16/04/2016 Click

This week, eye-popping colours, formation madness,

Ask because I'm just wondering how good your pixels are.

I'm not asking how many you got, just how good they are.

See, there are many ways to improve your TV picture.

One is to improve the resolution, how many pixels you have.

That is why standard def is not as good as high-def,

which in turn doesn't look as good as ultrahigh def.

But, another way to improve the picture

is to increase the colour depth, the level of detail in the colours.

Over the past year, one or two top-end TVs have started

to offer a new format which some are daring to call a game-changing

They are calling it "High Dynamic Range," HDR,

and this year it is set to be a thing on many new industry TVs.

But is it just industry puff, or is it really time to buy a new TV

We asked Dan Simmons to find out what HDR is, what it does,

What interests me is what it looks like.

Now, if that's going to have ten letters and numbers behind it,

so be it, but I wouldn't be able to tell you what they are.

I don't think many people know about High Dynamic Range itself.

Most people when they first see it take a step

Because sometimes to them it looks to them as if the person is actually

Ted has been selling TVs for 18 years.

He says it is a big deal so I have come to the HQ of Sony to

And you won't be able to see this because you are watching in HD

What more am I going to get from something called HDR?

That's what we have set up on this TV, you can see

HDR is the new broadcasting standard which gives you much more colour

and brightness information compared to regular 4K.

These are both 4K pictures but this one has High Dynamic Range.

For example, you can see the skin tones are much

HDR cameras capture colour information using a longer ten bit

So more colour hues are available, making things look more real.

For the first time, these TVs can play that back.

Our eyes can see a huge spectrum of brightness, about 15 stops' worth.

But up until now TVs have had a problem

The picture burns out too easily or dark bits lose detail, for example.

HDR delivers 85% of what most of us can see, resulting in a picture that

holds on to the darker detail, even when bright lights are in shot.

And in here, look at all that detail in the trees.

And these suns, one is quite big and the other is much smaller.

Is that something you get when you shoot in HDR?

Yeah, when you are shooting in HDR you are capturing more brightness

information so you don't get a washed out effect that you have with

But with the new broadcast standard everything getting washed

LG announced last week that 75% of its new TV sets this year would

It's OLED screens will show even more detail in the darker ranges,

it says, and it has teamed up with Dolby to support a sort

Dolby Vision allows for even more details to be captured and displayed

Now there is a rush to get content filmed in HDR to our screens.

Amazon and Netflix have limited offerings

and YouTube says it will be next, with broadcasters expected in 2017.

And the new 4K BluRay disc players support both Dolby Vision

With compatible TVs coming to shops this year in all

but the smallest budget price ranges, the industry hopes will have

Yeah, I was. darker screen.

This is the first time I saw a 4K screen I thought I could

I've had that experience once before watching an 8K screen but this 4K,

It is just a shame we can't show the viewers at home what this sort

But listen to this man, his word goes.

You mentioned there were competing formats as well.

Don't worry about the formats because they are

Dolby Vision has the edge on specifics, specifications,

and I can see a little bit of improvement over the blacks.

Not a huge improvement on the industry standard, HDR10.

Then there is the BBC standard, it is working on a broadcast

standard all of its own that it will share with the industry, that way

So one TV will be able to show all the formats.

If it says it is HDR ready or compatible, that is fine.

Will it cost more to buy these things?

Interestingly, TVs are not going up in price.

They are broadly the same as last year across the field.

With HDR, what will cost you more money is when you stream

Will I be able to watch much, has much been filmed for HDR already?

The cameras we have had have been HDR compatible

We have content, it just needs to come through the production system.

Streaming services will start to offer them, including YouTube,

We are also looking at the BluRay disks as well.

Don't worry about that, new discs are coming out with this format on.

And the BBC are working on that broadcast system which will deliver

some sort of live broadcast, we think, next year or the year after.

Just this week Netflix confirmed it has begun rolling out HDR to

its movie and TV streaming services around the world.

That said, the only thing that you can watch in HDR at the moment

But to access them, viewers will need to to have

Perhaps to lighten the blow, the service this week wheeled out

a buffet of its stars, Ashton Kutcher is new to the table with his

old 70's friend, Danny Masterson, who, with their new series,

Their ability to distribute that content to a subset

of the audience that is relevant to the piece of content you are

creating allows more diverse stories over time from content creators.

As it expands globally, Netflix will rely heavily on the

secret recipe, the recommendation algorithm which customises each

When you make a good algorithm, you have to take out all the rubbish

We used to take age and gender because we thought it was important

But now we think it is more important to

Hello, and welcome to The Week in Tech.

This was the week that we learned that Facebook is no longer just

The company's new bot feature will see some new chatty friends

The idea is that it will help you do things that you used to

Right now the conversations are limited, so you can order flowers,

Later on they hope that you can talk to them more naturally,

Let's just hope they don't start sharing pictures of their lunch.

And here's a trick you definitely should not try at home.

The car company, Ford, has shown its driverless car driving

in total darkness on its test track in Arizona.

While the humans present had night vision goggle, the car used radar

and very high resolution maps of the road layout to stay on course.

