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The Olympic Games have been a testbed for 8K broadcasting since London in 2012, with a new project to showcase ultra resolution from Paris.
The baton has now passed from Japanese broadcaster NHK to chip-maker Intel, which will use the occasion to demonstrate how 8K can be streamed live over the internet.
To be clear, this is a tech demo only, with a select number of events being captured natively in the format and distributed to a handful of rights holders, presumably with demo rooms set up with 8K TVs.
What’s Different From the Beijing Olympics Test?
What’s new is that the test, organized by Olympic Broadcasting Services and Intel, will aim to show how live 8K signals can be compressed using Versatile Video Coding (VVC) / H.266 and sent with minimal latency over the internet to screens on the other side of the world (or the US).
“Our goal at the Olympic Games Paris 2024 is a step closer toward making 8K mainstream, and to deliver live 8K streaming using advanced h.266/VVC encoding technologies that reach the highest quality at the lowest bitrate possible around the globe,” explained Intel’s 8K lead Ravindra Velhal.
The demonstration of an end-to-end 8K VVC livestreaming experience “provides a pathway for the future of low-latency, broadcast-grade 8K livestreaming over the internet.”
How They’re Broadcasting an 8K Olympic (Test)
The nuts and bolts of this tech demo are as follows:
“Broadcast-grade cameras” in select Games venues in Paris capture live content in 8K at 60 frames per second in HDR at 48 Gbps bitrate mixed with 32 audio channels.
A purpose-built “broadcast in a box” encoder powered by Intel Xeon CPUs processes that raw content in less than 400 milliseconds and distributes it across the internet “within seconds.”
At the other end, more Intel gear is required to decode the signals content “in real time,” before displaying the video on an 8K TV.
Velhal explained that technologies in Intel Xeon CPUs “analyze each scene, frame by frame” and that its algorithms have been trained to process fast-moving data “without compromising on latency and quality.”
The overall latency from camera to TV “is just a few seconds, a figure unachievable in the past,” he added.
“Together with our industry and technology partners, we are solving the world’s biggest distribution roadblock that stands in the way of 8K live broadcasts. Paris 2024 proves that the future of low-latency, high-definition 8K livestreaming is here.”
Understanding Audience Demand
It’s worth noting that, while OBS is producing its world feed coverage in UHD 4K HDR, there’s been a retrenchment of that higher resolution among sports broadcasters worldwide. The complexity of UHD production and the cost of transporting higher bitrates is not considered a viable trade off when paired with consumer demand.
UEFA, for instance, only broadcast the recent major soccer competition European Championships in HD 1080 HDR. There is a lack of demand for 4K UHD among world broadcasters, the majority of whom have not upgraded their infrastructure from HD. HD plus high dynamic range is considered by many to yield the best bang for buck picture quality especially when there is no appetite among consumers to pay a premium for 4K pictures.
Intel may be looking toward streamers like Netflix, Amazon and Apple who are increasingly involved in live sports broadcast and who may see a key differentiator which that can commercialize in a high frame rate 8K live streamed content.
Intel has previously worked with OBS at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 to produce a claimed world first 8K virtual reality feed — but the market dial has not moved on this format either.
In a Paris Olympics preview at NAB Show in April, Yiannis Exarchos, the CEO of OBS, said that its rights-holding broadcasters would in total broadcast more than half a million hours of content from the Games. (You can watch the full video below or read on for highlights.)
“Hopefully this will result in more or less half the earth’s population experiencing the Games,” he said. “This describes a little bit of the value that the Olympics still has a huge aggregator of audience. In a world of such incredible segmentation of audiences, the Games brings people together.”
But this can no longer be done on the back of traditional ways of working of producing and telling stories, Exarchos emphasized. “The achievement of these incredible athlete’s stories is emotional but the way you have to do [tell these stories] and the way this content is consumed are very, very different.”
He continued, “Of course, you still have a very big number of people who consume the Olympics in quite traditional ways. But if we talk about younger generations and the proliferation of digital media you have to look at it in a different way. This is why we are having to produce so much.”
In order to feed “the insatiable beast of digital” Exarchos described needing to produce a very high level high quality production for traditional television, but also tons of content for digital for social.
“So the Olympics is a big problem of scaling. A few years ago, [we made] a fundamental strategic decision to exploit as much as possible the opportunities that IP technology was bringing.
“This signaled our strategic transition from relying mostly on traditional broadcast technology into exploring the possibilities of IP. So today, we arrive at the point where actually software-defined broadcasting is a reality in Paris. We will produce [certain] sports without using traditional broadcast equipment and with software and off-the-shelf hardware.”
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