The vision of the future is fast becoming a reality for millions as the broadcast industry adapts to Ultra HD TV, the new benchmark for broadcasting.

Ultra HD provides an unprecedented viewing experience, with cinema-like picture quality combined with an increase in screen sizes at home. With a broader colours range, higher frame rates and greater luminosity, it surpasses consumer expectations today and in the decades to come.

The uptake of this new broadcasting mode has been facilitated with the new video compression standard HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) which offers improved compression rates.  At the HOTBIRD video neighbourhood, channels including SPI International’s FunBox UHD, Fashion TV’s FTV UHD and Travelxp 4K have already selected HEVC encoding with 10 bits of colour depth, at 50 fps. The channels address cable and IP network operators and DTH homes in the HOTBIRD footprint.

Travelxp is the world’s first 4K HDR channel broadcasting with wide colour gamut and HLG HDR. HDR offers a greater dynamic range of luminosity, significantly increasing the contrast ratio for more vivid pictures. Pixels on screen are even brighter, representing outdoor scenes more accurately and giving more detail in the dark.

HEVC encoding in Ultra HD for live events enables broadcasters and rights holders to broadcast major sports and other events at a lower bit rate than in MPEG-4. Eutelsat regularaly demonstrates this at the French Open, where tennis matches broadcast in Ultra HD via our EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite, give fans a stunning view of the action.

Satellites are a natural platform for broadcasting Ultra HD content. Their bandwidth availability and wide coverage areas enables viewers to receive the same quality signal wherever they are located within the satellite coverage. Satellite capacity is fully Ultra HD ready and accommodates Ultra HD transmissions with no modifications required.