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You might have only just gotten used to the wonder of Full HD on your tellybox, but Sky has already gone and transmitted the first event filmed in the UK in the next generation of high definition — Ultra HD.
Sky Sports filmed Stoke beating West Ham 1-0 on Saturday using four Ultra HD cameras and transmitted the extremely well defined game back to its HQ. There, lucky execs watched it on an 84-inch Sony Ultra HD TV. Welcome to the future of televised mid-table mediocrity.
“From the cameras to our OB truck and from our satellite platform to our broadcast operations centre in Isleworth, the entire match was played out as a genuinely live broadcast,” Sky Sports managing director Barney Francis wrote in a blog post.
“Prior to this, UHD sports broadcasts had either been recorded and played back ‘as live’, or distributed over closed-circuit networks, so this was real progress.”
The East London soccerball game was captured by four Sony F55 UHD cameras placed around the ground, with two UHD EVS servers on hand for replays and graphics. The picture displayed on the £25,000 TV at Sky HQ was in 3,840×2,160-pixel definition — four times the number of pixels used in Full HD 1080p, and sometimes referred to as 4K. It blasted out at 50 frames per second too, double the current rate.
“We saw enough in this test event to know that live sport in UHD has real potential,” says Francis. “We are also keeping a close eye on how the wider market for UHD develops… as and when affordable UHD TVs are available, over the next few years, our early leadership will position us well.”
So don’t expect to see your favourite provincial ball-hoofers in Ultra HD any time soon, but if enough people pony up for a next-gen telly, Sky could switch up pretty quickly. Quite why anyone would buy an Ultra HD TV without anything to watch on it, I have no idea, but some people have more money than sense.
A 55-inch Samsung UHD set will currently deplete your bank account of £3,300 — but it’s only on much bigger TVs, like the one used by Sky, that you’ll see any difference between UHD and 1080p.
Do you think your next TV will be Ultra HD? Or are you yet to be convinced? Broadcast your opinions in the comments below, or on our standard-definition Facebook page.
