You don’t need 4 cables, just one with higher bandwidth. Cable bandwidth has been increasing over time. It’s the same story from when they went SD to HD. I do agree that the ‘HD’ artifacts look terrible in current broadcasts. I have been impressed by RUclips TV + Fox 4K broadcasts.
Yes and no. It depends on the video equipment and the specification. For example, some production switchers are possible to take a quad link (12G) signal over a single piece of copper. However, unless the production trucks are running the latest and greatest (spoiler alert, they're not), they are only capable of single link (3G) cables.
@@HaloHamsturlive event video engineer here, and fun fact, they ARE using fiber optic cable for cameras. There's a cable called TRIAX that is a dual direction and power supplying cable for connecting cameras to the image processing rack unit, also known as a CCU. The TRIAX cable is capable of being somewhere around 2500 feet long, whereas a copper based SDI cable can only be reliably used up to 350 feet, and that's with the good stuff(there are some differences depending on lower resolutions being used on higher bandwidth capable cable).
I feel like a lot of the cabling issues for broadcasters could be handled by the stadium, at least in modern newly-built stadiums. It wouldn't be that difficult to run a bunch of fiber optic cabling from the stadium to those broadcast truck areas while the stadium is being built. The challenge then would be upgrading the equipment and also weather-proofing the connection points. Underground maintenance tunnels could carry the majority of this cabling.
@@OldDood lol do you know the cost of that SMPTE fiber cable? One cable to one camera in a regular size studio? $2k. You’re talking miles of cable. I’m not sure what this imaginary 16k standard is, or which existing cables would support that for the non existent cameras and switchers.
@@alexs3187 SMPTE Fiber is only $2 a foot. A lot of these issues is that these companies are cheap. It's like internet providers. They have been using fiber optics on the back end since the 1990s. Instead of future proofing and saving money they just deal with what's cheap.
Not really. They're not trying to solve the same problem, so there is no guarantee they will find a solution. Just because tire makers made a road tire that can do 200MPH, doesn't mean they'll be able to make one do 300MPH that anyone can afford to use.
As a Boston sports fan, I have to say that the NESN 4K HDR feed is the best I’ve ever seen sports. I feel genuinely grateful every time I watch a Bruins home game that they seem to have actually ponied up the money to do it right, however that may be. I recently watched the Super Bowl in 4K HDR and it was so much worse than the NESN broadcasts. There were artifacts around the fast moving plays, it just didn’t pop. Before I watched this video I would have said that the Super Bowl was upscaled 4K, and the NESN home broadcasts for the Bruins are genuine 4K HDR. But now I’m thinking it’s exactly what you theorize would be the gold standard: ultra high bit rate upscaled at 60 frames per second in HDR. I’d love to read an article about how NESN accomplished it.
Are you using cable or internet tv? If you're on IPTV I would be interested in what your live feed delay is. Delays are already such a huge problem with live 720P feeds.
That would be nice to try and watch a Bruins game in 4k HDR. I have get Wings and Jackets on local Bally channels that look good(I'm a Wings fan). When I try to watch a Leafs game on CBC it looks like it is in 360p in 4:3 format, it makes me wonder if Canada even has HD at all yet. (yes I know they do). All the games are on Spectrum, doubtful anything is in 4k.
I would also simply take 1080p streaming - when I have to watch a badly compressed 720p feed through cable (which it seems a lot of broadcasts still are!), I always think broadcasters could do so much better.
Why, in 2023 does the four leading broadcasters in the USA STILL transmit their programming in 720p or 1080i? In other developed nations programming is in 1080p and occasionally in 4k!
@@damianhaber4890 The average American viewer is much more concerned about quantity and could care less about quality. Remember what started the Beta vs VHS war, and why Beta lost?720 more than satisfies most, even after they see a proper 4K presentation
@@martinb7554 As a motorsports and Baseball fan, sadly I must watch via garbage cable. Baseball has not been on OTA in my area since 2018, and the cable companies charge 20 Small extra to watch it
A lot of the cable weight concerns could be allayed with fiber, even accounting for the bend radius restrictions. Also there are high speed proprietary wireless protocols combined with maybe a minute delay to absorb hiccups that would fix those issues at the broadcast point. Transmission through the broader network is the real issue.
The real bottleneck in delivering 4k to households is over the air bandwidth. Having the ATSC 2.0 standard alongside ATSC 3.0 standard means the over the air broadcasters don't have enough bandwidth to run a 4K signal. Get rid of ATSC 2.0 and every major network would be broadcasting in 4K right now.
@@fritzkabeano1969 No such thing as ATSC 2.0. And the issue with a few channels sending 4k OTA isn't about the amount of bandwidth, it is that they have no content that is produced in 4k and, as this video partially highlighted, they don't have the infrastructure to support true 4k end to end. Now if they all had sources and wanted to send higher bandwidth 4k, it would be a problem for many.
@@curtisbme I meant ATSC 1.0 and if they could broadcast 4K there'd be content overnight. As for end to end "true" 4K there's enough fiber bandwidth to get it to the transmitters in major metro areas. It's OTA bandwidth that's preventing it from happening.
The incredibly slow move from making 4k the default resolution versus 1080p, which hasn't been achieved yet, just makes me laugh when I see 8k TVs. If moving from 1080p to 4k is this hard, you can look forward to a lot of 8K content in about 25 years. But also, the increase in resolution keeps providing diminishing returns. Every jump is more difficult to notice the difference at normal screen sizes. The only reason to get an 8k TV today, and for many years into the future, is to be able to tell people that you have a fancy shmancy 8k TV.
There are newer standards for cable modulation since 1080 broadcast became common for more bandwidth on the same cabling. Processing power and graphics processing has definitely improved more than 4x. They just don’t want to.
The world cup 4k Livestream was stunning to me and I don't even like or normally watch soccer. It's really pathetic that we don't have 4k sports in the US but many other countries do. Even Canada is doing 4k baseball and basketball and hockey. I don't care if they go down from 80 cameras to just 20, the picture quality is worth it and it has to be done. Most people have 4k tvs and no 4k content, it's ridiculous and embarrassing for the United States.
I totally agree - high quality 1080p is enough except for the wide shot. And this is what I don't understand. Close-ups of sports at 1080p look amazing even compressed - there's more detail than we need. But the wide shot of the play being 1080p is the stupidest thing ever. If it's just 1 camera and we're talking Bernabeu or Camp Nou, that thing needs to be at least 4k (or 16k) and then downsample the image to 1080p. It's like the PS5 rendering at 4k and then displaying a 1080p image, it's going to look much than native 1080p rendering. When I watch soccer, it's near impossible to read the jerseys and see in full clarity the extremities of the players. I'm pretty sure that if that was shot in native 4k converted to 1080p it would look very smooth. Reality creation improves it but not enough. I understand small teams sticking with 1080p but the wide shot at any big sport arena should be 4k.
Those shots you have of the miles and miles of cables running into those production trucks really puts this thing into true perspective. Thanks for the educational video
Thank you for covering this topic! It’s something I’ve long wondered about. I hope to always have my bad news delivered by Caleb, he somehow makes me enjoy hearing it.
