Intelsat (News - Alert) recently announced that it will be demonstrating a 4K Ultra High Definition Television (4K UHDTV) video transmission via satellite at the IBC2013. The company will be collaborating with partners, BT Group (News - Alert), Ericsson, Sony, and Newtec, to deliver a multi-camera production of a sports event in 4K UHDTV, which will be transmitted live.

In a statement, Peter Ostapiuk, Intelsat’s vice president of media product management said, “4K UHDTV video programming represents an opportunity for our programmer customers to offer compelling, differentiated content to viewers around the world. The powerful Intelsat 1W satellite is uniquely positioned to bring such attractive content to the millions of cable and DTH viewers served by our leading European video neighborhood. Intelsat’s demonstration of this technology emphasizes that satellite is, and will continue to be, a critical part of the global media distribution infrastructure, and underscores the importance of having a fully integrated terrestrial network such as IntelsatOne.”

A premier league rugby match in London will be captured by BT with three 4K UHDTV Sony cameras and mixers. Encoding and decoding of the four 3G-SDI feeds will be carried out in real time with Ericsson (News - Alert) AVP 2000 Contribution Encoders and RX8200 Advanced Modular Receivers, which have been designed to support 4K UHDTV operations.  

Dr. Giles Wilson, head of TV compression, Ericsson said, “We are excited to contribute our compression technology to this ground-breaking live demonstration of 4K UHDTV video contribution at IBC2013. Compression solutions will be a critical enabler in the roll-out of 4K UHDTV services, helping to simplify the processes of content acquisition, exchange and distribution necessary to allow operators to deliver the highest possible video quality from remote, live events. Such demonstrations show we can already enable a truly immersive TV experience on today’s large sets, including such requirements as p60 frame rates and 4:2:2, 10-bit resolutions.”

Once the signal has gone through the encoding process, it will be transmitted as a 100 Mbps video by the outside broadcast unit of BT over the company’s Global Media Network to Intelsat. The transmission will be carried out via the Intelsat point of presence at BT Telehouse in West London. This signal will then be delivered via the IntelsatOne terrestrial network to its teleport in Germany and ultimately uplinked to Intelsat 1W via Newtec (News - Alert) equipment.