Have just noticed Samsung TV plus, not bad for a freebie
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This started a few months ago and it’s expanding its line up quit fast. Will be interesting to see how big the line up gets.
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Any chance for DVB-T test transmission for 4K: an excitement for free-to-air broadcasters ABC, SBS and Nine to get 4K as part of digital TV rollout in the next Federal Budget this year.
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No.
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If ever there was going to be 4k for FTA, it would be for the Tokyo Olympics. Instead they sold it to Optus? lol
4k will never see the light of day on terrestrial tv.
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I wouldn’t say NEVER.
But only if we move to DVB-T2 and H.265 codecs.
And then only a chance of it happening.
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US centric view of why few sports are in 4k
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They need to do something to catch up with UHD/4K media. Currently watching 9’s HD channel and Grease is on… it looks like barely upscaled SD quality. Coming from someone that’s recently sampled the bluray version and also the official 4K UHD disc. It’s sad seeing what the digital quality “could” be. But networks don’t want to spend the money for better quality broadcast transmissions.
A 4K version of the FTA channels would be an obvious value add for part of Stan/Paramount+ and whenever Seven bother…
Media release:
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I think it’s both a bit rate and a codec limitation… since 9’s HD channel only runs at around 4-5 Mbps, and a 4K Blu-Ray disc (assuming dual layer = 50 GB) for Grease (at 110 minutes) equates to approx 7.5 Mbps.
Given how slow networks are to roll out MPEG-4 (H.264) / HD, I tremble to think how long it’ll take for DVB-T2 / H.265 (MPEG-H) to become the norm.
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The 2026 World Cup which is held by SBS could see 4K free-to-air broadcast on linear and streaming.
I remember the 2010 World Cup was in 3D
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Unless they can get the “spare” channel eg VHF-10 as a temporary channel just for 1 x 4K stream, that’s about the only way I can see it happening
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By then, more likely SBS On Demand will have a 4K on-line live stream, not linear broadcast.
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I’d expect streaming but linear will be in normal HD
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Do free-to-air services have enough power to broadcast their main channels in 4K at all? I would love to see FTA sports in 4K. Saves those who want sport in 4K some money.
To broadcast 4K a network would have to change to a different broadcast format DVB-T2 that a lot of TVs could not receive and it could only broadcast basically one channel - no multis.
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Ah right. What about on-demand services like 7+? I heard BBC is trialing a 4K service on iPlayer.
DVB-T2 fits 2 4K channels. But the only country that currently actually has 4K in terrestrail TV is France (presumably because of the Olympics).
Most countries, that I know of, who did switch to DVB-T2 with HEVC codec only stayed at 1080p. That way they can run up to 8 HD channels in 1080p per mux.
They could, yes. But 4K needs a lot more data so the broadcaster would need to invest in more server infrastructure … especially for live events (not to mention the fact people need fast enough internet to acces 4K as well).
The BBC isn’t just trialing 4K on iPlayer anymore, they now got quite some content available: What programmes can I watch in Ultra HD? | iPlayer help
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