In Canada, all of the major professional teams (NBA, NHL, MLB, CFL) have had most of their home games broadcast in 4K for years now (exception was during 2020-2021 during the pandemic where it was mainly HD). Pretty sure Europe has 4K HDR broadcasts going for soccer, Wimbledon, etc
The upscaled 4K that FOX provides is significantly better than the standard broadcasts and streams from other networks. Sure, I would love native 4K HDR 60fps for sports at high bitrates. However, what FOX is doing is a great stop gap solution until the infrastructure catches up for native 4k.
Where are the comparisons on upscaled NFL 4k that we can say significantly better.i bet over the air hd will stomp the upscaled fake 4k the NFL is pushing
A while back, Prime Video did Premier League football (soccer) in 4K, and the ball motion was a jerky mess. I totally agree that 60fps high-bitrate 1080p is better for sport. The other thing is making sure the motion of the ball is clearly visible and not 'optimised away' by the compression. While squash is not that popular as a TV sport, it is a good example where high fps and bitrate means you can see the ball, but high compression tends to erase the ball when it's moving quickly.
HDR 1080p signals would be fine for sports, like you said. Every single TV manufacturer needs to perfect motion processing (no soap opera effect, I hate that) on every TV.
Weren't the Olympics shot with 8K cameras and broadcast in 4K? My TV (Sony 930D) delivers near 4k like images on anything live, especially sports or anything shot outdoors. Still want more quality, though
DirecTV has been airing 4K sports for more than five years now. They've done extensive Masters broadcasts since 2016, Pac-12 late-night football, Dodgers baseball, Nuggets basketball, MLB Network games. College Football Playoff. they also aired Olympic coverage in each of the last Summer and Winter Games. Broadcasts are available. Better to light a single candle than to curse th darkness ...
High Frame Rates (HFR) would be huge for Sports. NHL and ball tracking in golf would be so much better to watch. I also think Golf in 3D would be cool.
The greatest misunderstanding is what the definition of resolution is. I worked in high resolution radar mapping, so I know what that means. In reality one needs to remove the idea that resolution is digital and related to pixel size, although pixel size or sampling has to be fine enough to represent the bandwidth in the signal. Each pixel or point has a continuous response much larger than the pixel. If two identical amplitude points are separated by a distance just large enough so that a sufficient depth or gap is produced then that distance should be referred to as resolution. If the requirement is High Dynamic Range (HDR), then the gap has to be deeper than SDR. Subjective testing a long time ago found that 1080p HDR image was better than 4K. This issue with 4K HDR is that it takes more bits per pixel to represent and the gap needs to be deep. Netflix UHD (Dolby Vision is better but still has quantization noise filling the gaps) doesn’t subjectively look as good as 1080 P bluray video with lower compression. One answer for the Fox production case, would be to get rid of the cables for all of those cameras and use a wireless network that supports the capacity for those channels. Also, couldn’t each camera be given an inexpensive processor to convert its video and audio to uncompressed 1080P HDR, until it’s feasible to handle 4K HDR. The processor could also do Dolby vision encoding. Seems that the expensive part should be the camera’s with their sensors, not the processing which shouldn’t be more than 80 iPhones could do.
What wireless network do you suggest that also allows for four return video feeds to the camera op, two channels of intercom, teleprompter video to the camera head from the camera control unit (CCU), ability of the video engineer to paint or adjust camera color? During Obama’s first inauguration a producer wanted to use wireless technology, USSS reserves the right to jam any wireless frequency they see fit. We had to have wired backups in case they jammed stuff. Didn’t happen at his inauguration but it did happen when he was at a sporting event.
Conclusion: broadcasters IN THE USA are years behind in terms of upgrading their equipment because they are too cheap (or too greedy) to spend money, but they really quick when it comes to increasing prices for their services.
It’s kinda funny that F1 can do 4K HDR a sport that’s around $16bn yet American Football NFL franchise is around $8bn then each team averages a value of $4.5bn…. Not as if the money isn’t there.
There is a major noticeable difference between native 4K and fox sports 1080p up conversion. I’ve watched a couple MLB broadcasts in native and they look incredible. We’ve had 720p sports now since 2006. It’s time to move on.
If we are even going to have discussions about what resolution is important in terms of motion pictures, we need to talk about the lack of motion resolution on Sample and hold displays. Sttandard LCD and even OLED displays can only resolve about 300 lines in motion unless black frame insertion is employed, which will bump the resolution in motion up to 800 lines. Your TV has to artificially interpolate fake frames just to get to 1080 lines in motion on any Modern Display. So even the signal that they are sending during the Superbowl, your television cannot resolve without help from internal motion processing. We need impulse driven displays like CRTs to be able to see 1920 x 1080 pixels per second in motion. Micro-led provided that it is driven the right way is the only modern technology that will be able to reproduce 1080p in motion without artificial frames, or black frame insertion. This video bringing up that the bandwidth and cash required to transmit 4K for the Super Bowl illustrates fully that we need better TVs that operate differently from today's flat panels and instead act like our older analog CRT sets.
Most 4K is Trash, period. Especially steaming services. I laugh when I see RUclips tv advertising 4K upgrades. Fios TV was the best I experienced but too expensive. Physical media for the win.
F1 has been in 4k for years and it generally looks fantastic. Onboard footage isn’t in 4k yet due to wireless broadcast limits but they are working on a solution.
Cost of camera's is about the only thing that's really an issue here. How do you think datacentres run? A cheap single fibre optic cable per camera can easily carry WAY more bandwidth than even 8K produces. They get connected to switches which can feed the consoles. You don't need extra cables, just fibre in the first place. Also if you want twice the power of a server from say 5 years ago, you don't have to generate twice the heat. Chips have shrunk, they are more power efficient. My phone can process 4K HDR. These tasks are generally offloaded to dedicated chips anyway which handle multiple streams. If you needed 10 servers 5 years ago you can almost certainly do the same workload these days with 3 or 4 servers which at worst would produce the same heat as the original 10. Sure, local distributors may have issues, but that's on them. Cables from cameras and processing 4K really is not an excuse. F1 can do it for every race, and these days they don't even have on-site (at the race track) media production centres - it's bitstreamed to a central processing location thousands of miles away, directed, edited, produced and distributed to the relevant local distributor. Really isn't as hard as Fox are making out. This is just about bandwidth, and 4K is laughably small in comparison to even medium sized company network infrastructure. How do you think you can have 50 people in an office streaming 1080p or 4K at lunchtime over the company WiFi or 4G/5G? Yes, you need upgraded cameras. Yes, compression is horrendous from the traditional media companies and yes we should expect 60FPS and HDR. You can buy a XBOX Series X for $400 that spits out 4K, HDR, 120FPS and that's GENERATING the frames as well as processing. You're telling me Fox Sports and other's can't do the same as what 40 (I'm being VERY generous, could easily be 20) Xbox Series X / PS5's can do for a huge sports event? The heat output is too high? Pssshh - you've been fobbed off mate! Source: 23 years as technical infrastructure architect
Apple's MLS subscription looks fantastic on my calibrated LG OLED. It's 1080P, but they seem to be streaming a very high quality signal with no bit-stuffing artifacts. The color is fantastic and on a properly calibrated TV, looks very tonally balanced and clean. No blown out highlights, good shadow detail, and punchy but not unrealistic colors are a genuine feat considering what a low CRI most stadium lights produce.
Why, in 2023 does the four leading broadcasters in the USA STILL transmit their programming in 720p or 1080i? In other developed nations programming is in 1080p and occasionally in 4k!
