Football fans will be able to watch England’s World Cup disappointments in full 4K resolution and high dynamic range colour glory, thanks to a trial on the BBC’s iPlayer.
The only kicker is folk will need to have at least 40Mbps – something Auntie itself has admitted is accessible to a minority.
All 29 of BBC One’s World Cup matches are scheduled to be made available in 4K and HDR. But each match will be limited to “tens of thousands of people”, said the BBC.
“To enjoy the optimum experience, the BBC says audiences will need a 40 megabit per second (Mbps) internet connection – which is faster than that to which most households have access,” it said.
Just 23 per cent of households in Blighty had taken up 40Mbps in the first three months of this year, according to one million broadband speed tests submitted to comparison site Think Broadband.
Ofcom has said 13.9 million premises have access to speeds of up to 100Mbps, although many have failed to upgrade their packages.
The lucky few will be able to gawp at images of 22 blokes passing around a ball with four times as many pixels as a 1080p high definition picture.
Apparently that will depict otherwise obscured details such as the notes written on a yellow or red card, or the time on a referee’s watch (and presumably sharper images of the individual teardrops rolling down the faces of our team). All in a more dynamic colour range, thanks to HDR.
The Beeb boasted that BT began screening live sport in 4K in 2015, and Sky followed a year later, but neither do so in HDR.
Auntie can thanks to the development of an HDR hybrid-log gamma (HLG), which has been created in conjunction with the Japanese broadcaster NHK.
To gain access, viewers must be among the first to click on the relevant home screen button just after each stream starts.
It’s a perfect opportunity for anyone who enjoys coupling their rage with crap broadband speeds with their fury at England’s terminally awful performance.
source:-.theregister
