While the initial schedule published by the lafibre.info forum (see capture below) anticipated the availability of France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K from this month of September for the nine largest metropolises in France, that -this is delayed by a few months to now be set for the first quarter of 2024.
France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K, it's official
!The major maneuvers began several months ago with the publication of a call for tenders published on March 10 on the France Televisions website and open until April 11, entitled “Framework agreement aims to entrust to an operator the recovery of signals from the various Ultra High Definition (UHD) television services and the creation of audiovisual multiplexes for mainland France and overseas territories. The formalization came in recent hours from the very mouth of the president of France TV, Delphine Ernotte (see our TNT news, the Paris 2024 Olympics in Ultra HD 4K HDR10 and Dolby Atmos).
France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K in the first quarter of 2024, 100% of the French population covered for the Paris 2024 Olympics
If, as already mentioned, the deployment of France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K is now planned for the first quarter of 2024 (without further details) targeting the nine largest French metropolises (Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Lille, etc.), the objective is still to cover 100% of the French population by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, i.e. before July 26, 2024, the date of the opening ceremony.
France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K, audio and video specifications
The other information published in our previous news on the subject remains relevant, namely the implementation of these two channels through a dedicated UHD multiplex with an overall streaming capacity of 35 Mb/s (DVB-T2) . On the other hand, like France 2 UHD 4K, France 3 UHD 4K will also broadcast 100% of the time in UHD 4K.
The video technical characteristics of France 2 UHD 4K and France 3 UHD 4K, for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, will therefore be as follows: definition 2 160p, display frequency 50p (i.e. 50 Hz progressive), color encoding on 10 bits, HDR10 technology (via ITU-R BT.2100), HEVC compression and 16 Mb/s constant bitrate. For audio, E-AC3 and AC4 are on the menu (some old 4K UHD TVs are not AC4 compatible hence the E-AC3 backward compatibility) for, respectively, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby Atmos.