Get Sharp Aquos Quatrum panel 😅! They r made in Japan . They upscale 2X native . N 10 yr ago I was watching HD stream in 2K all d time! When ppl were doing 4k Tv getting 720p experience! Yeah I was doing 2K they were doing 720-HD . But those r SHARP flagship panels usually $200-300 more pricy than Sony Flagship ! Those r WORTH it ! Like they r lunching SHARP Aquos XLED this year for d -- 1st time in 8 yrs in USA . Maybe next a few yrs they might bring back AQUOS Quattrun panels back . They r future prove for 8-10 yrs .
I totally agree about the compression rate! If you have seen good not much compressed 720P or even 1080P, you will know that it is better than a much compressed 4K video.
I work for Verizon FiOS TV. We had the Olympics in 4K and we were getting pissed off calls from NBC executives watching at home saying the 4k channels had issues. Of course Verizon executives started freaking out. We discovered in pretty much every case, the NBC executives were using shitty HDMI cables that couldn't handle the 4K.
I used to work for many broadcasting companies. Most of engineers don't know crap! The simple solution to stream in 4k was by upconverting the feed. Remember that resolution means nothing in TV and video, what is the most important is the definition. Those cameras has enough sensels (not pixels) to capture the luma values to deliver very detailed images. NO broadcast in the USA broadcast not even in 1080p. They all are in 1080i and 720p. ONLY online videos are in 4k and 8k. All these digital switchers you see can handle a ton of video feed, the problem is the producers and directors trying to add BS to the system.
Here in Canada we do have Sportsnet and TSN in 4K broadcasted for IPTV providers... however actual 4K broadcasts on these channels are indeed limited; basically to only a few teams home games... mostly those in the Toronto market (BlueJays all 81 home games, Maple Leafs and Raptors) among a few others... but when they're on a road or at one of these venues they haven't setup for 4K broadcasts, back to the usual 1080i (or 720p). It's too bad they're unable to bring in the Sky Sports F1 4K feed for F1 broadcasts.
One of the biggest sports leagues in the World, IPL Cricket is going to be in 4K from this year. Around 1.5 billion people watch it daily for about 60 days each year.
I'd be happy if channels like ESPN would finally jump to 1080! Watching baseball on this channel with a 65" screen or bigger is ABSOLUTELY noticeable when the broadcast is in 720.
I have been saying FOR YEARS that its crazy we watch sports at sub 30fps!?! Sports, after gaming should be the first entertainment offerings to jump on the higher frame rate hype train!! It would improve the viewing experience profoundly!! I would take 1080/60 over 4k/30(or 23.4) EVER day of the week!!
The other day I went and tried to order a 4K Blu-ray of ANY type of major sporting event. Not even ONE was available for purchase - anywhere, in ANY type of sport. You would think that those producing those big sporting events would at least be willing and able to sell 4K DVD's of their events to fans after the fact now in 2023...and you would be wrong.
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 Did YOU even watch the video? They clearly said that ALL of the content is frequently UPCONVERTED to 4K after the fact. All of which can easily be put onto a 4K Blu-ray.
So right after the Super Bowl tonight I went to the NFL Shop site and, just exactly as anticipated, STILL no 4K disc of the game available for purchase. Still only standard 1080p Blu-rays can be bought. Is this EVER going to change? Will ANY sporting event of ANY kind ever be available to be purchased on 4K Blu-ray?
I'm gonna argue that they don't need 4k(+) cameras for 4k broadcasting, but they need the extra resolution for cropping in replays, in post, etc. You can crop into 4k footage by 200 % and into 8k footage by 400 %, and you still get Full HD footage. You can also use AI to automatically crop towards the ball. That should work especially fine for shots with high overview and deep depth of field.
The lossy encoding should be done in the camera. English premiere league 50 fps 4k hevc broadcast takes around 12 mbps. Cat6a 1 gbps Ethernet should be able to deliver effective 500 mbps. This should be more than enough to deliver low compressed 60fps 4k hevc
Having done recordings for games using uncompressed FRAPS, and then see how RUclips has to compress it down, I can definitely speak to how much uncompressed video looks fantastic
great job of explaining the issues of 4K sports. 1080p with HDR is the answer (For now) Fox sports app and apple Friday Nite Baseball look great on my 4K 75" Samsung 720p doesn't look so good but watchable.
12gSDI Is so common now, and has been for so long, these sports broadcasters are capable of broadcasting in 4K. It’s just not profitable for them. Buuut they can’t figure out why their industry isn’t seeing profits like they want. Hummm, I wonder why people aren’t paying up. Maybe because things like the cost of food is too damn expensive. Thanks Caleb, always enjoy your videos.
Depends on what you mean by common...there are many things in the chain that are not 12G capable. Including converters, monitors, routers, etc. Every. Single. piece of equipment MUST be upgraded.
The Super Bowl is not typical. Not many sporting events will use 80 cameras. A typical NFL, NBA, or big-time College Football should be much more manageable. I certainly understand it only being available on a limited basis, but it shouldn't be this limited! Major sporting events should have this by now! All new equipment purchased should be 4K and we should be slowly expanding.
In summary, the technology isn’t there yet. The same could be said about 1080p 15-20 years ago. Wait five years, and all that technology along the entire pipeline will have been upgraded.
Weren't there similar issues when it came to upgrading from standard definition to HD? (When HD sports first started becoming common,) I thought many HD broadcasts or SD channels of a game being shown in HD looked worse because they had digital compression and punched up colors that looked fake compared to say ESPN in the 90s. I've seen 90s games that look less over exposed than newer ones.
Great video and explanation thanks! Unfotunately in Canada we can only watch football/soccer through streamers like DAZN and Fubo TV which both boradcast at 720p, at least at 50fps. The high compression isn't great though and feel they could at least do 1080p as they are broadcast in 4K in Europe
BBC iPlayer shows large sporting events (world cup, Wimbledon tennis, soccer finals) using HLG HDR. Its technology the BBC made with Japan's NHK network. It looks so good, but the delay is noticeable!
1080p with a monster bitrate looks really fantastic. Most 1080p footage you see looks pretty bad because of the bitrate. Even look at a very high bitrate 720p video if you can find one, you won't believe your eyes.
I agree with everyone on here that says 4k should be the standard at this point in time. Even if I somewhat understand why not, how come the networks don't show non-live movies and shows in 4k? I was under the impression that all are shot in the higher resolution so why aren't we getting it to us?
Hoping 4k HDR becomes the target standard for a long time for everything from video games, tv & sports. Seeing 8k tvs when the average person cant even tell the difference is a waste to me
Y’all remember when we made the slow transition to 720/1080p television back in 2007ish? I remember I was amazed how incredible the picture looked when watching the news and shit 😂😂
Okay as far as deploying cables, why aren't major stadiums retrofitted with cables already? Usually most NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB games are only broadcast by one network at a time so wouldn't it make logical sense to preinstall these cables in conduits and just leave them in place? Then which ever network is broadcasting the games they can just plug into any cable they need. If they need extra then they can pull those cables via the conduits and take them with them when they leave. This is no different than the early cities when telegraph/telephone lines were installed. Eventually people realized having duplicate cables for every company made no sense and they all agreed to share. Breaking down and setting up all these cables must be a HUGE waste of time and man power every weekend. And as for the inputs, I get it, 4x as many. So broadcast the "main" cameras in 4K and the rest if 1080p. But all that said I agree 100% on just getting unstepped on 1080p in 6o fps. I actually like gaming on my 2K monitor at 165htz over a 4K monitor at 60htz any day!
