The 8K Monitor Talks to TVU Networks About Using 5G to Produce and Distribute 8K Content in China
5G networks are not only coming, they are indeed already here. One of the novelties will be vastly greater bandwidth from the use of new millimeter radio wavelengths. We never miss an opportunity to explore technologies that will bring 8K to market cost-effectively. So, when we saw a TVU Networks' Press Release a few weeks ago about using these new 5G mm wavelengths, we got Jeff Wu, TVU Networks, Vice President of Solutions, to tell us more about how this is all coming together in China. Read the article here.
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Tencent Cloud Becomes First Cloud Service Provider to Support H.266/VVC Standard
The deployment of Tencent's VVC encoder and decoder represents a major milestone. While many feel that VVC is the key to enabling commercial 8K streaming or broadcasting, Tencent seems to be focused on using it for 1080 and 4K to start. This makes sense as VVC offers immediate benefits for streaming at these resolutions too and this is where the market is today. It is our understanding that 4K encoding can be done today in real-time on consumer-grade PCs so it would be very interesting to see some results for 8K encoding as well. Read the article here.
Constant Bitrate vs Variable Bitrate Encoding and Content Complexity
If you're like us at the 8K Monitor, you can probably guess what the difference is. But in this educational OTTVerse piece, encoding guru Jan Ozer explains what the differences really mean, under the hood. What works for a high-bandwidth connection today for 1080p video delivery (200% constrained VBR) may not be appropriate for 8K content. Constant Rate Factor (CRF) encoding is great for a mezzanine encode, but since distribution bit rates may vary widely, it's too unpredictable for that use case. Capped CRF seems more optimal for delivery, however. Ultimately, bitrate savings will vary depending on the complexity and motion of the particular scene. Get the details here.
