When the Seattle Mariners come to visit the New York Yankees in mid-July, the game will mark the next step in broadcast history.
On July 17th, Japanese public broadcaster NHK will position six, 8K cameras throughout Yankee Stadium and record the first-ever baseball game captured in the ultra-high definition format. While the game will not be broadcast, Major League Baseball and NHK will have the media view the game in a specially outfitted suite with 8K monitors in Yankee Stadium during the game.
Ultra-high definition TV is 7680 pixels wide by 4320 pixels tall (33.18 megapixels), which is a sixteen time higher resolution than current HDTV. NHK is one of the first television entities in the world to develop 8K technology, which it hopes to offer on a wide scale basis by the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
And while 4K seems like it just now has started working its way into consumer outlets, 8K is already right on its heels. LG showed off a whopping 98” 8K prototype at CES in January this year that blew attendees minds. If that wasn’t enough, how about a 110” 8K Samsung that transmits in 3D without the use of glasses?
Back to NHK and the game at Yankee Stadium against the Mariners, it will allow MLB, baseball, and sports business media types to gauge the experience, and begin the discussion as to how baseball looks in the ultra-high def format. For NHK, it gives them an early dry run of how the technology fares, sets up, and is broadcasted for sports in advance of the 2020 Olympics. In fact, NHK has been moving so quickly with 8K broadcasts that the Japanese broadcast company is looking to leap-frog over 4K and go straight to the ultra-high def format.
“It took two decades to take hi-def from the lab to public demos, said Dr. Keiichi Kubota, NHK’s Executive DG of Engineering to Home Cinema Choice. “We’ve made the same progress with Super Hi-Vision in half the time. Our experts have set a target date of 2020 for experimental broadcasts, but there’s the possibility of bringing this forward. We want to begin as soon as possible.”
So, start putting that money aside for the new technology. It’s likely that about the time you’re feeling cool about that 4K display you just mounted in your media room, 8K displays and broadcasts will be right behind. And if it bodes well at the Yankee Stadium game against the Mariners, isn’t it possible Major League Baseball will begin seeing about ways to nudge networks in the U.S. that direction? If the experience is as mind-boggling as the reports are making the 8K experience out to be, baseball fans can only hope.
