Japan has tested broadcasting 4K streaming programs. 4K TVs are starting to appear in stores, but the 4K may not really take off in public until TV shows are available in 4K. For now, the 4K contents are very rare. Sony has announced this summer a Media Player 4K FMP-X1 containing 10 hits Hollywood 4K preinstalled and a service this fall to rent or buy movies via internet 4K Video Unlimited. Sony also announced that his future PS4 would be able to read HEVC/H.265 videos. Yet the consumer electronics manufacturers have not started to offer 4K TV models so for and even after the announcements of last year. The proposed Sony 84-inch 4K TV price is set at $ 25,000 and the prices seem to go down a little more realistic levels.
Whatever (digital satellite, terrestrial, cable, or via the Internet by IP) be the broadcasting system, the bandwidth is a major problem with ultra-high resolution images with a resolution 4K or even 8K (7680 x 4320 pixels). Just to 4K, with a four times greater than high definition "standard" size, current technologies encoding are no longer valid. Five minutes 8K uncompressed video can occupy 1TB of storage space. At the beginning of the year, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has approved the MPEG-H HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), also known under the name of H.265. It offers more effective than the current four times H.264 compression, reducing bandwidth by half without degrading the image more than that does in MPEG-2 H.264 system.
The TV channels around the world seem to look more and more like a business model that would see the broadcasts through the Net instead, or in addition, a radio broadcast. The current flows internet connections are unable to display 4K video in real time. But streaming solutions of these programs are being put in place.
Telco Japanese leading company conducted tests on 4K video streams streamed via the Internet, using an encoding HEVC/H.265 end to end. The set-top box to the user unpacks the videos before posting them on a 4K TV. Japan also announced it would be the first country to offer 4K satellite images in 2014 for the World Cup football.
Another piece in the puzzle of the dissemination of high definition TV programs that is taking place gradually, NHK, very present on the front of the high definition 4K or 8K, Japan called Super Hi-Vision, presented an 8K encoder developed with Mitsubishi. It uses a parallel architecture to achieve compress images quickly enough. It divides each frame into 17 bands of 7680 x 256 pixels to compress more efficiently. The area at the juncture of two bands is used by both (they share information-speed and direction-for animated objects) to avoid image degradation in border areas. The decoder works in real time at 60 Hz. The two companies are working on a new faster version, 120 Hz, the rate of the "Super Hi-Vision" Japanese. Japan in July 2014 begin broadcasting NHK 4K, and from 2016 to 8K. At first, the broadcast will take place via satellite. The side of the portable terminal as the HVEC/H.265 codec begins to point the tip of his nose. Earlier this year, NTT Docomo announced a HEVC software solution for its Android Smartphones. The CPU of Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 also decompresses video H.265. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is capable of displaying HEVC/H.265 videos.
