Impact of channel errors on single-layer and two-layer HDR video transmission architectures in error prone networks

Abstract

Although High Dynamic Range (HDR) content can provide an enhanced immersive experience for end-users, the impact of channel errors on its perception is unclear due to the lack of a standardized HDR video distribution framework. This paper presents an assessment of the robustness of the two main HDR video distribution architectures, the single-layer 10-bit scheme and the two-layer 8-bit backward-compatible scheme, in terms of their perceived quality in an error prone transmission network. In order to approximate a realistic distribution scenario, the state-of-the-art error concealment approaches are implemented at the HDR decoder with drop packets during the transmission. Results suggest that the single-layer architecture is more robust to channel errors compared to the two-layer architecture. However, the results reveal that with an efficient concealment approach in an enhancement layer, the backward-compatible two-layer coding architecture has potential to outperform the single-layer coding architecture which can lead to new directions of HDR research.