Intelsat, BT, Ericsson, Newtec and Sony Unite for 4K Demonstration

A Sony 4K TV at CES. Photo: John.Karakatsanis

[Via Satellite 04-08-2014] Intelsat and partners BT, Ericsson, Sony and Newtec are displaying a new 4K Ultra-HD television, which is transmitting end-to-end over satellite to the 2014 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. The presentation is intended to demonstrate preparedness of satellite for 4K Ultra-HD TV commercialization.

The transmission consists of live sports programming captured using Sony 4K equipment. Replayed images are encoded by Ericsson equipment capable of encoding the four 3G-Serial Digital Interface (SDI) feeds in real time. After encoding, the signal is transmitted as a 100 Mbps video stream from the BT Tower in London to Intelsat, carried on the IntelsatOneSM network to the teleport in Riverside, California, and from there uplinked to the Galaxy 17 neighborhood.

The Ultra-HD TV displays at 60 frames per second, 10 bit-color depth and 4:2:2 video compression.