Foxtel 4K

Television Subscription and International
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The curtain goes up on Foxtel in 4K

  • Sunday’s Bathurst 1000 Great Race leads the 4K charge
  • 4K brings 4x the resolution of HD to Bathurst, live sport and more
  • Foxtel’s Cricket in 4K on deck to arrive in November

Foxtel will mark another major milestone in Australian TV history this weekend when it brings live coverage of Sunday’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 Great Race across the finish line in 4K ultra high definition. The launch gives fans used to seeing the race in HD 4x the reasons to be excited when the 4K footage hits their screens.

The highly anticipated arrival of Foxtel in 4K for this weekend’s race will see history made on two fronts with the launch of Australia’s first ever dedicated 4K channel and the first ever 4K broadcast of the iconic race at Mt. Panorama.

The 4K action kicks off on Foxtel’s newly launched 4K channel 444 on Sunday, October 7 with a replay of the Top Ten Shootout, followed by a live broadcast of Sunday’s main event, both in 4K and, for the first time ever, with no ad breaks during racing.

Patrick Delany, Foxtel CEO, said, “The engines are revving and wait is over - this weekend Foxtel in 4K will immerse racing fans in an incredible pit-side experience as the colour and spectacle of Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 roars to life and leaps into living rooms across Australia like you’ve never seen it before.

“This history making step in Australian broadcasting is just one of a host of new innovations that Foxtel is launching that set the gold standard for in-home entertainment, and even more are on the way with new announcements coming every month.”

Following the Great Race, Foxtel’s 4K channel will continue to bring subscribers a host of 4K content including The Rolling Stones: Havana Moon , documenting the classic rock band’s historic concert in Havana, Cuba; The Big Wave Project , Tim Bonython’s award-winning masterpiece on the art of big wave riding; the musical genius of Pharrell Williams: Live from Hyde Park , nature documentaries, Spy in the Wild , Planet Earth II , and Deadly Australians .

Over the next 12 months, Foxtel’s selection of unique 4K content will continue to grow, including the Australian 4K debut of live Cricket, which kicks off with the November 4, Australia v South Africa, as part of the Gillette One Day International (ODI) Series followed by every Australian men’s international ODIs and T20 matches plus every men’s Australian Test match on home soil along with a selection of BBL matches.

Foxtel’s new, dedicated, 4K live channel comes as extra value being part of a Foxtel Platinum HD or Foxtel Sports HD subscription for customers with an iQ4.

Foxtel customers can learn more at foxtel.com.au/4K.

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The 4K channel has now appeared on Foxtel online TV guide. In the first week there will be new programming generally between 4pm and midnight AEDT, with other hours filled with repeats of programs from previous night.

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All Australian television premieres?

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I think the music specials are Australian premieres. The documentaries like those from David Attenborough’s BBC nature collection have aired on Nine and Foxtel before.

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Channel 444 doing a live test now!

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picked up a 50 inch phillips 4K tv today.

spent an hour trying to figure out why it was not showing 444 in 4K - i changed HDMI Ports, messed with the settings and everything. than it hit me to check the foxtel box and it was set to output at 1080p. i changed that and there was no issues

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Any screenshots of 444 today with Bathurst on?

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i don’t have the equipment for screenshots - the best i’d do is a iphone photo of the screen.

it looks good though. there are some minor niggles - at one point larko was talking about brakes in a split screen and the 4K viewers didn’t get the split whereas 506 did

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interesting that there appears to be a second feed being produced then. You’d think the host broadcast would be in 4K and then down-scaled for 506 and Ten. Perhaps the trucks can’t downscale two 4K camera feeds for a split screen yet.

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Apologies for the shit image quality, I’m at Bathurst and they have this display for Foxtel 4K here. I think you can make out the watermark. Feeds look identical to the standard one being circulated around the racetrack.

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…streamable links don’t appear to be working properly in the forum software so you’ll need to do a bit of copy pasting to get the video recording working

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Yeah, you can tell there’s quite a bit of detail in the graphics up close…but this setup they have with glare everywhere in an outdoor setting is far from ideal.

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interesting that the pre-recorded stuff i’ve seen on this channel is not watermarked

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I wonder if no watermark means the stream is all pre-encoded. The advantage of pre-encoding means they can do a 2-pass encode and allow high quality at lower bit-rates.

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It probably isn’t pre-encoded and doesn’t need to be with such a high bitrate. The non-sport content probably gets played directly off a server at Foxtel and they haven’t bothered with a UHD bug generator. It doesn’t have commercials so doesn’t need a presentation suite. I’m guessing the sport content comes from Fox Sports who need to add commercial content so they have a presentation suite and Foxtel cuts the feed over.

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My grandparents have a iQ4K with the Entertainment and Sport packs (when they actually ordered a iQ3) for their standard HD TV, and they were confused at first. They thought you needed to get the other packs to get all the content when you only needed the Entertainment pack. I reminded them the truth when i last slept over in their house, and they understood me.

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What bitrate are they running? Also does anyone know if it is H.264 or H.265?

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25Mbs HEVC

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//www.broadcastnow.co.uk/tech/gearhouse-captures-live-4k-supercar-race-in-oz/5133464.article

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So all replays were upconverted HD, hmmm