Examining Sky Sports Live HDR End-to-End Implementation
Sky launched its live high dynamic range (HDR) service in 2021, expanding to over 6,000 hours of live HDR sports annually using single-stream HDR workflows across its platform and international distribution. This paper explores the end-to-end process of launching live HDR while maintaining standard dynamic range (SDR) delivery. It covers content acquisition and the development of reliable, repeatable, and cost-effective workflows to integrate HDR and wide color gamut (WCG) into existing productions. It also addresses the training and operational demands placed on engineers. The paper analyzes key workflow areas—editing, archiving, and distribution encoding—highlighting design decisions and practical knowledge required. It reviews lookup table (LUT)-based conversions and validation techniques used to ensure pipeline accuracy. Finally, it outlines considerations for critical viewing environments and managing end-user devices and television sets during quality assessment.
- Print ISSN
- 1545-0279
- Electronic ISSN
- 2160-2492
- Published
- 2025-09
- Content type
- Original Research
- Keywords
- hdr, hlg, uhd, live production, workflows
- DOI
- 10.5594/JMI.2025/NUGE5689