IBC 2008 – AMSTERDAM. It needs a screen size in excess of 70 inches and a 22.2 multichannel sound system, but what it lacks in convenience, the Super Hi-Vision demo makes up for in stunning picture quality.
The 7680 x 4320 pixel system is the brainchild of The Broadcast Technology Futures Group, a collaboration between NHK, the BBC, RAI and the EBU. Delegates in the NHK Theatre at IBC 2008 witnessed a parade of butterflies, sunflowers and the obligatory singing children.
Dr Keiichi Kubota, director-general, Science & Technical Research Laboratories, NHK told Broadband TV News that the timescale for the technology’s introduction had been reduced to ten years. In an exclusive interview Dr Kubota said that although the cameras and displays had not been improved on Super Hi-Vision’s debut two years ago, there had been significant advances in transmission.
“The biggest improvement is in compression technology. We’re using two transponders, but this cannot be the case when we use this technology in the real world to provide a service to consumers,” he said. “We’re working on H.264 and we can improve that technology. Right now we’re running a video data rate of 130 Mbit/s, but in the laboratory we’re running at 110 Mbit/s, and we should be able to compress this down to 90 Mbit/s by 2010.
Part of the demonstration was uplinked from Turin, Italy to Eutelsat’s Atlantic Bird satellite (5 degrees East).
Demonstrations continue in the NHK Theatre and on the EBU stand.
