BBC iPlayer 4k support in time for the World cup?

[ajwool]

So, will we finally get Bbc iPlayer support in time for the World Cup? Announcement coming imminently:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/bbc-4k-hdr-world-cup-confirmation-week-away

[jan.hansen957]

It is not a myth. It has been researched. Perhaps you could spot the difference, I dont’ know, but the main reason that people do on a small 43 inch TV is because of the increased bitrate.

Sent from my iPhone

[Kuschelmonschter]

I dont’ know, but the main reason that people do on a small 43 inch TV is because of the increased bitrate.

You have to increase the bitrate! 4K means four times the pixels compared to 1080p. You need to store those additional pixels which obviously requires more bits. If you encoded 4K with the same bitrate as HD, the result would look awful, unless you use a much more efficient compression algorithm. So the increase in bitrate mitigates the increase in pixels.

[jan.hansen957]

I know you have to do that. It requires a higher bitrate, but many videos come with an increased resolution, h265 + even higher bitrate. That is why some 4k media looks better on 1080p devices. With that said; bitrate varies

Sent from my iPhone

[romipat]

---

@bemaniac84 wrote:
Holy moly. My new £670 Philips Hdr1000 monitor has arrived I think I'm the
first in the UK with one. Compared to the XD8599 the BBC footage is bright
and vibrant and amazing. The BBC are pumping out really bright footage you
just need the right hardware to display it! The £1500 Sony has been binned
off to the spare room because Sony suck. Sony don't suck at exclusive games
though and Uncharted 4 pops in HDR like crazy on this Philips panel with
highs of 1300nits brightness. Or 1300cd/m2 if you are allergic to nits.
Basically if you want good world Cup footage dump your Sony!

---

not sure which sony model you had and binned but my 65 xe9305   (1400 nits) is giving me  very bright and vibrant colours with the bbc 4k hdr coverage.

[romipat]

---

@jan.hansen957 wrote:
https://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/4k-ultra-hd-uhd-vs-1080p-full-hd-tvs-and-upscaling-compared

4k also comes with higher bitrate. If your 10 ft away you wont notice the bump in resolution

Sent from my iPhone

---

 sitting  10  ft away from my  65 xe9305 and i can definitely tell thedifference between  1080  and  4K.  I've  been watching the world cup  games in  4k hdr and where it really excells is in the  colour range and contrast.  the colours pop and are vibrant and  whenever the sun is in the  picture it   dazzles to the extent that I  almost have to squint. it  blows  my old kdl w2000  1080p tv's image quality  away. have to   say that im very  happy with  it just a  shame that  sony havent sorted out the iplayer issue andthat ive had to  use the iplayer app on my v6 box to get the  bbc 4k hdr content.

[rgledhill]

I know I'm going to get flamed here... but... the bit-rate is independent of the resolution.  The MPEG codec will decompress the picture information to any resolution; you can have a 1Mbps stream on at 8k monitor if you want, at 8k, it'll just look exactly the same as running the same stream at whatever the original source video was at.  Normally, of course, you use a higher bit rate at 4k than Full HD simply because there are more pixels available to decompress to.  Basically, the more bits that come in, the finer the ultimate quality of the picture.  I've seen Full HD streams at 10Mbps and 4k streams at 4Mbps.

Myth-busting again and if you don't believe me, have a read of the Wikipedia page about MPEG and other similar codecs.

[Kuschelmonschter]

If you compress video, you can indeed through as few bits at it as you want. Question is how the result will look like. Try to encode the same video with the same codec and same quantizer, one time with 1080p and one time with 2160p resolution. The encoder will have to throw much more bits at the 2160p to achieve the same quality. 4K at the same low bitrate as 1080p will probably be unwatchable.

[rgledhill]

Agreed.  It's exactly the same with JPEG pictures.  You can have a 20Mpixel image that's 100kB or 10MB; the difference is in how fine the detail is resolved.  The same applies to MPEG.

[jan.hansen957]

I agree. I know there are 1 GB 1080 rips, and 5 GB 720p rips. I am just saying that much 4K material is in a much higher bitrate than what is equivalent to the bitrate needed for say 720p. That means that in certain situations 4k streams will look better on a non 4k tv. BBC is doing a 36 mbit stream 4k stream. If the Roku box plays that 35 mbit 4k stream on a 43 inch 1080p TV, it will look better than the 5.8 mbit 1080p stream that BBC also provide.

[lukejohnson]

Hurry up and get this firmware released for my Sony (KD-43XD8305) television...!

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/lcd-tvs-android-xd83xx_x83xxd-series/kd-43xd8305/download...

What exactly are you waiting for? I want to watch the World Cup in 4K HDR on BBC player! This support from Sony is a disgrace! I’ve been loyally buying Sony television products for over 20 years and my lastest purchase (only in November 2016) was the leading Sony model for 43inch sized panel and I have no support for 4K HDR on the BBC iPlayer app. I have friends who have bought cheap TVs for a fraction of the price of mine and they are working well on BBC iPlayer..it’s EMBARRASSING! ......I WILL NEVER BUY SONY EVER AGAIN! No more loyalty anymore....Sony YOU should be ashamed of yourselves!