Advanced Television

BBC to offer UHD via iPlayer

October 24, 2016

By Chris Forrester

Last week the BBC’s Mike Gunton (Creative Director/BBC Natural History Unit) and Andy King (its outgoing Head of Technology/Television Productions), speaking to advanced-television.com at the MIPCOM programming market, said that the BBC was now working hard to get its Ultra-HD productions out to the consumer.

King said that high-profile shows, such as the upcoming Planet Earth II series, were increasingly being produced in High Dynamic Range (HDR), helped by the various standards bodies having agreed their specification for HDR.  HDR is widely agreed to deliver the ‘Wow’ factor needed to further differentiate 4K production over ‘ordinary’ HDTV.

King said: “What we now need to work on is how we are going to get [these shows] to the viewer. Obviously, as an organisation we are committed to delivery on every platform. But Digital Terrestrial is going to be very difficult. However, we are very much strategically taking an ‘Internet first’ approach.  So we see our first offerings with UHD/HDR, and HDR is very important, to be on the iPlayer platform. [We also need] to take a look at sound. We have moved to 5.1 but I’d really like to see some serious developments in Object Based Audio. As an industry we need not to forget the sound stuff!”

The full interview can be seen here

 

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, Catch Up, DTT/DSO, FTA, OTT, OTT, Production, UHD, Ultra-HD/4K, VOD