Japanese telecommunications provider NTT West, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, has begun trials of a 4K-resolution video streaming over the Internet to TV set-top boxes.
Said to be the first-of-its-kind, the trial runs until 14 June 2013 and deploys new H.265 high efficiency video coding (HEVC) standard to transmit compress video from a cloud server and deliver directly to a set top box attached to a 4K TV.
Approved as an international standard by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in January 2013, HEVC was developed to double the compression ratio of current standards.
4K resolution broadcasts are expected to offer four times more resolution compared to the standard 1080p high-definition content.
Compressing technologies enable broadcasters to broadcast content through less data usage without losing the image quality.
Currently, the earlier version of the codec, H.264/MPEG-4, is used to broadcast digital TV, including the UK’s Freeview HD and Sky HD satellite services as well as the bulk of online video clips.
Content from our partners
