As the race for the historical Fifa World Cup tournament in Qatar in November heats up, Africa’s leading entertainment group, MultiChoice unveils plans to launch two channels in 4K.
This was made known by Nyiko Shiburi, CEO of MultiChoice South Africa. Shiburi confirmed that two SuperSport channels will be broadcast in 4K for the duration of the global football event, which ends on 18 December.
World Cup 2022 will be the first time that the pay-television broadcaster has launched commercial 4K services
This is a big step up in the image quality of broadcasts on DStv, which until now have topped out at 1080i resolution.
Though MultiChoice has experimented with 4K broadcasts in the past, World Cup 2022 will be the first time that the pay-television broadcaster has launched commercial 4K services.
The company’s new Explora Ultra PVR is capable of receiving and displaying 4K video on supported TVs.
Shiburi said a significant amount of technical work had to be done in the backend to ensure MultiChoice is ready to launch the two 4K channels for the World Cup.
MultiChoice has demonstrated content broadcasting in 4K over satellite — and the quality was impressive.
Shiburi confirmed that MultiChoice is using more modern HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) compression techniques to broadcast in 4K over satellite. HEVC is also known as H.265. It is the successor to the widely used Advanced Video Codec, or AVC, also known as H.264.
Shiburi said MultiChoice will decide after the World Cup how it plans to take its 4K strategy forward, and which other channels will get the ultra-high-definition treatment.
MultiChoice-owned streaming platform Showmax, which will also carry the World Cup on its Pro tier, is also expected to stream the games in 4K, although the group hasn’t formally confirmed its plans yet.