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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/05/40mbps-broadband-required-bbc-to-stream-2018-world-cup-in-4k.html

The BBC has announced another UK iPlayer trial of their 4K (Ultra HD) and High Dynamic Range (HDR) video streaming quality, which will cover all 29 of their 2018 FIFA World Cup matches. Unfortunately to get the most out of this they’re recommending that users have “at least” a 40Mbps broadband ISP connection.

This isn’t the first time that the BBC has tested such technology and they’ve continued to refine their approach, although sadly the new trial will still be restricted to offering only a “limited number of spaces available (tens of thousands) for each game” and those will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis.

On the upside this will at least limit the capacity impact on broadband ISP networks during the tournament.

This will be an interesting experiment in both high definition broadcasting, and also doing it at a peak time live event. It's either going to go well, or be a disaster.

Even though I'm not 100% sure that its right to do this at a peak time event, it is another example of how faster higher quality broadband is now dipping its toes in to normality.

4K is rapidly being seen as the new standard for specialist streaming technologies, and also with more 4K movies coming out these days I think the rush for 4K will be faster than the rush for 1080.

What do you guys think?

[burakkucat]

To me, a television is just a television! (A hybrid word using both Ancient Greek and Latin.)

[Chrysalis]

Very likely there will be a 720p/1080p option, probably SD as well.  But yeah given iplayer issues this may well be an underfunded venture thats too ambitious, we will see.

Personally I dont care for 4k, I dont feel the need to have something like a 50inch screen, and on a 32inch screen, 4k is barely different to 1080p.

The main reason people see a difference is probably due to higher bitrates rather than increased resolution.  e.g. when sky released HD they reduced the bitrates of their SD to make HD more attractive.

Proper innovation is having things like player cam's and split screen replays, but the media companies just seem dumb and think innovation is just adding pixels.

[niemand]

It'll be fine. The BBC have both their own network and a couple of deals with external CDNs when they need the extra capacity.