Sept. 29, 2021— Cobalt® Digital, designer and manufacturer of award-winning edge devices for live video production and master control, and a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, has announced that Groupe M6, utilized its 9904-UDX-4K openGear card including Advanced HDR by Technicolor solutions to convert UHD HLG signals to UHD SDR during the UEFA European Football Championship.

Groupe M6, one of the key broadcasters for the UEFA Football Championship in France, offered all retransmitted games on a dedicated UHD SDR channel on top of the traditional HD SDR terrestrial broadcast. This additional UHD transmission presented a technical challenge for M6 who received a UHD HLG signal which needed to be delivered in a UHD SDR format. Working with Cobalt’s French reseller, OBV.TV, M6 configured, tested, and implemented a workflow using the Cobalt 9904-UDX-4K card with AI embedded Advanced HDR by Technicolor solutions to analyze each image for optimal conversion. The flawless performance was achieved using the default settings on the Cobalt 9904-UDX-4K card which also allowed for effortless deployment.

Suzana Brady, Cobalt Digital’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing, says, “Aside from all the high technical specifications, the beauty of our extremely versatile 9904-UDX-4K card is that it’s truly plug-and-play and doesn’t require any customization. Colors converted by the card from the original channel to the UHD SDR channel were virtually identical. We were delighted to play such a critical role in M6’s coverage of these popular games, and proud to work alongside Technicolor to achieve such successful transmission.”

different markets throughout the world. These distribution channels vary in capability for content delivery,” says Bozzini.

As a result, creatives need the ability to offer content in multiple flavors — whether it is HD or UHD and SDR or HDR — to match the capabilities of a particular distribution channel and generate revenue.

“Advanced HDR by Technicolor enables engineers to distribute content in both SDR and HDR within a single stream. It leverages the metadata to determine whether a consumer device is capable of supporting SDR or HDR. That is a point of differentiation in a highly competitive marketplace.”

The award-winning Cobalt Digital 9904-UDX-4K advanced scaler/frame synchronizer is a 12G/6G/3G/HD/SD UHD Up/Down/Cross Converter/Frame Sync/Embed/De-Embed Audio Processor. The card, referred to as the company’s Swiss Army Knife for its unparalleled capability range, offers numerous options, including SDR-to-HDR conversion and color correction.