TOKYO—Japan’s NHK says it has successfully transmitted 8K “Super Hi-Vision” television signals via a single standard UHF terrestrial broadcast channel over a distance of 27 km. The field test, conducted on Jan. 20 was performed as a follow-up to a May 2012 demonstration in which the UHD signal was sent slightly more than four km.
This most recent test was performed by NHK’s science and research laboratories and took place at that organization’s bureau located in Hitoyoshi, Kumamoto Prefecture in southern Japan.
Super Hi-Vision 8K video with its 7,680 x 4,320 pixel images provides about 16 times the resolution of conventional 1080-line high-definition television and generates a proportionally greater amount of data. Uncompressed, an 8K 60-field image produces a data rate of about 24 Gbps.
According to an NHK press release, this large amount of data was fitted into a “standard” six MHz broadcast channel via “image compression technologies” and was transmitted using “ultra-multilevel” orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and multiple-input multiple-output dual-polarization technologies.
The experiment was intended to demonstrate that Super Hi-Vision television could be satisfactorily delivered to the home over a signal path typically encountered in terrestrial broadcasting.
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