In Broadcast - March 2013 - 36

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 17 - MARCH 2013

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InFOCUS
Ultra-High Deﬁnition Finally Lifts Off Cont.

36

body the CEA predict that UltraHD will only account for 1.5 million
or 4% of the US market by 2016),
though as prices inevitably tumble
Futuresource forecasts that by 2020
the sale of 4K-equipped receivers
could amount to 15% of the overall
TV set market.
“The lack of a potential subscriber
base will be an inhibitor,” says Adam
Cox, Futuresource Senior Analyst.
“4K is likely to be adopted slowly as
the industry, and consumers, are still
transitioning to HD.”
With TV displays continuing
to decline against sales of other
consumer electronics equipment,
notably tablet and smartphones,
manufacturers will be hoping the
high-resolution picture experience
captures consumer imagination more
than the previous marketing tool, 3D.
The Ultra-HD TVs coming to
market from vendors including
Haisense, LG, Samsung and Sony all
boast an up-scaling ability. Toshiba’s
range, available in 58-, 65- and 84inch LED models, incorporates a
CEVO 4K Engine, which powers
the upscaling of HD. At the CES
in January it was demonstrating 4K
content shot with a Red Epic and
played back from a £1,000 RedRay
4K Cinema Player.

CES 2013 – Samsung’s 4K display
demonstration

Sony is making most effort to
seed the market with 4K content.
It is offering owners of its 4K LEDs
a media server pre-loaded with
4K movies from the Sony Pictures
Entertainment catalogue. These
include ‘The Amazing Spiderman’,
‘Total Recall (2012)’ and older titles
scanned from 35mm, ‘Taxi Driver’
and ‘The Bridge On The River Kwai’.
In 2013, commercially available
eight-layer Blu-ray discs, with
200 GB capacity (sufﬁcient for a
compressed 4K film) may also
become available, reckons Deloitte.
In another sign of the need to
ramp the amount of native 4K
content, Sony and Panasonic
have demonstrated prototype 4K
camcorders, while Panasonic has
also previewed a 4K resolution tablet.

Content And Production
The ﬁrst 4K services are likely to
rely on premium movie channels
from a rising slate of studio

features although 4K-mastered TV
documentaries and high-end drama
are emerging. As with HD before it,
the case for a higher resolution is
that it can help retain a high-quality
ﬁnal image on transmission now
while providing a future-proofed
copy as and when Ultra-HD
broadcasts appear.
Both 3net, the Sony, Discovery and
IMAX joint venture and the BBC have
announced ﬁrst 4K documentary
productions, Space, a CGI
commission BBC Natural History
Unit series Survival respectively.
Sony Pictures Television has already
shot CBS TV show Made in Jersey,
in 4K on the F65 to test workﬂows
and in late January, opened a 4K
television production facility in LA.
The facility is available to post new
programmes; it has also started to
remaster in 4K select shows that
were shot on film.
The options for capturing at 4K are
growing and will no doubt mushroom
at NAB in April. The Red (original
and Epic versions) remains the
main choice, but producers can
also create multi-camera 4K shows
using a variety of other cameras
including JVC’s handheld GYHMQ10, Canon’s EOS C500 and
EOS-1D C DSLR and the F5 and F55
from Sony. An external recorder, due
this year for those models, will also
enable Sony’s NEX-FS700 camera
for hi-speed sequences to go 4K,
while the full 8K power of its ﬂagship
F65 cine camera is to be unleashed
in forthcoming upgrades. For-A
has a 4K variable rate camera for
hi-speed action and even minicam
maker GoPro unveiled a 4K version
of its Hero 3.
Since editing can be performed
using HD proxies, as far as postproduction goes the issues are
greater storage and processing
power for transport and neither
is insurmountable. In fact, some
facilities are ready now.
“The demand is here and there’s
no bottleneck - just faster and
faster pipes and a bigger SAN,”
says Richard Mills, CTO, OnSight
the London facility. OnSight uses
a Barco projector for reviewing 4K
content, Mistika for ﬁnishing and a
10Gbps Ethernet to run data around
the building.
LipSync Post performed its ﬁrst
4K post operation in 2003. “The
cost of 4K will go up since the kit
and storage costs more and time
to complete takes longer,” informs
Head of Post, Kevin Phelan. “But
this was ever the case when HD
was introduced.”
The grunt power required to shunt
4K signals around a live environment
requires more than just cameras.
The whole outside broadcast
infrastructure from professional

