Fautier: “UHD still an industry in formation”
November 27, 2023
By Chris Forrester
Thierry Fautier, previously in a senior VP position with Harmonic and now MD at Your Media Transformation, has blogged one of his ‘long form insights’ about the recent UHD Forum and Summit in Malaga, Spain.
Fautier says that the UHD event in Malaga is partly responsible for Spain’s enthusiasm for UHD. “Spain was the first country to launch a DVB UHD service in 2022, with a great coordination from the Ultra HD Forum Spain, for which I have pushed for the creation, based on the French and Italian models.”
He adds that even 8K is being discussed and with a consensus that 8K is a future-proof format to archive content but for the time being distribution will be 4K “which does not prevent up-converting to 8K done by the TV set.”
Fautier said that it was likely that China would be looking for 8K at next year’s Paris Olympic Games “and possibly Brazil’s TV Globo”. For the rest of the planet Olympic Broadcast Services will capture 100 per cent of the Games in 4K. Globo would be introducing its TV 3.0 system in 2025 and will be “the most advanced in the world”.
He said that currently EU regulations that forbid electrical consumption to not exceed that of today’s 4K displays is a problem for 8K adoption.
Fautier predicts that Spain’s enthusiastic adoption of 4K will resonate with consumers. He quoted Spain’s public broadcaster which said that the migration to broadcast 4K would have a greater impact than IP delivery and that once consumers had experienced 4K they would not go back to HD.
“In summary, UHD after more than 7 years in service, is still an industry in formation, some significant progress has been made since, and we now see after an ATSC 3.0 start, DVB taking the UHD train with Spain and France, closely followed by Brazil and Japan who will take a radically new approach,” he stated.