Most top flight sport in the UK is broadcast in UHD HDR, all the major broadcast companies here have UHD trucks and they do UHD HDR sport every weekend.
Thanks for the video Caleb. But my question is wasn't it the same when we went from 480p to 1080p? Meaning everyone had to adapt their software and hardware?
@@FHC1944 4k isn't a lot harder.our current bandwidth is exponentially much higher than it was in 98 when the NFL went hd .these companies have access to multi gigabits of data whereas back then they were on low dsl or dial up 😂
@@truthx7 It was really rare with hd in the 90s. It's going to take time before we get 4K on every live sports. It's more complex than we think and not so economical. Like Caleb said, it's better with an uncompressed 1080p than a compressed 4K. Just watch every streaming service. It's very compressed streams.
@@truthx7 No you're mistaking internet connection with broadcast infrastruture. It only at the end hits an internet connection. Even then a 1080p60fps stream is 3Gbps. I doubt you even have a 1Gbps download speed (1000Mbps) at your house.
@@FHC1944 Yep. Additionally, many companies just invested in HD infrastructure a few years ago, meanwhile SD was around for 20 -25 years. So the cost of moving all equipment (especially since 4K is bleeding edge) is astronomical. Many TV stations waited for the price of HD to come down and rode out their SD equipment for as long as possible.
Always have been curious about why sport-streams look so bad. Thank you for answering! May the time of good looking sport-streams come sooner than later.
There is one drawback to 4K which you didn't mention. When you have sports like tennis, where the camera work features many close-up shots, those shots have to be exceptionally well-focused, or it really stands out that they aren't as sharp as they should be. 4K sports have been common in Europe for a while, and whether it is true 4K or not, it is noticeably better than HD.
Here in the U.K. we do get Premier League games and other big sports like F1 racing in 4K but that’s about it. There were some games in the recent World Cup that were also in HDR, which took things to the next level. However it’s still certainly not the norm here to get all sports broadcast in 4K.
If there had been RUclips way back then I suppose someone would have made a video about why talking movies were so hard to make compared to silent movies, why there weren't more sports in colour instead of black and white, why aren't more sports in 1080 instead of 720 etc. Competition and tech improvements will drive the next improvements in sports broadcasting, as they have always done.
An uncompressed HDR 1080p in 60fps looks just as good! And anyway, like it's been said, we're not there yet. An upscaled compressed 4K looks ass anyway!
Am I the only one who doesn't think having 100 cameras actually makes the experience better for the viewer? I'm tired of these directors feeling like they have to cut to a different camera every 5 seconds. I'd like a version of the broadcast in 4K that just sits there, as if I was watching the game in the stadium sitting on the 50 yard line. I mean hell, don't we have the ability to just place one of those globe shaped multi cameras in a seat...and then I can throw on an Oculus and turn my head and look at whatever I want in the stadium...just like I was there...when is that coming?
What an absolute copout. Almost every weekend we get premier league games in 4k. Other leagues in Europe also regularly broadcast in 4k. And, yet here we are making excuses for a multi-billion dollar league such as the NFL to not invest in quality broadcasting. 15 years ago networks went from SD to HD as a standard. The appetite for HD is equivalent to that of 4k now. The only reason it's not happening now is for these corporations to save money. Nothing else. Yet our cable, internet and subscriptions keep increasing in price.
With the huge amount of money sports brings in, there's no way they can't afford to upgrade everything to 4K 60p. I can't exactly compare it to my own 4K 60p videos, but I would assume that they think the general population would not see a difference and therefore the investment isn't worth it.
Its complicated to deliver it in 4k but in 2023 full hd with good bitrate should be a standard especially when you consider how much we pay for sport packages. In uk if you want bt and sky sport you need to pay 45£ or 55$. So that means they make 660$ per year from one household and there are millions of them who pay for that service(just in uk).
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 i didnt forget but it seems you forgot how many billions they make from commercials(on top of all cash they make from subscribers of sport packages).
Broadcasters are stuck in the past. They were forced to go to 1080P and it cost them a lot of money. They even went to 60 frames per second for sports broadcasts. Don't expect them to destroy their transmission infrastructure to do 4 K.
You don’t need 4 cables, just one with higher bandwidth. Cable bandwidth has been increasing over time. It’s the same story from when they went SD to HD. I do agree that the ‘HD’ artifacts look terrible in current broadcasts. I have been impressed by RUclips TV + Fox 4K broadcasts.
Like of sight 5G can also deliver 4K wirelessly and without loss.
Yes and no. It depends on the video equipment and the specification. For example, some production switchers are possible to take a quad link (12G) signal over a single piece of copper. However, unless the production trucks are running the latest and greatest (spoiler alert, they're not), they are only capable of single link (3G) cables.
Just stick to watching CNN. They run off the back of the DoD's bandwidth - which is limitless. Your tax dollars at work ...
@@taylorbroad8941 time for fiber optic
@@HaloHamsturlive event video engineer here, and fun fact, they ARE using fiber optic cable for cameras. There's a cable called TRIAX that is a dual direction and power supplying cable for connecting cameras to the image processing rack unit, also known as a CCU.
The TRIAX cable is capable of being somewhere around 2500 feet long, whereas a copper based SDI cable can only be reliably used up to 350 feet, and that's with the good stuff(there are some differences depending on lower resolutions being used on higher bandwidth capable cable).
I feel like a lot of the cabling issues for broadcasters could be handled by the stadium, at least in modern newly-built stadiums. It wouldn't be that difficult to run a bunch of fiber optic cabling from the stadium to those broadcast truck areas while the stadium is being built. The challenge then would be upgrading the equipment and also weather-proofing the connection points. Underground maintenance tunnels could carry the majority of this cabling.
Isn’t it already done that way at a lot of stadiums? Some may still have the old triax cables.
Not just 4K but at least Pre-Wire the Stadiums with 8K (or 16K?) cabling.
With Power Back-Ups to boot.
Now that would be impressive.
@@OldDood lol do you know the cost of that SMPTE fiber cable? One cable to one camera in a regular size studio? $2k. You’re talking miles of cable. I’m not sure what this imaginary 16k standard is, or which existing cables would support that for the non existent cameras and switchers.
Why does the stadium care? They don’t.
@@alexs3187 SMPTE Fiber is only $2 a foot. A lot of these issues is that these companies are cheap. It's like internet providers. They have been using fiber optics on the back end since the 1990s. Instead of future proofing and saving money they just deal with what's cheap.
4K TV sports channels should be standard today.
Considering even 1080p is not a complete standard, that's not happening anytime soon.
@@nathanmerritt1581but they marketing 8k TVs 😂😂 🔥🔥💰💰💰
@@gaurd3 yeah yeah good luck actually seeing content for that anytime soon!
Did you watch the video… ?
Did you even watch the video? Your comment is embarrassing
I assume these were all issues when we upgraded to HD. They solved those issues, they can solve the 4K issues.
Not really. They're not trying to solve the same problem, so there is no guarantee they will find a solution. Just because tire makers made a road tire that can do 200MPH, doesn't mean they'll be able to make one do 300MPH that anyone can afford to use.
As a Boston sports fan, I have to say that the NESN 4K HDR feed is the best I’ve ever seen sports. I feel genuinely grateful every time I watch a Bruins home game that they seem to have actually ponied up the money to do it right, however that may be.
