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No one’s going to drop in excess of £15,000 on a fabulous 84-inch 4K TV without something to watch on it. So to get the broadcast ball rolling, Sony has demonstrated a real-time satellite transmission system that cleverly compresses a 4K signal without reducing its stunning image quality.
Working with a Luxembourg-based satellite distribution firm, Sony demonstrated the new system at the IBC trade show that’s just wrapping up in Amsterdam. Using existing H.264 compression technology, the massive 4K signal was smooshed to a 50Mbps stream, which is the equivalent of a broadcast-friendly 1920×1080 high-def signal. That means, theoretically, that existing broadcast and streaming hardware can be used to transmit a 4K signal. This could speed up the 4K rollout, since networks and stations don’t necessarily have to upgrade all their gear.
But Sony doesn’t plan to stop there. In the future it hopes to employ a new video compression technology called HEVC — or High Efficiency Video Coding — to further reduce the signal to a mere 20Mbps, allowing them to transmit multiple 4K signals at once. The more the merrier.
[Tech-On!]
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I honestly think they should just skip 4K TV’s and focus on 8K. Even if the signal isn’t there yet, it’ll be able to handle any 4K transmission with ease.
Also, 4K won’t have mass appeal, not when manufacturers are showcasing 8K screens at the same time. They’re just muddying the market.
This is seriously not an iPhone article?
Come on now…don’t be a jerk for the sake of it. I know you can do better.
Is this a retina display? XD
50Mbps are what Broadcast TV cameras record and what broadcasters (BBC/Sky) will accept as a recording format bit rate for program origination.
The HD signal you watch at home is way below 20Mbps thanks to what the broadcasters transmit and deem acceptable, which is why you’ll see banding and other artefacts in the picture. Digital isn’t error free perfect.
Squishing a 4k signal down to 50Mbps isn’t much of a big deal. I can see how it gets down to 20Mbps too but expecting them to broadcast it at 20Mbps and for joe/josephine bloggs to receive it at 20Mbps will take a lot of bandwidth fiddling as right now there isn’t enough of it.
I think the next generation of H.26+ compression will solve this but we’ll all have to wait.