Sky and BT 4k

Amp34 · 2 Feb 2015 at 21:05

http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/02/bt-sky-4k-set-top-boxes/

It's no secret that BT is after Sky's sports broadcasting crown -- it's already taken away Sky's access to Champions League coverage and will soon go toe-to-toe with its rival again to spend big on more live Premier League matches. While it isn't quite as dominant as its rival in terms of customers, Sky deems BT a credible enough threat that it will reportedly bring forward the launch of its new 4K set-top box to ensure it doesn't lose subscribers when those major European football broadcasts vanish.

That's according to The Telegraph, which says the broadcaster will debut a new internet-connected 4K set-top box in the Spring. It's meant to be capable of sharing streams to smartphones and tablets, allowing access to recorded programmes while a user in on the move -- similar to EE's new TV hardware.

Sky's new box could be the final incarnation of a project known internally as "Project Ethan." Reports of the project first popped up in April last year, which detailed new Sky hardware that can output 4K broadcasts and store recorded programmes in the cloud. It was meant to debut in 2016, but the rise of BT and increased competition from Virgin may have forced it to launch earlier than originally planned.

BT won't let Sky have it all its own way, however; the company is also said to be readying a new 4K-ready box, which could launch "within months." The Telegraph says BT will kick off trials of its new ultra high-definition streaming service in May, ensuring it's ready in time to broadcast its Champions League coverage in the autumn.

Looks like 4k will start to get a lot more content, even if it is just sport at the moment.

Amp34 · 3 Feb 2015 at 08:39

The point is that 4k TVs will only get more popular with more content. I'm not interested in sport (and won't be getting either of these boxes as I don't watch live TV but it does mean there is yet another way to get 4k content to your TV. My next TV is going to be 4k and I'm sure many others will be thinking the same.

Amp34 · 6 Feb 2015 at 19:12

S2KIP said:
It will be upscaled 1080 along with low bitrate 4k to please the masses. The retailers will love this.

I'll be keeping my 1080p OLED screen for some time.

I'm aiming for a 4k OLED set. With the price of OLED sets coming down massively it should be reasonable in the next year or so.

I'm certainly not going to be getting a standard LCD screen if I can help it...

Alternatively I'll look at projectors, but any good 4k one is close to 5 figures, so they will have to come down significantly for that!

Amp34 · 6 Feb 2015 at 19:14

lude1962 said:
distilled from wiki

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a video compression standard, a successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding),..
...The Main 10 profile was added at the October 2012 HEVC meeting based on proposal JCTVC-K0109 which proposed that a 10-bit profile be added to HEVC for consumer applications.[86] The proposal stated that this was to allow for improved video quality and to support the Rec. 2020 color space that will be used by UHDTV.[86] A variety of companies supported the proposal which included ATEME, BBC, BSkyB, CISCO, DirecTV, Ericsson, Motorola Mobility, NGCodec, NHK, RAI, ST, SVT, Thomson Video Networks, Technicolor, and ViXS Systems...

Max bit rate for Main
and Main 10 profiles (kbit/s)
25,000 100,000 4,096×2,[email protected]

So the way I read it thats with max compression, so you'll need a min of 25Mbit/sec
And only 30fps.
Wonder how BT's IP backbone is going to handle it if everyone signs up at once.

I presume this will either come with the Infinity 2 bundle (72Mb/s) or the bundle will come with the subscription for this. I'm sure they must have plenty of redundancy on that system considering it's pretty damn new!