4K UHD Content from Sky

Scubbie · 30 Jul 2016 at 18:10

In case you missed it already, Sky will be launching their 4K UHD service from 13th August.

The latest update from Sky for the Sky Q Silver added support for 4K and many of you have already been playing with the settings.

Well don't stop there!

Starting next week Sky will be pushing even more on this and encouraging people to start changing the settings of their Sky Silver boxes for their 4K TVs.

So that you can see what it will be like, they'll also be releasing some 4K content early via the On Demand content!!!!!

5th August around Midday (Movies and Entertainment)

Big Cats
Forest Gump
Pixels

6th August 5pm Sky Sports

International Champions Cup - Liverpool vs BarcelonaSo please get playing!!

Scubbie · 31 Jul 2016 at 13:23

Hi folks,

My understanding is that it will be proper 4K UHD content, not HD or SD upscaled to 4K.

The stated aim is to give people an opportunity to set up their TVs and Sky Q boxes prior to the full launch and give everyone an opportunity to see what the quality will be like.

I doubt that they will want to upscale the contentfor such a demonstration, but I guess you'll find out on Friday.

Scubbie · 31 Jul 2016 at 21:03

From my understanding the F1 coverage shown by Sky UK is handled by one team that provides content to Sky Italy & Sky Germany/Austria. They will be providing 4K content next year. I'm unsure if they'll be providing it sooner.

As for the films, to the best of my knowledge all the films released in the cinemas now are available in 4K. Whether the source sent to Sky is the same or HD I don't know, but that would be a rather pointless exercise IMHO. It would make more sense for Sky to be provided with 4K content for their 4K broadcasts.

Sky Sports will be providing a lot of live footie coverage in 4K. I believe that this will be captured with 4K cameras.

Sadly 3D isn't as popular as many would have liked. Many of the manufacturers now have stopped producing 3D TVs and their 4K TVs now don't have 3D. Such a shame, but there you go.

Is there a source available in 3D 4K? Well once more that is what is shown in many cinemas now, so yes it does exist. Sadly we're just not going to get it on the TVs.

Scubbie · 31 Jul 2016 at 21:28

deuse said:
FOM and the FIA are in charge of the race video and sound. They only do 1080p and below.
You won't see F1 in UHD anytime soon. And why sky is going to upscale it is beyond me.

Sure the current feed from F1 races is in 1080i, but I've just gone back to the press information made back in March about this.

The is nothing stating that the footage will be upscaled or full 4K.

It launches with the 2017 season.

Scubbie · 31 Jul 2016 at 21:45

spoffle said:
It'll be UHD, as proper 4K is 4096x2160 and isn't 16:9.

Quote from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_television#Resolution

Resolution

Two resolutions are defined as UHDTV:

4K UHDTV (2160p) is 3840 pixels wide by 2160 pixels tall (8.29 megapixels), which is four times as many pixels as 1920x1080 (2.07 megapixels).

8K UHDTV (4320p) is 7680 pixels wide by 4320 pixels tall (33.18 megapixels), which is sixteen times as many pixels and four times the spatial resolution of current 1080p HDTV, which brings it closer to the detail level of 15/70 mm IMAX. NHK advocates the 8K UHDTV format with 22.2 surround sound as Super Hi-Vision.

The suffix "p" in 2160p and 4320p stands for progressive scan or non-interlaced.

From reading that I would expect any material from the states arriving in 2160p to be 3840x2160 for 4K broadcasts. I could be wrong, but I'd be surprised if they were making it so differently.

deuse said:
Sky will do what any UHD TV can already do. Upscale it. Pointless.

But if you want F1 in UHD give Bernie a few million

Well that's the deal which they've signed up to. I guess that yo'd best go have a word with the boffins at Sky on this as they've obviously made a press release which is false if you are so sure that BE won't have 4K cameras available from next season.

Scubbie · 1 Aug 2016 at 13:39

deuse said:
I've got amazon prime so my UHD is covered there and I watch a film or two and BT sports.
But as for normal tv...no I can't stand it.

edit=I don't follow football any more as they are a bunch of drama queens

Whilst I may agree with you regarding footballers, Sky does offer a range of products that many people are happy with.

Sadly the days when you simply paid a single TV license fee and that was enough are long gone.

Ultimately everyone now has a choice. Sure some products cost more than others, but we each need to decide what interests us and if we are prepared to pay the fees asked by the relevant providers.

As for the various comments in this thread about different standards and what kind of download speeds will be required, well that is a small part that people will be finding out from this Friday.

Sky's CUTV / OD content has always worked on a download enough before you can start watching it basis. This means that even if you have a 2MB connection, you'll be able to download something. However it would be better to have a faster connection so that you can download more of the content sooner.

Of course it may not be beneficial to have a 80/20 connection. Sky has always limited the download speed of any of it's content so you can't download the whole film pretty much instantly.

As for the size, once more this will become clear from Friday. However you'll soon be glad of have the 2TB drives and wishing that Sky would supply 10TB models.

Scubbie · 1 Aug 2016 at 19:56

MarkeR said:
In reply to the above. Using my 76/19 fibre connection any UHD movie from on demand was available within 30 seconds or so to watch.

Yes, that is how Sky's CUTV & OD services work.

However if you look you'll see that the STB is still downloading the content. On a slower connection you may have to wait a little longer for the content to be playable.

The point at which something is allowed to be watched is calculated so that the download will finish before you reach the place where the download is happening.

When it comes to 4K content the size of the file could be around 15-20GB or as much as 40GB. This is considerably larger that say 3.5GB for a film.

Scubbie · 1 Aug 2016 at 21:34

No problem @MarkeR. Some people don't know how it works so I was clarifying the answer just in case.

In fairness even a 20mb connection will cope with a HD download quite easily as once more Sky only needs enough for you to start watching without catching up.

Scubbie · 1 Aug 2016 at 23:11

MarkeR said:
Sorry scubbie, I came across a bit, we'll call it grumpy ...

Apologies.

No problem

Scubbie · 5 Aug 2016 at 12:07

Reports are coming in that Big Cats, Forest Gump and Pixels are all now available to watch in UHD.

I understand that in some cases Forest Gump & Pixels are available even if you don't subscribe to Sky Cinema! So if you have a 4K TV and Sky Q Silver, do give these downloads a try and ensure that your Q Box and TV are all set up correctly.