Yet another 4K first, this time it is the first live 4K broadcast over Digital Terrestrial, in this case TDF’s French DVB-T2 network carrying the country’s TNT service. And compressed in the HVEC, H.265 standard.
As we see the rapid completion and establishment of the new compression standard based products, that at IBC, last September weren’t yet capable of live 4K compression, let alone at 50 or 60 frames per second.
Various matches from the Centre Court at Roland Garros, home of the French open Tennis tournament, taking place from May 25 to June 8th, are being broadcast by TDF in DVB-T2 format to TNT, the national DTT service, and will be viewable on compatible Panasonic 4K TVs as well as other compatible 4K television sets.
Compression software vendor Envivio,Inc., based in California, but with its research roots in the Rennes, France region, that included the TDF labs that helped establish MPEG in the first place, announced TDF will use its Muse Ultra HD software, running on the vendor’s 2RU high G5 server.
The 4K video being distributed is encoded at 50 frames per second.
Both TDF and Envivio expressed their content with the demonstration of their combined 4K powers:
Alain Komly, deputy director at TDF, said; “The sharpness and rich quality of the video is absolutely stunning, and we are excited to present this emerging technology for the first time in France.”
Adding: “Envivio has provided an outstanding contribution for the debut of live 4K HEVC video transmissions over a DTT network at the French Open tournament,”
And an ‘extremely pleased’ Julien Signès, Envivio’s president and CEO continues:
“The French Open is one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world, and we are extremely pleased to provide the compression technology for this world-first, over-the-air broadcast in 4K Ultra HD, in partnership with TDF and TNT,”
Expanding on his technology:
“Our Muse video processing software has been fine-tuned for 4K to provide the best video quality possible, while leveraging the efficiency of HEVC to optimize bandwidth efficiency.”