14 DAY TRIAL // This year's IFA trade show was the launching pad for more than one 84-inch 3D TV with a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels. Now we know there is at least one transmission in that quality.
During the show, Sony, LG and all other companies who had a 4K2K TV on display had to resort to upscaling technology to argue for the usefulness of their products.
That is to say, since there aren't any TV channels in that quality, they offered the next best thing, technologies that “upscale” Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels).
Now, though, there is one TV satellite transmission that will fully exploit the pixel count of the high-end displays.
SES, a satellite operator with a fleet of 51 geostationary satellites, has teamed up with Sony to show IBC visitors a live satellite transmission of 4K UHDTV content on the Bravia 84-inch panel.
IBC is an annual conference centered around the “creation, management and delivery of electronic media and entertainment content worldwide.” It is taking place between September 6 and 11, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The protected Quad Full HD video content, encoded in the H.264 standard at a data rate of 50 Mbit/s, is uplinked from SES in Betzdorf/Luxembourg via Transponder 3.236 on ASTRA 3B at 23.5° East.
“4K or Quad Full HDTV is the de-facto next standard beyond HDTV and will deliver a stunning picture quality on modern, large flat-screen displays,” said Thomas Wrede, SES vice president of reception systems.
“With the live demo via ASTRA-3B and using equipment from Sony we demonstrate that the eco-system for 4K UHDTV satellite transmission is available today. With the arrival of the new video encoding standard HEVC in 2013 together with a plethora of 4K compatible flat-screen displays satellite television ‘Beyond HDTV’ can start.”
Actual 4K content availability probably won't be here until 2013, but a demo is nice all the same. We suspect that it won't be too long before a consumer-available channel or two are set up.