NHK Plans 8K Test Next Month of Whole 'Broadcast Chain' on 'Actual Satellite'

The test next month is “an important step” in NHK’s “road map” to launch 8K transmissions in 2018 as a prelude to bringing wide-scale 8K commercial broadcasts to Japanese consumers in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Sugawara said. The test will encompass the whole “broadcast chain, from production to home receivers,” he said.

There have been “milestones every two years” in NHK’s quest to make commercial 8K broadcasts a reality by the end of the decade, Sugawara said. Each milestone has included “a large-scale sporting event,” such as the London Olympics in 2012 and the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, he said. The Olympics in particular long have been “a showcase for broadcasting technology,” he said.

Cable, satellite and IP-based transport systems will be the transmission formats NHK will use for experimental 8K broadcasts in 2016, “but it is desirable to introduce terrestrial in the future,” he said. “R&D on large-capacity transmission technologies for terrestrial broadcasting is ongoing,” Sugawara said. NHK successfully conducted a “long-distance transmission test” of terrestrial 8K last year using a “4096-QAM” modulation scheme, he said. In Q&A, Sugawara said 4096-QAM modulation is “quite different” from that of the current DTV system but is needed to achieve the comparable coverage area of existing DTV. “So that means we may have to change the network” to suit the new modulation scheme, he said. “But there is a strong desire not to change the current network, so we need more investigation.”

NHK sees 8K as “the ultimate format” for two-dimensional TV broadcast, “based on our own research on the human factors,” Sugawara also said in Q&A when asked if 8K represents the uppermost goal in NHK’s future road map. “So we do not see 16K, 32K,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience of engineers.

The Super Hi-Vision 8K platform will be built upon a structure that trumpets “more,” “better” and “faster” pixels, Sugawara said. From its commercial launch, its 7680 x 4320 resolution will support 120 Hz frame rates and 12-bit-based wider color gamut. Sugawara stopped short of saying whether NHK out of the gate will support full BT.2020 colorimetry, but said that under Super Hi-Vision 8K, color gamut will be “expanded so that almost all surface colors can be reproducible.”

High dynamic range “is a hot topic,” Sugawara said, but one he apparently wanted to steer clear of during his NAB Show presentation. “There are various points of view in the discussion,” but there was no “time” available during the talk to cover them all, he said. “So I would like to say simply that NHK is considering” how to include HDR in the future and “has a desire to introduce” HDR for Super Hi-Vision 8K broadcasts, he said.

For broadcasters reluctant to embrace new distribution technologies, “fear, uncertainty and doubt are dead-end roads,” said NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny in a conference keynote speech in which he spoke to the audience of engineers as if he were giving a motivational sermon. Those negative emotions “don’t get us anywhere, at least nowhere productive,” he said. “We need to believe in the virtuous cycle.”

Adopting new distribution strategies, “via website, mobile applications and social media, all serve to build” audiences for “our core broadcast services,” Matheny said. “These platforms feed and support one another. And with our core service, we need to embrace our strengths. We are wireless. We are locally targeted. We have nationwide coverage. And we have a one-to-many architecture. We need to take these strengths and combine them with new technologies like IP distribution, greater connectivity and big data, and leverage them to make us even stronger.”

Matheny is confident there’s “a very important and sustainable role for broadcasters to play in IP video distribution,” he said. “It is probably the one thing that has me the most excited” about ATSC 3.0, in that the next-gen system will use “IP-based transport that will set us up for success in so many ways, from how we can integrate with new distribution partners to the types of devices that will choose to build in broadcast receivers,” he said.