UHD HDR broadcast from Wimbledon. at DVinfo.net

Steve Game · July 15th, 2019, 10:43 AM

The BBC managed to put out UHD HLG video from the Centre Court over this year's Wimbledon championship as part of its ongoing trials. I'm not a big fan but I thought that I'd have a look yesterday.
The resolution was clearly better than FHD but not up to other on-line UHD. It also looked like 25p which with a white tennis ball against a (fading) green grass court, didn't give very smooth motion. Maybe the shutter angle was unnecessarily small.
Has anybody else here seen the broadcasts?

Paul R Johnson · July 15th, 2019, 11:44 AM

I'm always very impressed with the UHD I see in the studios, but getting that into people's homes is tricky without fibre end to end. The studio pictures we capture are remarkable. I don't think many of my colleagues are impressed with the current delivery. To be honest, even Sony admit their domestic kit cannot display the pictures their studio kit produces.

Tony Neal · July 15th, 2019, 01:53 PM

I've been dipping into the UHD tests on iPlayer from time to time and the quality has been good but not on a par with the Formula 1 UHD transmissions from Sky. But watching the Wimbledon tests I noticed that the image was fairly flat and dim, so I put together a picture profile on my Panasonic TV that really brought the images to life. And once I set it to Rec 2020 the colour fidelity was incredibly life-like, especially the crowd closeups which were like looking through a window.

But as Steve pointed out, what really lets it down is the poor resolution of motion. The transmission is supposedly 50p but it definitely was not, nor was it 25p but seemed to be something in between - you could almost count the still images as players juddered across the court.. I'm guessing that iPlayer drops the frame rate if you don't have the bandwidth, but I'm sure I've got more than enough for UHD 50p. Or maybe iPlayer still need a bit of tweaking.

Steve Game · July 15th, 2019, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tony Neal

I've been dipping into the UHD tests on iPlayer from time to time and the quality has been good but not on a par with the Formula 1 UHD transmissions from Sky. But watching the Wimbledon tests I noticed that the image was fairly flat and dim, so I put together a picture profile on my Panasonic TV that really brought the images to life. And once I set it to Rec 2020 the colour fidelity was incredibly life-like, especially the crowd closeups which were like looking through a window.

But as Steve pointed out, what really lets it down is the poor resolution of motion. The transmission is supposedly 50p but it definitely was not, nor was it 25p but seemed to be something in between - you could almost count the still images as players juddered across the court.. I'm guessing that iPlayer drops the frame rate if you don't have the bandwidth, but I'm sure I've got more than enough for UHD 50p. Or maybe iPlayer still need a bit of tweaking.

Well I have a BT Infinity FTTC connection and it normally gets about 58Mb/s down and just under 10Mb/s up. The other iPlayer tests seem OK but they are presumably streaming from a video server file, which would allow the end users' experiences to have been tested before going public.
That leads me to suspect the the realtime compression needs finessing.
Interesting that you mentioned the flat image. I hadn't thought of changing from REC 709 to 2020, (I have a Panasonic DX750 so it should make an improvement).
I have had problems with the Panasonic's iPlayer over the last 3 years and now always run it on the Beta version so I'll give it another go whilst the Wimbledon stuff is still there.

July 15th, 2019, 10:43 AM	#1
Steve Game Major Player Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: London, UK Posts: 353	UHD HDR broadcast from Wimbledon. The BBC managed to put out UHD HLG video from the Centre Court over this year's Wimbledon championship as part of its ongoing trials. I'm not a big fan but I thought that I'd have a look yesterday. The resolution was clearly better than FHD but not up to other on-line UHD. It also looked like 25p which with a white tennis ball against a (fading) green grass court, didn't give very smooth motion. Maybe the shutter angle was unnecessarily small. Has anybody else here seen the broadcasts?

July 15th, 2019, 11:44 AM	#2
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,045	Re: UHD HDR broadcast from Wimbledon. I'm always very impressed with the UHD I see in the studios, but getting that into people's homes is tricky without fibre end to end. The studio pictures we capture are remarkable. I don't think many of my colleagues are impressed with the current delivery. To be honest, even Sony admit their domestic kit cannot display the pictures their studio kit produces.

July 15th, 2019, 01:53 PM	#3
Tony Neal Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: Fareham, UK Posts: 160	Re: UHD HDR broadcast from Wimbledon. I've been dipping into the UHD tests on iPlayer from time to time and the quality has been good but not on a par with the Formula 1 UHD transmissions from Sky. But watching the Wimbledon tests I noticed that the image was fairly flat and dim, so I put together a picture profile on my Panasonic TV that really brought the images to life. And once I set it to Rec 2020 the colour fidelity was incredibly life-like, especially the crowd closeups which were like looking through a window. But as Steve pointed out, what really lets it down is the poor resolution of motion. The transmission is supposedly 50p but it definitely was not, nor was it 25p but seemed to be something in between - you could almost count the still images as players juddered across the court.. I'm guessing that iPlayer drops the frame rate if you don't have the bandwidth, but I'm sure I've got more than enough for UHD 50p. Or maybe iPlayer still need a bit of tweaking.