Satellite operator SES, together with its partners Harmonic and Broadcom Corporation, pioneer the first Ultra HD transmission in the new HEVC standard live from an ASTRA satellite at 19.2 degrees East. The HEVC standard features an up to 50% encoding efficiency improvement, compared to previous test broadcasts in MPEG-4 AVC (H.264).
“HEVC is the catalyst that will drive UltraHD television with its telepresence-like resolution to consumers.”
The end-to-end demonstration (presented at the SES Industry Days in Luxembourg) used Harmonic’s ProMedia Xpress and a HEVC decoder reference-design system based on Broadcom’s BCM7445 device for receiving HEVC encoded Ultra-HD television transmission. The signal was broadcast in DVB-S2 using a data rate of 20 Mbit/s.
The live demonstration for the first time broadcasts a full 3840x2160 pixel Ultra HD picture in HEVC, while previous demonstrations were either broadcast in H.264 or using 4 HD pictures in parallel.