I recently watched the Super Bowl in 4K HDR and it was so much worse than the NESN broadcasts. There were artifacts around the fast moving plays, it just didn’t pop. Before I watched this video I would have said that the Super Bowl was upscaled 4K, and the NESN home broadcasts for the Bruins are genuine 4K HDR. But now I’m thinking it’s exactly what you theorize would be the gold standard: ultra high bit rate upscaled at 60 frames per second in HDR. I’d love to read an article about how NESN accomplished it.
Are you using cable or internet tv? If you're on IPTV I would be interested in what your live feed delay is. Delays are already such a huge problem with live 720P feeds.
I find my stream is sometimes extremely laggy with 4K Bruins games. Very frustrating.
If NESN is doing what they do for baseball then only one replay machine is 4K, the others are upconverted.
That would be nice to try and watch a Bruins game in 4k HDR. I have get Wings and Jackets on local Bally channels that look good(I'm a Wings fan). When I try to watch a Leafs game on CBC it looks like it is in 360p in 4:3 format, it makes me wonder if Canada even has HD at all yet. (yes I know they do). All the games are on Spectrum, doubtful anything is in 4k.
I also live in Boston and yeah, NESN 4K HDR looks great! If NESN can do it, why can’t other channels do it?
I would also simply take 1080p streaming - when I have to watch a badly compressed 720p feed through cable (which it seems a lot of broadcasts still are!), I always think broadcasters could do so much better.
Amen!
Why, in 2023 does the four leading broadcasters in the USA STILL transmit their programming in 720p or 1080i? In other developed nations programming is in 1080p and occasionally in 4k!
@@damianhaber4890 The average American viewer is much more concerned about quantity and could care less about quality. Remember what started the Beta vs VHS war, and why Beta lost?720 more than satisfies most, even after they see a proper 4K presentation
Plug an antenna into a TV and watch uncompressed OTA. I can't stand sports feeds over cable.
@@martinb7554 As a motorsports and Baseball fan, sadly I must watch via garbage cable. Baseball has not been on OTA in my area since 2018, and the cable companies charge 20 Small extra to watch it
A lot of the cable weight concerns could be allayed with fiber, even accounting for the bend radius restrictions. Also there are high speed proprietary wireless protocols combined with maybe a minute delay to absorb hiccups that would fix those issues at the broadcast point. Transmission through the broader network is the real issue.
Not really they can use fibre optic cable I’ve been using it on tv for years
The real bottleneck in delivering 4k to households is over the air bandwidth. Having the ATSC 2.0 standard alongside ATSC 3.0 standard means the over the air broadcasters don't have enough bandwidth to run a 4K signal. Get rid of ATSC 2.0 and every major network would be broadcasting in 4K right now.
@@fritzkabeano1969 No such thing as ATSC 2.0. And the issue with a few channels sending 4k OTA isn't about the amount of bandwidth, it is that they have no content that is produced in 4k and, as this video partially highlighted, they don't have the infrastructure to support true 4k end to end. Now if they all had sources and wanted to send higher bandwidth 4k, it would be a problem for many.
@@curtisbme I meant ATSC 1.0
and if they could broadcast 4K there'd be content overnight. As for end to end "true" 4K there's enough fiber bandwidth to get it to the transmitters in major metro areas. It's OTA bandwidth that's preventing it from happening.
Superbowl was in 720p 😂
in the UK BT sports shows a couple of games a week in native 4K HDR and it looks amazing , nothing beats 4K HDR at 50FPS when it comes to sports.
The incredibly slow move from making 4k the default resolution versus 1080p, which hasn't been achieved yet, just makes me laugh when I see 8k TVs. If moving from 1080p to 4k is this hard, you can look forward to a lot of 8K content in about 25 years.
But also, the increase in resolution keeps providing diminishing returns. Every jump is more difficult to notice the difference at normal screen sizes.
The only reason to get an 8k TV today, and for many years into the future, is to be able to tell people that you have a fancy shmancy 8k TV.
There are newer standards for cable modulation since 1080 broadcast became common for more bandwidth on the same cabling. Processing power and graphics processing has definitely improved more than 4x. They just don’t want to.
The world cup 4k Livestream was stunning to me and I don't even like or normally watch soccer. It's really pathetic that we don't have 4k sports in the US but many other countries do. Even Canada is doing 4k baseball and basketball and hockey. I don't care if they go down from 80 cameras to just 20, the picture quality is worth it and it has to be done. Most people have 4k tvs and no 4k content, it's ridiculous and embarrassing for the United States.
I totally agree - high quality 1080p is enough except for the wide shot. And this is what I don't understand. Close-ups of sports at 1080p look amazing even compressed - there's more detail than we need. But the wide shot of the play being 1080p is the stupidest thing ever. If it's just 1 camera and we're talking Bernabeu or Camp Nou, that thing needs to be at least 4k (or 16k) and then downsample the image to 1080p. It's like the PS5 rendering at 4k and then displaying a 1080p image, it's going to look much than native 1080p rendering.
When I watch soccer, it's near impossible to read the jerseys and see in full clarity the extremities of the players. I'm pretty sure that if that was shot in native 4k converted to 1080p it would look very smooth. Reality creation improves it but not enough. I understand small teams sticking with 1080p but the wide shot at any big sport arena should be 4k.
Those shots you have of the miles and miles of cables running into those production trucks really puts this thing into true perspective. Thanks for the educational video
I find it very misleading calling upconverted 1080p 4K. It’s not 4K.
Thank you for covering this topic! It’s something I’ve long wondered about. I hope to always have my bad news delivered by Caleb, he somehow makes me enjoy hearing it.
In Canada, all of the major professional teams (NBA, NHL, MLB, CFL) have had most of their home games broadcast in 4K for years now (exception was during 2020-2021 during the pandemic where it was mainly HD). Pretty sure Europe has 4K HDR broadcasts going for soccer, Wimbledon, etc
Yup, this is a bullshit video. USA is just cheap as fuck and they paid him to make this POS.
It's hard to even get true 1080p 60fps in most sport broadcasts let alone true 4k60
The upscaled 4K that FOX provides is significantly better than the standard broadcasts and streams from other networks. Sure, I would love native 4K HDR 60fps for sports at high bitrates. However, what FOX is doing is a great stop gap solution until the infrastructure catches up for native 4k.
Where are the comparisons on upscaled NFL 4k that we can say significantly better.i bet over the air hd will stomp the upscaled fake 4k the NFL is pushing
A while back, Prime Video did Premier League football (soccer) in 4K, and the ball motion was a jerky mess. I totally agree that 60fps high-bitrate 1080p is better for sport. The other thing is making sure the motion of the ball is clearly visible and not 'optimised away' by the compression. While squash is not that popular as a TV sport, it is a good example where high fps and bitrate means you can see the ball, but high compression tends to erase the ball when it's moving quickly.
Somehow they worked it out for the World Cup...all 64 matches. World Cup > Superbowl.🤷♂
HDR 1080p signals would be fine for sports, like you said. Every single TV manufacturer needs to perfect motion processing (no soap opera effect, I hate that) on every TV.
No motion processing, it's garbage. Just transmit 60 FPS when needed
Weren't the Olympics shot with 8K cameras and broadcast in 4K? My TV (Sony 930D) delivers near 4k like images on anything live, especially sports or anything shot outdoors. Still want more quality, though
Nope. Most it's just upconverted.