monitors to vision mixers needs
upgrading. With a view to attracting
lucrative live sports contracts
from pay-TV rivals BSkyB and BT
Vision, the UK’s suppliers are laying
the groundwork.
Telegenic, which took an early lead
in 3D truck investment and won the
bulk of Sky’s 3D TV live production
on the back of it, is building what it
hopes will be Europe’s ﬁrst 4K-ready
mobile facility, but NEP Visions won’t
be far behind.
“4K is very, very much on our
radar,” said Brian Clark, Commercial
& Technical Projects Director at
outside broadcaster NEP Visions.
“Manipulating 4K signals comes
down to crunching data. The entire
design of Atlantic (the division’s
latest 3G – 1080p 50 vehicle) is IPbased where we are managing data
not traditional HD signals. 4K, 6K,
8K is on a rapid technology path.”
Fox Sports has recorded 4K using
a Sony F65 for higher resolution
replays (transmitted HD) during
NFL broadcasts. ESPN has also
acknowledged the enhancement
to production that 4K provides for
today’s HD channels, although
says it has no plans to launch a 4K
branded channel.

3D Linked With 4K

“…We need cheap,
mass-produced
Ultra-HD panels
since they will
drive development
and adoption of
autostereoscopic
screens.

”

Ken Lowe, Vizio

glasses (full HD to both eyes) or
auto-stereoscopic 3D.”
Most auto-stereo display
developers face the same tradeoff between the number of views
emitted by the screen and base
picture resolution. A full HD panel
with nine views results in a picture
with SD resolution. A 4K panel
with nine views is able to achieve
a picture roughly equivalent to HD.
Ken Lowe Founder of US TV
vendor Vizio adds: “We need
cheap, mass-produced UltraHD panels in the market since
they will drive development of
autostereoscopic screens.”
There is however a growing
opinion that autostereo is not the
holy grail for 3D TV’s longevity.
Instead the format’s success has
to be about growing the volume and
quality of content.
Once again 4K and 3D go hand
in hand. It’s no coincidence that the
bulk of 4K content recorded today
is also for 3D screening. That goes
for SPE’s features like ‘The Green
Hornet’ and ‘The Amazing SpiderMan’ to TV docs such as ‘Galapagos
3D’ (Colossus Productions for Sky),
‘Space’ (3net) to a slate of ﬁve 3D
ﬁlms being produced by BBC Earth
and shot on Reds. In tandem with
Cameron Pace Group, the ﬁrst of
these, a CGI and live action mix
‘Walking With Dinosaurs’ is due out
at the end of this year.
Other titles being prepared are
‘Enchanted Kingdom 3D’ set for
release in 2014; ‘Africa 3D: The
Wildest Place on Earth’, ‘Amazing
Bugs! 3D’ and ‘Sharks! Rulers of the
Seas 3D’. Another BBC NHU series,
‘Hidden Kingdom’, is also being shot
in 3D using Red Epics.

The notion that Ultra-HD/4K
is a replacement for 3D is a
fallacy since 3D functionality will
come as standard on all nextgeneration TV sets.
In fact, higher-resolution screens
will not only create a better
stereoscopic viewing experience,
allowing full 1080p HD to reach
both eyes, but are deemed essential
to the viewing quality of glassesfree 3D displays.
Tom Cosgrove, President of 3net,
says: “4K makes 3D look that much
better. 4K will also future-proof our
programming.”
While there are those who believe
4K will sideline 3D because it
offers a more immediate visual
upgrade achieved without the
need for glasses, there are others
who think higher resolution panels
are beneﬁcial to 3DTV. Autostereo
displays could give 3DTV renewed
impetus.
“Broadcasters will need to be
convinced of use cases that support
the need for a
4K service
to the home,”
says Dolby’s
D i re c t o r,
Broadcast
I m a g i n g ,
Roland Vlaicu.
“One such could
be
h i g h e rresolution 3D
using passive BBC NHU's Hidden Kingdom is shot in 3D using Red cameras
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