The BBC has revealed it received over 1.6 million requests during its recent Ultra HD trials for the World Cup and Wimbledon.
The most popular day was Saturday 7 July when England met Sweden in the World Cup quarter-final. It was also the first weekend (Day 6) of the grass court tennis championships.
Phil Layton, Head of Broadcast and Connected Systems, BBC R&D, said: “The trial is an important step forward, showing for the first time that Ultra HD and High Dynamic Range (HDR) can be delivered live and “free-to-air” over the Internet. It’s part of the BBC’s mission to ensure that future audiences can enjoy the benefits of improved picture quality, and this trial follows on from our work ensuring viewers were not left behind by the move to HDTV, albeit with different technologies.”
In a blog post, Layton said the BBC was aware of a number of recent models that would be able to display the Ultra HD/HDR content, but didn’t know how many of the TVs were connected to a suitable high-speed Internet connection.
The result was the need to provide a mechanism to control numbers on a first-come, first-served basis. Layton reveals this was only briefly used once for controlling access and once when it was needed to move traffic between CDNs.
The majority of viewers were receiving one of the two Ultra HD resolutions.
Wimbledon was also available to Sky viewers through the Sky Q box.