@@ians.4284 Huh?
DirecTV has been airing 4K sports for more than five years now. They've done extensive Masters broadcasts since 2016, Pac-12 late-night football, Dodgers baseball, Nuggets basketball, MLB Network games. College Football Playoff. they also aired Olympic coverage in each of the last Summer and Winter Games. Broadcasts are available. Better to light a single candle than to curse th darkness ...
High Frame Rates (HFR) would be huge for Sports. NHL and ball tracking in golf would be so much better to watch. I also think Golf in 3D would be cool.
I would love 3D MLB games.
@@PSYCHOV3N0M3d was tried, once Sony stopped paying the bill, the 3d went away.
NBA Finals in 3D in 2011 was pretty great
give me NHL at 120hz, 4k native, HDR. Id die a happy man.
@@dumbcow1 Even uncompressed 1080p would be a huge upgrade with higher frame rates
The greatest misunderstanding is what the definition of resolution is. I worked in high resolution radar mapping, so I know what that means. In reality one needs to remove the idea that resolution is digital and related to pixel size, although pixel size or sampling has to be fine enough to represent the bandwidth in the signal. Each pixel or point has a continuous response much larger than the pixel. If two identical amplitude points are separated by a distance just large enough so that a sufficient depth or gap is produced then that distance should be referred to as resolution. If the requirement is High Dynamic Range (HDR), then the gap has to be deeper than SDR. Subjective testing a long time ago found that 1080p HDR image was better than 4K. This issue with 4K HDR is that it takes more bits per pixel to represent and the gap needs to be deep. Netflix UHD (Dolby Vision is better but still has quantization noise filling the gaps) doesn’t subjectively look as good as 1080 P bluray video with lower compression.
One answer for the Fox production case, would be to get rid of the cables for all of those cameras and use a wireless network that supports the capacity for those channels. Also, couldn’t each camera be given an inexpensive processor to convert its video and audio to uncompressed 1080P HDR, until it’s feasible to handle 4K HDR. The processor could also do Dolby vision encoding. Seems that the expensive part should be the camera’s with their sensors, not the processing which shouldn’t be more than 80 iPhones could do.
What wireless network do you suggest that also allows for four return video feeds to the camera op, two channels of intercom, teleprompter video to the camera head from the camera control unit (CCU), ability of the video engineer to paint or adjust camera color?
During Obama’s first inauguration a producer wanted to use wireless technology, USSS reserves the right to jam any wireless frequency they see fit. We had to have wired backups in case they jammed stuff. Didn’t happen at his inauguration but it did happen when he was at a sporting event.
High frame rates are more important for sports than high definition. 60hz refresh just isn't good enough when a ball is flying through the air.
Conclusion: broadcasters IN THE USA are years behind in terms of upgrading their equipment because they are too cheap (or too greedy) to spend money, but they really quick when it comes to increasing prices for their services.
Exactly what it is!
It’s kinda funny that F1 can do 4K HDR a sport that’s around $16bn yet American Football NFL franchise is around $8bn then each team averages a value of $4.5bn…. Not as if the money isn’t there.
PLEASE DON’T PUMP FAKE HDR, JUST STAY ON STANDARD DYNAMIC RANGE… PLEASE!!
There is a major noticeable difference between native 4K and fox sports 1080p up conversion. I’ve watched a couple MLB broadcasts in native and they look incredible. We’ve had 720p sports now since 2006. It’s time to move on.
If we are even going to have discussions about what resolution is important in terms of motion pictures, we need to talk about the lack of motion resolution on Sample and hold displays.
Sttandard LCD and even OLED displays can only resolve about 300 lines in motion unless black frame insertion is employed, which will bump the resolution in motion up to 800 lines. Your TV has to artificially interpolate fake frames just to get to 1080 lines in motion on any Modern Display.
So even the signal that they are sending during the Superbowl, your television cannot resolve without help from internal motion processing.
We need impulse driven displays like CRTs to be able to see 1920 x 1080 pixels per second in motion.
Micro-led provided that it is driven the right way is the only modern technology that will be able to reproduce 1080p in motion without artificial frames, or black frame insertion.
This video bringing up that the bandwidth and cash required to transmit 4K for the Super Bowl illustrates fully that we need better TVs that operate differently from today's flat panels and instead act like our older analog CRT sets.
I think HDR is more important. I’d take 1080p with HDR than just 4K any day.
60fps would nice too
I just want better than 5mbps 1080p… TSN PLEASE
To simplify the explanation, it all comes back to MONEY, and advertisers aren’t going to pay a nickel more for the 4K production‼️End of discussion❗️
With ESPN charging $80 for UFC Pay Per Views on top of a $10/month subscription. It should be in 4K Dolby Vision minimum.
Most 4K is Trash, period. Especially steaming services. I laugh when I see RUclips tv advertising 4K upgrades. Fios TV was the best I experienced but too expensive. Physical media for the win.
F1 has been in 4k for years and it generally looks fantastic. Onboard footage isn’t in 4k yet due to wireless broadcast limits but they are working on a solution.
Cost of camera's is about the only thing that's really an issue here. How do you think datacentres run? A cheap single fibre optic cable per camera can easily carry WAY more bandwidth than even 8K produces. They get connected to switches which can feed the consoles. You don't need extra cables, just fibre in the first place.
Also if you want twice the power of a server from say 5 years ago, you don't have to generate twice the heat. Chips have shrunk, they are more power efficient. My phone can process 4K HDR. These tasks are generally offloaded to dedicated chips anyway which handle multiple streams. If you needed 10 servers 5 years ago you can almost certainly do the same workload these days with 3 or 4 servers which at worst would produce the same heat as the original 10.
Sure, local distributors may have issues, but that's on them. Cables from cameras and processing 4K really is not an excuse. F1 can do it for every race, and these days they don't even have on-site (at the race track) media production centres - it's bitstreamed to a central processing location thousands of miles away, directed, edited, produced and distributed to the relevant local distributor. Really isn't as hard as Fox are making out.
This is just about bandwidth, and 4K is laughably small in comparison to even medium sized company network infrastructure. How do you think you can have 50 people in an office streaming 1080p or 4K at lunchtime over the company WiFi or 4G/5G?
Yes, you need upgraded cameras. Yes, compression is horrendous from the traditional media companies and yes we should expect 60FPS and HDR. You can buy a XBOX Series X for $400 that spits out 4K, HDR, 120FPS and that's GENERATING the frames as well as processing. You're telling me Fox Sports and other's can't do the same as what 40 (I'm being VERY generous, could easily be 20) Xbox Series X / PS5's can do for a huge sports event? The heat output is too high? Pssshh - you've been fobbed off mate!
Source: 23 years as technical infrastructure architect
Apple's MLS subscription looks fantastic on my calibrated LG OLED. It's 1080P, but they seem to be streaming a very high quality signal with no bit-stuffing artifacts. The color is fantastic and on a properly calibrated TV, looks very tonally balanced and clean. No blown out highlights, good shadow detail, and punchy but not unrealistic colors are a genuine feat considering what a low CRI most stadium lights produce.
We've had 4k for a long time. I would have thought we'd be farther along by now.
Why, in 2023 does the four leading broadcasters in the USA STILL transmit their programming in 720p or 1080i? In other developed nations programming is in 1080p and occasionally in 4k!
