I'm hoping they broadcast some of this on com8, 1080p100 or even 720p100 would be great, much more meaningful for sports TV than just adding more pixels that blur the moment anything moves anyway. I always thought that movement was really an essential part of sport!

I've tried some 720p120 I shot myself on a bunch of "4K" TVs and none of them would play it. My DLP projector has no problem with it though and it really looks smooth, you only realise how smooth when you go back to 50 or 60p.

I'd really like to see some properly shot >60fps sports video, unfortunately I can't get up to Glasgow until it's all over. I'm recording as much of this as I can so lets hope, although the current h265 encoders seem to struggle at 60p never mind more!

In a similar way that 720p50 was so much better than 1080i25 for almost all environments and certainly for LCD panels!

So how did that work out, remind me...

Joe public is always going to go for the bigger numbers, the still camera market proved that and is still proving it in the smartphone pixel arms race. I've spent some time in a local high end TV shop (watching BBC Ultra HD World Cup recordings) and heard many punters say "Shouldn't I wait for 8k?" usually followed by "65 inch is far too big for my house".

The curved screens seem about right for 1m viewing distance, if they made then at 40 inch I'd get one as a monitor, perfect.

German HD (ARD 1) is 720P, cable and satellite only, no HD DTT.

That's not the same thing. You can see the difference between 1280x720 and 1920x1080 in some living room environments (larger screens and smaller viewing distances). The size of TV you'd need to tell the difference between 3840x2160 and 7680x4320 would be beyond the realms of possibility for most people.

This time there's no interlacing compromise question either.

I think the high frame rate stuff is a separate test.

Steve

I think this was more down to the display than anything else. 720p on a 720 screen (they did exist) could be just as good as 1080p on a 1080 screen

Now that we are locked with 1920x1080, I would even say "The size of TV you'd need to tell the difference between 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 would be beyond the realms of possibility for most people."

Yes it's muddied by the interlacing or "legacy formats" as the EBU now thankfully refer to it. The point was that Joe Public will always go for the biggest number regardless of any reality, sense or reason. The few Sports Broadcasters I know who were planning to go with 720p were vetoed by the marketing department, told to use 1080i as customers wanted "proper HD"

I think I'd benefit a little from 3840x2160 and can definitely discern 720p from 1080p with a 120" screen DLP projector from 2.5m but for the TVs currently on sale used in the way most people watch TV nothing is big enough to get any significant benefit from any signal over 1080p. I'm sure they will sell well when the price comes down a little

However the difference between 2160p50 and 1080i25 (50 half frames) is clearly visible from a distance. I did some tests with 1080p60 re-compressed from the 2160p60 World cup and 1080p50 re-compressed from some other 2160p50 football I have and it's much more pleasant to watch than the usual oval balls and blurry legs that 1080i results in.

It's those pesky Japanese putting 85" TVs in 4 foot square apartments that are muddying the situation with 8k. The 8k demos I've seen have struggled to maintain any focus so in fact were mostly fuzzier than 4k or even 2k.

I do not have my setup for DTT at present, but what has been on this channel today? Just rythmic gymnastics or others?

I recorded some of the overnight stuff the other day as described, and as I said programmes such as Coast featured. However, it appeared that the screen was completely white during this broadcast or is that to do with not being able to display things properly.

Will try to capture some more in daytime once I know what time the channel is going out live.

Any more info would be appreciated. Thanks.

My mistake. The picture I thought was all white was a view directly at the sun as shown on a camera.

I have now managed to use PotPlayer to play the files but first 8 sdeconds is OK then it plays a little bit at a time!

It's been Gymnastics every time I've looked, doesn't seem the best thing to showcase Ultra HD with to me.

Is that possible, or are they curved screens?

An 85" screen at 16:10 ratio would fit on the wall of a 4ft square room on it's end and would be approximately 45x72 inches, a normal room height of 8ft (96 inches) would accommodate it easily.

It's maths Jim, but not as we know it

Eh?

What happened to 16:9 ratio? Or has it been superseded by a squarer screen?

The only full 4K camera set is at The Hydro, so there's going to be a lot of Gymnastics.
Here's a guide to all of the Hydro events:

At other times it seems the 4K channel shows either an R&D screen between events, or a 25-minute loop from the previous day through the night. The opening ceremony was also broadcast in 4K, so I wonder if the closing ceremony will be too.

The boxing and netball should be a welcome change, did you see/ record the opening ceremony? I looked at the time and didn't see it on com8, maybe they will re-run that at some point.

Andre

Huh, was relying on this R&D blog entry which said it would be screened in Glasgow, which made me think it was just put on the Test channel too, but I guess not. :/

I'm pretty sure the opening ceremony was on com8 - I was out that evening but got back right as the ceremony finished - I was able to see one frame of the ceremony ending that my scripts had generated, but by the time I was in a position to stop the scripts and try to dump a sample of the stream they'd already switched back to the BBC demo roll.

I've never seen the opening ceremony being repeated. As people are saying above, the live competition content is all coming so from the SECC so far. No doubt they are restricted by budget resources but it would be nice to see them move to an outdoor event for some brighter and more complex shots with greater movement.

I was there watching BBC One HD and recording the UHD, every time I grabbed a few frames it seemed to be the BBC demo reel. I'll have to go through that recording properly, maybe it started part way through or even was a highlights only piece. I'll be annoyed if I missed it.

I have a system fast enough to play these recordings now, an overclocked Devil's Canyon I7 does the job. Only just fast enough for the 59.94fps World cup matches but plenty for 50fps.

The video stream on COM8 has switched to the main 10 profile -

I'm just trying to work out what else has changed. The profile swap was at approx 17:30 but something then locked my scripts so I'll have a look at what they are up to and edit this post if I find anything more.

With luck this means they are producing the closing ceremony in 10-bit. I read somewhere they'd had to delay using Main 10 since some of their trial equipment wasn't coping with it. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/07...ver-dtt-and-ip referring to their world cup UHD trial -

Now that the Commonwealth Games have finished, are we likely to see Com 8 start normal transmissions with one or two regular HD channels.

COM8 from Winter Hill now off air. Last detected at approx 13:40.

There was no UHD coverage of the closing ceremony.

That's all folks!

Still going at Crystal Palace. Some posh bloke. . .

They had the demo roll running since Saturday once the live UHD sport had finished. I think it was one that used to run on BBC HD when that had unscheduled time, and I assume it is all upscaled from HD. I don't know about the colour depth, could that possibly be shot in 10-bit but then only broadcast in 8? Else the colour depth is upscaled too while they are running Main10.

Do keep us informed if anything changes- there's no sign of COM8 here all afternoon. I wonder if the public demo in London is still up and showing something?

The mux disappeared from CP sometime between 8:30 and now.

My recorder stopped at 10:37, nothing there now.

Thank you BBC R&D for conducting tests in the open, unencrypted and what's more blogging about it to tell us what's coming.

PS XBMC & FFmpeg have been really busy over the last week, XBMC nightly builds on Linux now play the World Cup and Commonwealth Games recordings at full speed with ease where a week ago it was ~20fps on the same 4.8Ghz i7.