Eutelsat Communications Ultra HD Channel Hit Europe

Folks living in Europe were able to take advantage of the first Ultra HD channel in a dedicated demonstration when the first day of CES 2013 kicked off, which could very well be why this bit of news was missed. Thanks to Eutelsat Communications, this Ultra HD channel was delivered via satellite with the resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 (4K) at 50 frames per second, which is actually the European equivalent of 60p. The stream itself has been encoded in MPEG-4 with the help from video compression solution provider, ATEME, where it is then transmitted at 40 Mbps.

Being more than double the bandwidth that is used by most 1080i broadcasts, it does not necessarily point towards the future utilization of Ultra HD broadcasts, but there is the general expectation of using a more efficient HEVC codec, but other factors do come into play such as color space. You will first need an Ultra HD TV to take advantage of such a channel, and we do know that these are generally off the charts in terms of pricing for the layperson.

Edwin Kee
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