Get Sharp Aquos Quatrum panel 😅! They r made in Japan . They upscale 2X native . N 10 yr ago I was watching HD stream in 2K all d time! When ppl were doing 4k Tv getting 720p experience! Yeah I was doing 2K they were doing 720-HD . But those r SHARP flagship panels usually $200-300 more pricy than Sony Flagship ! Those r WORTH it ! Like they r lunching SHARP Aquos XLED this year for d -- 1st time in 8 yrs in USA . Maybe next a few yrs they might bring back AQUOS Quattrun panels back . They r future prove for 8-10 yrs .
I totally agree about the compression rate!
If you have seen good not much compressed 720P or even 1080P, you will know that it is better than a much compressed 4K video.
maybe its different in gaming but jumping up from 60 fps to lets say 90 (or more) is very noticeable in how smooth and realistic things appear to move
I work for Verizon FiOS TV. We had the Olympics in 4K and we were getting pissed off calls from NBC executives watching at home saying the 4k channels had issues. Of course Verizon executives started freaking out. We discovered in pretty much every case, the NBC executives were using shitty HDMI cables that couldn't handle the 4K.
as a tennis fan, yeah, just give me 1080p60 any time of the day vs 4k, the higher framerates make the action so much clearer vs the old 24fps standard
I used to work for many broadcasting companies. Most of engineers don't know crap! The simple solution to stream in 4k was by upconverting the feed. Remember that resolution means nothing in TV and video, what is the most important is the definition. Those cameras has enough sensels (not pixels) to capture the luma values to deliver very detailed images. NO broadcast in the USA broadcast not even in 1080p. They all are in 1080i and 720p. ONLY online videos are in 4k and 8k. All these digital switchers you see can handle a ton of video feed, the problem is the producers and directors trying to add BS to the system.
Here in Canada we do have Sportsnet and TSN in 4K broadcasted for IPTV providers... however actual 4K broadcasts on these channels are indeed limited; basically to only a few teams home games... mostly those in the Toronto market (BlueJays all 81 home games, Maple Leafs and Raptors) among a few others... but when they're on a road or at one of these venues they haven't setup for 4K broadcasts, back to the usual 1080i (or 720p). It's too bad they're unable to bring in the Sky Sports F1 4K feed for F1 broadcasts.
One of the biggest sports leagues in the World, IPL Cricket is going to be in 4K from this year. Around 1.5 billion people watch it daily for about 60 days each year.
I'd be happy if channels like ESPN would finally jump to 1080! Watching baseball on this channel with a 65" screen or bigger is ABSOLUTELY noticeable when the broadcast is in 720.
I have been saying FOR YEARS that its crazy we watch sports at sub 30fps!?! Sports, after gaming should be the first entertainment offerings to jump on the higher frame rate hype train!! It would improve the viewing experience profoundly!! I would take 1080/60 over 4k/30(or 23.4) EVER day of the week!!
In Australia. Our pay TV provider Foxtel has sports in 4K. Huge difference.
The other day I went and tried to order a 4K Blu-ray of ANY type of major sporting event. Not even ONE was available for purchase - anywhere, in ANY type of sport. You would think that those producing those big sporting events would at least be willing and able to sell 4K DVD's of their events to fans after the fact now in 2023...and you would be wrong.
They just want control over things. Makes no sense honestly
Did you even watch the video? Many of the cameras are not 4k
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 Did YOU even watch the video? They clearly said that ALL of the content is frequently UPCONVERTED to 4K after the fact. All of which can easily be put onto a 4K Blu-ray.
So right after the Super Bowl tonight I went to the NFL Shop site and, just exactly as anticipated, STILL no 4K disc of the game available for purchase. Still only standard 1080p Blu-rays can be bought. Is this EVER going to change? Will ANY sporting event of ANY kind ever be available to be purchased on 4K Blu-ray?
I'm gonna argue that they don't need 4k(+) cameras for 4k broadcasting, but they need the extra resolution for cropping in replays, in post, etc. You can crop into 4k footage by 200 % and into 8k footage by 400 %, and you still get Full HD footage. You can also use AI to automatically crop towards the ball. That should work especially fine for shots with high overview and deep depth of field.
The lossy encoding should be done in the camera.
English premiere league 50 fps 4k hevc broadcast takes around 12 mbps.
Cat6a 1 gbps Ethernet should be able to deliver effective 500 mbps.
This should be more than enough to deliver low compressed 60fps 4k hevc
Even why not 8k streaming !!
8K Ultra HD Blu ray disc it should be exclusive to physical media 8K
4k Sports should be standard. They have enough money
Having done recordings for games using uncompressed FRAPS, and then see how RUclips has to compress it down, I can definitely speak to how much uncompressed video looks fantastic
great job of explaining the issues of 4K sports. 1080p with HDR is the answer (For now) Fox sports app and apple Friday Nite Baseball look great on my 4K 75" Samsung
720p doesn't look so good but watchable.
12gSDI Is so common now, and has been for so long, these sports broadcasters are capable of broadcasting in 4K. It’s just not profitable for them. Buuut they can’t figure out why their industry isn’t seeing profits like they want. Hummm, I wonder why people aren’t paying up. Maybe because things like the cost of food is too damn expensive. Thanks Caleb, always enjoy your videos.
Depends on what you mean by common...there are many things in the chain that are not 12G capable. Including converters, monitors, routers, etc. Every. Single. piece of equipment MUST be upgraded.
The Super Bowl is not typical. Not many sporting events will use 80 cameras. A typical NFL, NBA, or big-time College Football should be much more manageable. I certainly understand it only being available on a limited basis, but it shouldn't be this limited! Major sporting events should have this by now! All new equipment purchased should be 4K and we should be slowly expanding.
8K physical Sony and Blu ray disc Association by 2026 please 8K Blu ray disc or flash drive format.
In summary, the technology isn’t there yet. The same could be said about 1080p 15-20 years ago. Wait five years, and all that technology along the entire pipeline will have been upgraded.
I hope you’re right.
Another perfect example of why “just because we can. Doesn’t mean we should”
I myself don’t even have a 4k tv. 1080p is more than enough
Weren't there similar issues when it came to upgrading from standard definition to HD? (When HD sports first started becoming common,) I thought many HD broadcasts or SD channels of a game being shown in HD looked worse because they had digital compression and punched up colors that looked fake compared to say ESPN in the 90s.
I've seen 90s games that look less over exposed than newer ones.
Some of them Consider HD but it's 1080i. Some announce 1080p but lower the bitrate and the image fluctuates between 480p and 1080p .
Great video and explanation thanks! Unfotunately in Canada we can only watch football/soccer through streamers like DAZN and Fubo TV which both boradcast at 720p, at least at 50fps. The high compression isn't great though and feel they could at least do 1080p as they are broadcast in 4K in Europe
Well Fox is still primarily 720p on sports even in 2023......
Gees I forgot what an amazing job you've done with your weight when you showed the clip from years agp. Congrats old Twitter friend.
BBC iPlayer shows large sporting events (world cup, Wimbledon tennis, soccer finals) using HLG HDR. Its technology the BBC made with Japan's NHK network. It looks so good, but the delay is noticeable!
1080p with a monster bitrate looks really fantastic. Most 1080p footage you see looks pretty bad because of the bitrate.
Even look at a very high bitrate 720p video if you can find one, you won't believe your eyes.
I agree with everyone on here that says 4k should be the standard at this point in time. Even if I somewhat understand why not, how come the networks don't show non-live movies and shows in 4k? I was under the impression that all are shot in the higher resolution so why aren't we getting it to us?
