Thursday, September 5, 2013

NHK testing 8K transmissions in

Brazil for 2014 World Cup

Originally published in 3DFocus

It has been reported that NHK will be testing the transmission of Super Hi-Vision World Cup coverage from Brazil to Japan next year

Japan's public service broadcaster (the equivalent of the BBC in the UK and PBS in America) are working with Brazil's TV Globo to test how robust Internet delivery of 8K content can be, in time for next year's World Cup coverage and the 2016 Olympic Games.

According to Advanced Television (via Brazilian newspaper O Globo) the initiative is being backed by Brazil’s National Network of Education & Research (RNP), and uses two parallel high-speed connections to deliver the 7680 x 4320 images.

Yesterday it was reveiled that Saturday’s Premier League match between West Ham and Stoke City was the first-ever live UK event to be broadcast in 4K. BSkyB filmed the match and transmitted it over a Eutelsat satellite to a £25,000 Ultra-HD display at its studio facility in West London.

Mobile is also set to incorporate 4K technology. At this week's IFA show in Berlin, Acer will be showing its forthcoming Liquid S2 smartphone, a 6-inch device capable of recording 4K video.

Click here to watch and listen to Jonathan Tustain interview NHK regarding Super High Definition.

BIOGRAPHY

This is a series of blogs by Barry Sandrew, Ph.D., an internationally recognized inventor, digital imaging expert and visual effects pioneer. Dr. Sandrew is founder of three visual effects facilities that were among the largest and most prolific production studios in Hollywood. Over the past three decades he has been and continues to be instrumental in evolving the entertainment Industry's digital standards and processes in feature filmmaking.

Sandrew earned his doctorate in neuroscience from SUNY at Stony Brook. After winning a 2 year NIH Fellowship at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons, he joined Harvard Medical School/MGH as staff Neuroscientist. In 1987, Sandrew left his academic and scientific career to found American Film Technologies (AFT) where he invented the first all digital process for colorizing black and white feature films.

At AFT he also invented a paperless animation process used to produce episodic animation for Fox Children's TV and a digital ink & paint and compositing pipeline that produced Spielberg's first digital animated feature film, "We're Back: A Dinosaur Story." Sandrew took AFT public while converting hundreds of movies for clients such as Turner, Disney, Warner Bros., Fox, Gaumont, TF1, ABC, and CBS, among many others.

In 1993 Barry Sandrew left American Film Technologies to co-found Lightspan, an animation and production edutainment studio that grew into one of the largest educational software companies in the U.S., marketing into entire school districts around the country. Lightspan ultimately went public and was later acquired by Plato Learning.

In 2000, Sandrew founded Legend Films, re-inventing colorization and a proprietary film restoration process using the latest in digital imaging technology. Over the course of the next 7 years, Legend Films converted to color approximately 145 black & white films as well as several TV series. Legend Films also produced visual effects for Scorsese's "The Aviator", HBO's "Entourage" and other high profile TV and film projects.

In 2007, with Jim Cameron's game changing "Avatar 3D" scheduled for a 2009 release, Sandrew leveraged his proprietary colorization pipeline, redirecting his company's entire R&D focus to embrace 2D-to-3D conversion and changing the company's name to Legend3D. Since 2010, Legend3D has lead the competitive field, producing 3D conversion and visual effects on over 35 of the highest performing box office tentpole films of the past 6 years.

In 2014, Dr. Barry Sandrew left Legend3D to focus on new immersive and web based media technologies as well his non-profit and for-profit board positions. He is consultant to Fortune 500 companies re: mobile 3D-sensing and motion tracking technology that he considers precursors to augmented reality. Most recently, he is Co-Founder and President/CEO of Graffiti Video, Inc. a company that is redefining the curation of web based media.