LONDON—BT Sport has become one of the first global broadcasters to demonstrate live 8K sport.
Working with a range of established partners, BT Sport and BT’s Media and Broadcast division delivered an hour-long, live broadcast in 8K on to the BT stand at IBC, showcasing the Gallagher Premiership Rugby 7s tournament taking place in Northampton.
Partners who supported BT’s live 8K trial included:
- Appear TV (Appear X10 platform used for encoding, decoding, IP encapsulation and interfacing to the BT network for live link)
- Astro Design (8K Interface Conversion)
- Blackmagic Design (ATEM Constellation 8K for vision mixing/HyperDeck Extreme 8K HDR for recording)
- Fujinon (lenses and BT Sport preferred 4K lens partner)
- Ikegami (cameras)
- Leader (technical monitoring)
- MOOV (graphics)
- Samsung (showcasing the content on its 2019 8K QLED TV, the Samsung Q950R, offering resolution four times that of 4K and a total of 33 million pixels supported by HDR10+. Samsung are also the first TV manufacturer to support the BT Sport app)
- Telegenic (OB support)
According to BT Sport’s Chief Operating Officer Jamie Hindhaugh, the purpose of the broadcast was to demonstrate BT Sport’s capabilities, and where that leads a broadcaster creatively. “We’re not necessarily saying we’re going to launch an 8K proposition, we’re not necessarily saying the U.K. market needs that,” he told TVBEurope.
“But you learn from value of 8K, you learn from the extra quality it gives you and it can become an element within your production. It’s like 8K VR, we’re already trialling that and it is something that will roll out and replace our 4K 360 that we currently do.”