Premier League in the UK has been 4k for a couple of years now, so there's no excuse for American sports, where there's a lot more money involved.
It’s still upscaled 1080p just like “4k” sports here.
It's upscaled Fake 4K in the UK. Don't buy in the hype, it's not the real deal.
Formula 1 is also produced in 4k since 2018.
Hoping 4k HDR becomes the target standard for a long time for everything from video games, tv & sports. Seeing 8k tvs when the average person cant even tell the difference is a waste to me
Y’all remember when we made the slow transition to 720/1080p television back in 2007ish? I remember I was amazed how incredible the picture looked when watching the news and shit 😂😂
Okay as far as deploying cables, why aren't major stadiums retrofitted with cables already? Usually most NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB games are only broadcast by one network at a time so wouldn't it make logical sense to preinstall these cables in conduits and just leave them in place? Then which ever network is broadcasting the games they can just plug into any cable they need. If they need extra then they can pull those cables via the conduits and take them with them when they leave. This is no different than the early cities when telegraph/telephone lines were installed. Eventually people realized having duplicate cables for every company made no sense and they all agreed to share. Breaking down and setting up all these cables must be a HUGE waste of time and man power every weekend.
And as for the inputs, I get it, 4x as many. So broadcast the "main" cameras in 4K and the rest if 1080p.
But all that said I agree 100% on just getting unstepped on 1080p in 6o fps. I actually like gaming on my 2K monitor at 165htz over a 4K monitor at 60htz any day!
Well done,explained , didn't know the details. Keep up the good work.!!
Most top flight sport in the UK is broadcast in UHD HDR, all the major broadcast companies here have UHD trucks and they do UHD HDR sport every weekend.
8k TVs have been around for a while and 4K is still not entirely mainstream.
Watching the Cubbies play a game at Wrigley on a bright sunny day in 4K would be the ultimate viewing.
Apple TV+ showed MLB games in 4K very well last year. Picture quality was amazing for it’s first year.
Fox OTA is still 720p
I'd be happy with football and/or sports in 1080p. We're still living in 2008 with 720 HD.
Thanks for the video Caleb. But my question is wasn't it the same when we went from 480p to 1080p? Meaning everyone had to adapt their software and hardware?
Maybe so, but it did take a lot of time before we got 720p on broadcasts and later on 1080p. 4K is a lot harder.
@@FHC1944 4k isn't a lot harder.our current bandwidth is exponentially much higher than it was in 98 when the NFL went hd .these companies have access to multi gigabits of data whereas back then they were on low dsl or dial up 😂
@@truthx7 It was really rare with hd in the 90s. It's going to take time before we get 4K on every live sports. It's more complex than we think and not so economical. Like Caleb said, it's better with an uncompressed 1080p than a compressed 4K. Just watch every streaming service. It's very compressed streams.
@@truthx7 No you're mistaking internet connection with broadcast infrastruture. It only at the end hits an internet connection. Even then a 1080p60fps stream is 3Gbps. I doubt you even have a 1Gbps download speed (1000Mbps) at your house.
@@FHC1944 Yep. Additionally, many companies just invested in HD infrastructure a few years ago, meanwhile SD was around for 20 -25 years. So the cost of moving all equipment (especially since 4K is bleeding edge) is astronomical. Many TV stations waited for the price of HD to come down and rode out their SD equipment for as long as possible.
Always have been curious about why sport-streams look so bad. Thank you for answering! May the time of good looking sport-streams come sooner than later.
There is one drawback to 4K which you didn't mention. When you have sports like tennis, where the camera work features many close-up shots, those shots have to be exceptionally well-focused, or it really stands out that they aren't as sharp as they should be. 4K sports have been common in Europe for a while, and whether it is true 4K or not, it is noticeably better than HD.
Here in the U.K. we do get Premier League games and other big sports like F1 racing in 4K but that’s about it. There were some games in the recent World Cup that were also in HDR, which took things to the next level. However it’s still certainly not the norm here to get all sports broadcast in 4K.
If there had been RUclips way back then I suppose someone would have made a video about why talking movies were so hard to make compared to silent movies, why there weren't more sports in colour instead of black and white, why aren't more sports in 1080 instead of 720 etc. Competition and tech improvements will drive the next improvements in sports broadcasting, as they have always done.
An uncompressed HDR 1080p in 60fps looks just as good! And anyway, like it's been said, we're not there yet. An upscaled compressed 4K looks ass anyway!
Am I the only one who doesn't think having 100 cameras actually makes the experience better for the viewer? I'm tired of these directors feeling like they have to cut to a different camera every 5 seconds. I'd like a version of the broadcast in 4K that just sits there, as if I was watching the game in the stadium sitting on the 50 yard line. I mean hell, don't we have the ability to just place one of those globe shaped multi cameras in a seat...and then I can throw on an Oculus and turn my head and look at whatever I want in the stadium...just like I was there...when is that coming?
A lot of the excuses provided were the same ones uttered in the 2000s and 2010s about HD broadcasting of sports.
Jio just announced 4K streaming for IPL 2023 for free. That's around 300 hrs of 4K content at 50 fps, that too in multiple viewing angles.
What an absolute copout. Almost every weekend we get premier league games in 4k. Other leagues in Europe also regularly broadcast in 4k. And, yet here we are making excuses for a multi-billion dollar league such as the NFL to not invest in quality broadcasting.
15 years ago networks went from SD to HD as a standard. The appetite for HD is equivalent to that of 4k now. The only reason it's not happening now is for these corporations to save money. Nothing else. Yet our cable, internet and subscriptions keep increasing in price.
there are wireless alternatives to those thick cables, that include some form of encryption. The added pixels would still result in higher quality
What about movie trailers on RUclips? There's no excuse for why they are still uploaded in 1080p. They should all be in 4K!
Everything broadcasted should be uncompressed, native 4K & sports/live events 4K60. That should be the standard by 2030.
With the huge amount of money sports brings in, there's no way they can't afford to upgrade everything to 4K 60p. I can't exactly compare it to my own 4K 60p videos, but I would assume that they think the general population would not see a difference and therefore the investment isn't worth it.
Thank you for adding the chapter markers, that first 2 minutes was completely unnecessary for the video. Wish I could get that time back
Its complicated to deliver it in 4k but in 2023 full hd with good bitrate should be a standard especially when you consider how much we pay for sport packages. In uk if you want bt and sky sport you need to pay 45£ or 55$. So that means they make 660$ per year from one household and there are millions of them who pay for that service(just in uk).
You are forgetting the billions the broadcasters have to pay the leagues and governing bodies for each sport to aquire broadcast rights. LOL
@@enadegheeghaghe6369 i didnt forget but it seems you forgot how many billions they make from commercials(on top of all cash they make from subscribers of sport packages).
Broadcasters are stuck in the past. They were forced to go to 1080P and it cost them a lot of money. They even went to 60 frames per second for sports broadcasts. Don't expect them to destroy their transmission infrastructure to do 4 K.
In Arabia, we’ve been doing proper 4K for a few years now on the beIN network. We all watched the World Cup in 4K.
You forgot ATSC 3.0 it can handle 4K HDR over the air.
Thanks a good explanation .Our broadcast TV is still mainly 1080i / 25 fps interlaced . Plus with many "sub channels" the bit rate is low.