Japan’s NTT West to trial 4k streaming to STB
June 12, 2013
Japanese telco NTT West will stream 4k video over the Internet to set-top boxes this week, in what it claims is the world’s first public test of the technology.
NTT will conduct a three-day trial in Tokyo during a digital media seminar from June 12th to June 14th. The telco said it will use the MPEG-HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) standard to send video from a cloud server directly to a STB attached to a standard 4k television.
The test will use H.265/HEVC, the successor to the H.264/MPEG-4 standard in wide use today. HEVC, approved as an international standard in January, was designed to double the compression ratio of existing standards, and covers traditional TV broadcasts as well as Internet streaming. plan for 1GB service now costs ¥4,000 ($40) per month.
NTT West will conduct the test along with NTT SmartConnect, its hosting and streaming subsidiary.