Champions League Final to be upscaled for UHD viewers

IBC365 recently reported that the Champions League Final and this summer’s European Championship would both be captured in 1080p HD HDR, rather than 4K/UHD.

Commenting at the time, Thierry Fautier, Media Technology Consultant and former VP of Video Strategy at Harmonic, said: “We see similar discussions in the US, where Amazon Prime is on 1080p HDR track for Thursday Night Football, while WBD is on 2160p60 HDR for the Champion’s league, and the same WBD/TNT decides to put the UEFA final in 1080pSDR.”

Alongside increased costs, another possible reason behind such decisions could be technical. For example, if UHD cameras were used as source routing in a standard (non-IP) outside broadcast truck they would typically be distributed as four links using 3G-SDI (Serial Digital Interface). This Quad Link 4K/UHD signal needed careful monitoring to ensure sync when combined on output and made the work of the OB technically more challenging.

However, the BBC and several other broadcasters have successfully demonstrated that it is possible to produce a single workflow and output both UHD HDR and HD SDR.

It is also now common practice for UHD to be produced through upscaling, although the enhanced imagery would miss some of the finer details that might be captured using 4K/UHD.