Do you know that feeling when you have left some water

on the other side of your spaceship but are worried you will crease

Festo's free-motion handling autonomous flying gripping sphere is

The drone can fly itself autonomously using indoor GPS and a

pair of cameras and its soft plastic shell and sucker should mean that

Welcome, everybody, to the world's first 360 immersive video.

The first surgery to be filmed in 360 degree virtual reality

streamed on-line for anyone to watch anywhere in the world.

The medical students can see anything happening

in the operating theatre from the perspective of a 360 degree

This is the operating theatre number one of the Royal Sheffield Hospital.

Dr Ahmed is removing a tumour from the patient's colon He is also

a self-confessed geek and is passionate

about using this technology to help train a new generation of surgeons.

Students don't always have access to surgery so we have to find

People around the world can use low-cost

technology to immerse themselves in operation thatres around

Dr Ahmed's company required a special player to enable live

streaming and in the future the developers hope for more features.

We would love an option for live chatting so the students

can ask questions to the doctor and the surgeon can respond to them

The doctor explains to his students as he does

It's such a great opportunity for people who would not normally

be able to see such an operation to learn from it.

If you are there in person you won't be touching the patient, you are

But now you can look over the patient instead of being

The main selling point is that it puts you in places you would

It is not as real as being here, but, whether you'd actually want to

These big, lumbering beasts were once the future,

but now they are in the past, thanks to disasters like this one.

Flammable hydrogen, not such a great idea.

Recently, we have started to see a renewed interest

There was this helium filled thing which can be flown over crowds

without the normal risk of those drone type injuries,

There was a fine wind turbine, and this: The dragon dream,

Now, LJ Rich has managed to get a look at something which is a kind

of cross between an airship and a more traditional plane,

something which is really about to take off .

Welcome to the hangars of RAF Air Force base 50

It is so big it has its own weather system and more than a few giant

airships have glided out in storms over the years.

Originally developed for the US summer by a British company,

It is an airship, but not as we know it.

Its distinctive shape has certainly been a talking point.

That rotund shape fundamentally changes how the air moves around it.

It is a hybrid airship which has a lot in common with traditional

60% of our lift comes from buoyant lift.

We also get up to 40% of our lift from having an aerodynamic shape,

so the air going over the whole body of the aircraft.

The wing shape gets it into the air and allows it to fly.

That allows us to have the control ability of an aircraft and allows

us to land very easily without lots of ground crew

It's this, the landing, which gets people excited

Like car, it just needs somewhere 1.5 times its size to touch down.

It removes the need for an airport to get it in the air.

The company hopes that the next version may even remove

Simply by carrying its own mast, this flying machine could set

down virtually anywhere, no matter how remote.

I don't know what it is, I just want to be next to it.

It's not every day that you come across a cuddly flying machine,

But don't be fooled, there are over 30,000 cubic metres

Up here is very rigid, this doesn't actually have a structure.

It's reasonably rigid because of all the gas inside.

Because of the design, this hybrid airship is greener

compared to a fixed wing aircraft, using over two thirds less fuel over

a comparable flight, but journeys take a lot longer.

I could not take the ship up unaccompanied, but I was given

After some instruction from a professional pilot,

Turn to the right, lift it to the left.

The Navy guys who come here are quite happy with it.

A normal pilot would not recognise this.

The first real-life use is likely to be cargo, up to ten tons.

The next model will be able to carry five times that.

But no matter how pleasant journey, just one of these costs over

?325 million to make, that's $35 million.

It leaves some people wondering if this mode of travel will ever

I'm about to land my simulated airship, my approach speed

I will just get a little bit lower...

Then it should probably come to a halt on its own,

Hopefully not bouncing around the passengers in the back.

A couple of people might have spelt their tea,

but otherwise I think that landing was reasonably good.

Stay airborne for a few minutes, we first met the Jet Man in Dubai,

the airline pilot who built himself a wing that allows him to do this.

Until recently, he's had the skies to himself,

but now he's got company up there in the clouds.

Jet Man's training centre is based outside of Dubai.

Today, I will watch him do his thing up close.

In this hangar, they maintain the jet wings which are capable

The wings need constant maintenance, he lacks to test them

We change the engine to bigger ones, and we perform.

He is a three-time world champion skydiver.

I would see what he was doing as a pilot

But you're alone, you can't share your emotions

Outside the hangar, things are getting a bit noisy.

This is why we got up early, Allied has arrived.

With the chopper on the flight line, it is time for him to become Jet

No flight would be complete without an

As well as lacking doors, this particular vehicle lacks seats

So, he's getting ready to launch the helicopter.

His concentration looks absolutely total.

With good reason, it he's got a wing on his back

That is without a doubt the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

We can to see him in the distance, his formation with the helicopter.

There he is, flying with the helicopter right now.

He's got about eight minutes worth of fuel.

We definitely got the best seats in the house.

But he is going to land using a slightly different method.

As a trouble goes, it wasn't the most comfortable

of rides but the in-flight entertainment was something else.

They have plans to add another Jet Man to the line-up,

so soon there might be a mini squadron.

These guys will be taking to the skies.

Those guys are, what's the technical term?

You can see more on that story online.

You can follow us for more tech news throughout the week.

Thanks for watching, we would love to see you soon.

Hello. A big shock to the system for many