At the beginning of August, we deplored the absence of Ultra HD 4K recording of Euro 2024 (European football championship), which will be held in Germany next year from June 14 to July 14 ( see our Euro 2024 news, no Ultra HD 4K capture, it’s confirmed…). In mid-November, following a press release published at the 4K HDR Summit, we regained hope of taking advantage of this formidable competition in UHD 4K through a communication from the 4K HDR Summit held in Malaga in Spain announcing the broadcast by RTVE in 2024 of the Olympic and Paralympic Games of Paris 2024 and the European Championship in Germany, i.e. Euro 2024. False joy…
Euro 2024, a cheap video capture
Alas, three times alas, the initial information coming from Tim Achberger, technical director of Sportcast, the company in charge of producing Bundesliga matches (see here Sky Sport Summit 2023), then confirmed by Karl Petermichi, the boss of Austrian broadcasting via a post on his X account, are therefore the good ones. After a (long) investigation with numerous players in the image chain (Dolby laboratories, our Spanish colleagues at RTVE for example) and UEFA, no native 4K UHD capture is on the agenda. for Euro 2024 at the time of writing these lines. Essentially for cost reasons, potential customers (either the channels holding the rights and/or the OTT services which could contract with these channels) are not rushing to the gate in this difficult economic period and upcoming recession. In short, no declared customers (or very few), no native UHD 4K capture.
Euro 2024 Ultra HD 4K via Upscaling?
On the other hand, our interlocutors mentioned the possibility for rights holders to broadcast an Ultra HD 4K Upscaling signal to offer a suitable channel. We know that with the appropriate Ultra HD 4K encoders, the result can be surprisingly high quality. To see if initially such a signal will be offered, and if in a second step if it would really make a difference with 1080p HD broadcasting…
