Italy Broadcasting Remaining Euro2016 Matches in 4K Via Eutelsat

Italy’s national public broadcaster, RAI, and Eutelsat began delivering to Italian viewers Thursday the first of seven planned Euro2016 matches in Ultra HD. UEFA placed 14 Ultra HD cameras at the Vélodrome Stadium in Marseilles, and images were sent to the International Broadcasting Centre in Paris, where they were forwarded to Eutelsat’s Paris-Rambouillet teleport, they said. A temporary studio set up by RAI at the teleport added live commentary, before the special RAI 4K channel was encrypted and uplinked to Eutelsat’s Hotbird satellites, they said. Tivùsat homes equipped with an Ultra HD screen and a conditional access module certified by Tivùsat were able to watch the first quarterfinal match, due to be followed over the weekend by three additional quarterfinals, the semifinals on Wednesday and Thursday and Sunday’s final. The live broadcasts are precursor to the launch of regular Ultra HD channels, they said, and the installed base of Ultra HD screens in Italy is expected to hit 1 million units by the end of the year. Supporting partners are DBW Communication and V-Nova, proving the P.Link 4K encoding and decoding system.