Tony Neal
July 26th, 2012, 04:57 PM
The BBC in association with NHK are trialing Super Hi Vision (8K UHDTV) at the London Olympics, and as an introduction to the new format, are running public screenings at BBC Broadcasting House in London.
BBC - BBC Internet Blog: Super Hi Vision TV Screenings (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/07/super_hi_vision_ultra_hd.html)
I was lucky enough to get to see a screening yesterday (25th) of a series of demo recordings, some made by NHK in Tokyo and in the USA, and some recorded by the BBC in London two weeks ago.
The demo was full 8K at 120Hz projected on to a screen that I guess was about equivalent in size and resolution to a 4x4 array of 55" LCD TVs, backed up with a full 22.1 surround sound system - the sound and image quality was phenomenal.
I can only compare it to IMAX (film, not digital!), but without the jitter, flicker and grain of film. The images were absolutely rock steady, and detailed enough to see distant faces in the crowd watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, and at 120Hz the faces of joggers passing by in the foreground in the shots of Tower Bridge were only marginally smeared.
I was sitting in the third row back, much closer than I would sit for a movie, and the screen filled most of my field of view, but even that close I could not see the pixel structure of the image. Rather than just sitting motionless and watching the screen as you would in a movie, I found myself moving my head from side to side, as if looking through a huge window, picking up on all of the incredibly fine detail in the images.
Close-up shots of Tokyo carnival floats were almost shockingly vivid and colourful, and low-light shots of the crowds showed the only signs of noise that I noticed during the whole demo. I looked for compression artifacts but noticed none at all - incredible considering the huge volumes of data the system is processing.
Shots of the last Shutlle lift-off were sensational and felt totally 'real', reinforced by the power of the 22.1 surround sound reproducing the crackling and popping of the rocket exhaust echoing around the launch site.
Super Hi-vision is not like cinema and its not like 2k HDTV - its just incredibly good at sustaining an illusion of reality and an ideal way of recording big events such as the Olympics, If you can get to see a demo you won't be disappointed.
BBC - BBC Internet Blog: Super Hi Vision TV Screenings (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/07/super_hi_vision_ultra_hd.html)
I was lucky enough to get to see a screening yesterday (25th) of a series of demo recordings, some made by NHK in Tokyo and in the USA, and some recorded by the BBC in London two weeks ago.
The demo was full 8K at 120Hz projected on to a screen that I guess was about equivalent in size and resolution to a 4x4 array of 55" LCD TVs, backed up with a full 22.1 surround sound system - the sound and image quality was phenomenal.
I can only compare it to IMAX (film, not digital!), but without the jitter, flicker and grain of film. The images were absolutely rock steady, and detailed enough to see distant faces in the crowd watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, and at 120Hz the faces of joggers passing by in the foreground in the shots of Tower Bridge were only marginally smeared.
I was sitting in the third row back, much closer than I would sit for a movie, and the screen filled most of my field of view, but even that close I could not see the pixel structure of the image. Rather than just sitting motionless and watching the screen as you would in a movie, I found myself moving my head from side to side, as if looking through a huge window, picking up on all of the incredibly fine detail in the images.
Close-up shots of Tokyo carnival floats were almost shockingly vivid and colourful, and low-light shots of the crowds showed the only signs of noise that I noticed during the whole demo. I looked for compression artifacts but noticed none at all - incredible considering the huge volumes of data the system is processing.
Shots of the last Shutlle lift-off were sensational and felt totally 'real', reinforced by the power of the 22.1 surround sound reproducing the crackling and popping of the rocket exhaust echoing around the launch site.
Super Hi-vision is not like cinema and its not like 2k HDTV - its just incredibly good at sustaining an illusion of reality and an ideal way of recording big events such as the Olympics, If you can get to see a demo you won't be disappointed.