SES will be broadcasting an 8K television signal via its satellite system for the first time during the annual SES Industry Days event, held in Luxembourg on the 23rd and 24th of May. Using the new DVB-S2X standard, the transmission will be carried out on a single 36 MHz transponder on Astra3B.
With a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels, the video will be encoded in HEVC and transmitted at a rate of 80Mbps, four times higher than that of an Ultra HD signal. In addition, the test transmission will use a native IP formatted signal, providing some insights into the requirements of a future All-IP broadcast infrastructure for television.
For this demonstration, SES has partnered with Spin Digital, which developed a software solution to decode and play 8K HEVC signals in real-time and also encoded the content using its HEVC encoder. In addition, SES teamed up with Sharp, which is providing 8K screens for the test.
The content, with a frame rate of 60fps and 10-bit colour depth, features native 8K camera footage provided by Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre and an 8K animation provided by Unigine Corp.
