BBC UltraHD trial goes live

The BBC has used the World Cup game between Columbia vs. Uruguay on 28 June to transmit in UltraHD at a resolution of 3830×2160 over both DTT and MPEG-DASH at a bitrate of 35Mbps on both standards.

Rapid TV News reports BBC R&D’s department earlier announced the corporation’s intention to trial UltraHD over both DTT and IP networks and in the test it says it was able to successfully receive and decode the DTT transmissions from Arqiva’s Crystal Palace site at its West London research laboratory in BBC Centre House. Transmissions also took place from the north of England and in Scotland.

The UltraHD coverage was up-linked from the Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro by Eurovision. Globecast provided the downlink facilities and the BBC used Ateme satellite receivers to decode the quad high definition AVC/H.264 signal.