Why BT and Samsung are betting big on 8K

At Emirates Stadium in late February, Trusted Reviews was one of the first publications to testify to "the future of television" or at least what TV manufacturers and broadcasters imagine The future will look like, and according to BT and Samsung, that future is the 8K.

In a premiere for broadcast in the UK, BT Sport broadcast an 8K live stream of the Europa League match between Arsenal and Olympiacos to a Samsung 8K QLED in a private box.

The gist of it all? It is coming sooner than you might think, and 2020 could turn out to be a pivotal year for technology that is gaining popularity.

Related: What is 8K?

The first step to making 8K TV a reality at home

The pace of technological innovation is fast, but there are many hurdles, mainly price, accessibility and content. Japanese public broadcaster NHK launched an 8K channel in 2018, but there has been less movement elsewhere. Content availability goes hand in hand with adoption.

The goal (pun intended) is to make it a realistic possibility. As Dan Hastings, Director of TV / AV at Samsung UK, commented: "This is the first step in making 8K a reality for everyone in every home."

Jamie Hindhaugh, Director of Operations at BT Sport, told us: "All we do around innovation is to bring people back to the heart of sport … we do it because it makes a difference."

This demonstration was not just a proof of concept. This is what can happen in households. We think this is really important. If you subscribe to BT Sport Ultimate and have an 8K TV, you will soon be able to watch the Premier League Champions League in 8K. "

Related: Best 8K TV

Meet as close as possible to the place

BT Sport previously tested an 8K SDR broadcast as part of its work in the 8K contribution space of the Northampton Saints Rugby Club at the IBC (International Broadcasting Convention) 2019 in Amsterdam.

The difference with the Emirates event was that it was live, in HDR, and a demo aimed at consumers. A Sony UHC-8300 camera (it costs a little less than $ 500,000) captures at full resolution 4320p (8K), HDR10, wide range of colors (Rec.2020) at 50 frames per second.

Power to the UHC-8300 was relayed to the outdoor broadcast trucks. There, the signal could be viewed on four small professional 4K monitors, which together spliced ​​the 8K image.

With only one 8K camera available, there had to be two, but the coronavirus paid for the broadcast to be split with shots of 4K and 1080p HDR signals (the latter double converted to 8K). That meant live reruns and studio shots weren't in 8K, but the process was a representation of what an 8K service would look like.

A version of the feed entered a Samsung 8K QLED outside the truck using distribution encoders, before being packaged and sent upstairs to a Samsung QE82Q950R at 48 Gbit / s (divided into four signals) via the cloud (Amazon Web Services).

Send it to the cloud

If you thought the process would become simpler, you would be wrong. From there, it was siphoned into a special HDMI 2.0a box, then run through another "special box" which converted the HDMI 2.0 quad signal to an HDMI 2.1 version. This then went through a proprietary version of the BT Sport app on the TV and voil, an 8K broadcast.

Related: What is HDMI 2.1?

Native and uncompressed 8K stream

The image quality was impressive; bright, detailed and clear, even in its now compressed 80 Mbps form. You can easily read the billboards and flags scattered throughout the stadium, choose the details of the players (although it took a while to realize that Aubameyang was playing). The colors were punchy, and even if you couldn't see as much detail in the darker areas as looking outside, it was still impressive.

Despite the complicated process, compression gives 8K an easier way to infiltrate people's homes. It was an early version of the coder, and according to Andy Beale, chief engineer at BT Sport, we can expect better soon: "We know codecs are developing fast … so we think this could easily reach 60, 65 Mbps in about a year. "

"The 66Mbps bandwidth support fits very well into our product line … but we also know that it fits into the 5G envelope. So we think there is potential for this as a product in the future. "

That's still a lot of bandwidth, but fiber internet and 5G certainly make 8K a more workable proposition now than it would have been a few months ago.

"We take the customer to the heart of sport"

BT Sport believes that technical innovation can push viewers' levels of immersion. 4K ushered it in, Atmos and HDR took it a step further, and the hope is that 8K can achieve a similar result.

Beale reaffirmed this philosophy by saying: “We always want to take the customer to the heart of sport. We always want to immerse them. We know that the best place to watch a sporting event is clearly on the site. You can't beat this. But second place… (must) be with BT Sport. "

The hope is that BT Sport Ultimate subscribers can watch the 2020/21 Premier League season in 8K HDR via the BT Sport app. By putting it in front of more users, BT Sport can extend its reach and distribution. And since the app is currently only available on Samsung TVs, it could be the secret weapon that makes Samsung the undisputed leader in the adoption of 8K TVs.

There is always the question of whether a resolution bump is reason enough for the 8K to exist. If you are going to increase the resolution, then, no doubt, the frame rates should increase in tandem. BT Sport is already in 8K VR and is studying object-based broadcasting which, as Hindhaugh explains, will allow the viewer "to customize the way you watch a live game, the graphics, the size of the ; clock, the camera angles you projected on the screen. "

There is also the problem of the 8K format which requires a large screen. Not everyone's house is big enough, with 55 inches, the most popular TV size in the UK. Samsung produced the QLED Q950R 8K in sizes from 55 to 98 inches, but with a smaller screen and a difference in pixel density, will the 8K be as sharp or "epic" as possible? 43-inch 4K TVs have become commonplace, so who can say that the same won't happen for 8K?

Nevertheless, on the roadmap for 8K TV, it was an important next step. The Japan Olympics (if held) should be an important driver for the format, and prices for 8K televisions are approaching premium 4K televisions.

Technology is evolving rapidly and the land has been laid out for the entrance to the 8K. He must put the ball in the back of the net and hope that VAR does not dismiss it. If BT Sport and Samsung can do it, they will be at the top of the league to shape the future of television.

TV and audio editor

Kob started his career at What Hi-Fi ?, starting in the dusty stash before climbing the ladder to join the editorial and production team as publisher of the Buyers' Guide. Experienced in both the magazine and …