTA and are interested in contributing to any of these volunteer working groups, I invite you to contact Cedia's Technology and Standards team, in [email protected].
Text written by David Meyer, Director of Technical Research at Cedia.
