WHAT IS MPEG-H?

When we were told that the Samsung N950 soundbar (right) was compatible with Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and MPEG-H, well, we knew Atmos and DTS:X, of course, as we do the third commonly considered immersive sound format Auro-3D. But what is MPEG-H?

Not new, it turns out, developed from 2014 as part of a full audio-video standard, of which the audio compression standard has been vying with Dolby AC-4 for adoption within the new ATSC 3.0 broadcast standards. While Dolby has the edge with AC-4 for use in the States, MPEG-H was adopted in South Korea for its launch of ATSC 3.0 last year, which may explain why the main brands known to consider it are LG, which licensed MPEG-H for its 2017 TV models (according to the MPEG-H Audio Alliance), and now momentarily (see below) Samsung. MPEG-H Audio is also part of the DVB A/V codec specification.

While Dolby is likely the preferred option for Europe, too, MPEG-H is gaining traction there, tested during the 2018 French Open by France Télévisions and the French Tennis Federation, in collaboration with TDF and FRANSAT. MPEG-H was encoded over DVB-T2 and satellite during the tournament and included in the live UHD broadcasts from the Philippe Chatrier court from May to June 2018.

MPEG-H’s goal is to provide a nextgeneration open audio standard, where ‘open’ means “fair pricing” and “an extensive community of open standards developers”. MPEG-H is being commercialised by the MPEG-H Audio Alliance of Fraunhofer, Technicolor, and Qualcomm. The licensing program is based on a per-unit royalty starting at US99c per unit, falling to 15c with volume, and no patent royalty applying to MPEG-H content as such.

As with Atmos and other immersive coding systems, objects are combined with ‘beds’ (traditional channels) in order to scale the sound experience to the system available, be it home theatre, VR, stereo headphones or smartphone use. A third inclusion appears to be scene-based coding based on Ambisonics, encoding spatially compressed signals that describe a sound source’s direction by means of their relative amplitudes and polarities. This positions MPEG-H as an audio standard ready for the growing realms of VR applications.

As a single technology for all applications, MPEG-H is designed to work in streaming systems and broadcast systems.Fraunhofer operates the MPEG-H TV Audio System trademark program without fees or charges, with manufacturers responsible for testing fees. The listing of available consumer devices is blank — and indeed Samsung later corrected themselves to tell us the N950 doesn’t support MPEG-H after all. Maybe nothing ever will. www.mpeghaa.com and www.mpegh.com