I was informed two years ago at IBC that 8K TV was fifteen years away and now NHK are filming the Rio Olympic games on 8K cameras and streaming the pictures live to Japan.
Live streaming of 8K material is no mean feat , remembering the BBC R&D were streaming the Glasgow Commonwealth games 2 years ago.
BBC R&D from Philip Johnston on Vimeo.
Big centre stage events like the Olympic Games have always been a good test bed for future developments in television.
RIO – 8K from SCIENTIFANTASTIC on Vimeo.
Hi Phillip. Thanks for the heads up. Very helpful to get these technology updates. Bob.
I expect the BBC will still be running the
“We can not do HD in your area”
message after the 6pm News on Sky when 8k comes in.
None of this should come as any surprise to us now.
Resolution remainied around SD quality for so long because the only way to consume video was via analogue SD transmission.
We had an unpleasant decade transitioning from SD non-square pixels, via Anamorphic SD, a few weird anamorphic HD formats like HDV and DVCPRO until we finally reached square pixels.
From here resolution is simply going to creep up year on year. h265 is coming to market and it’s four times as efficient as 264, so 4k h265 now fits into 1080p h264 bandwidth.
Meanwhile, traditional linear TV is dying because it is being consumed differently. Soon we’ll all have unmetered ultra fast wired and mobile broadband.
Eventually I believe sci-fi predictions will become reality. Our walls will become large uninterrupted screens where media and information ‘follows’ us around our homes, and elsewhere.
News of ‘yet another bump in resolution’ should be of no real importance.
Looks like Japan is thirteen years ahead of everybody else 🙂