Advanced Television

Japan commits to Ultra-HD

August 27, 2014

By Chris Forrester

Japan is about to announce a major commitment towards 4K broadcasting. It already has a 4K ‘best of 4K’ channel on air (which went live on June 2nd) under the auspices of Japan’s ‘NexTV-Forum’ and representing all of Japan’s broadcasters both public and private.

Next week will see Japan’s broadcasting authorities announce their latest roadmap towards full 8K broadcasting, which calls for three 4K channels to be on air in 2016, as well as one 8K ‘Super Hi-Vision’ channel on satellite.

But that’s just the start. By 2018, the roadmap calls for Japan’s public broadcaster to have its own dedicated 4K channel as well as five commercial broadcasters to be transmitting a 4K channel.

Moreover, the technical specification calls for the highest resolution, including wider colour gamut, dynamic range as well as high frame rates. Each of these will help guarantee the ‘Wow’ factor needed to persuade viewers to buy into the new broadcasting standard.

NHK’s engineers and technicians will be showcasing their latest developments at IBC (September 12th-16th) while the NexTV-Forum and NHK will be screening some of its 4K programming at MIPCOM (October 13th-16th) as part of a special MIPCOM focus on 4K/Ultra-HDTV.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Policy, Regulation, Standards, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K