Burbank, Calif.-based Deluxe Entertainment Services Group said March 29 that it’s successfully broadcast live 4K video between the U.K. and the U.S. using the public Internet.
Delivered at 50 Mbps, the live 4K stream was encoded using the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video compression standard at a frame rate of 30 frames per second, leaving a Deluxe facility in the U.K. and traveling across several Internet service providers (ISPs), before arriving at Deluxe facilities in the U.S.
Deluxe said the broadcast — which was protected by Advanced Encryption Standard-256 (AES) encryption — opens up new opportunities for broadcasters worldwide.
“This is a significant development for broadcasters, content owners or any rights holder moving live video signals across continents,” said Alec Stichbury, CTO at Deluxe MediaCloud. “As a whole, the industry is constantly battling with delivering increasingly higher bit rate formats at lower costs, like when moving from SD to HD, and now from HD to 4K.”
Deluxe has deployed 4K streaming in production between studios in Europe and North America in the past, using its broadcast delivery network (BDN), which currently covers five continents, and was most recently used to deliver the Super Bowl live in Europe. But this marks the first time a 4K stream was sent live between the U.S. and U.K. using just the Internet infrastructure that’s already available to the public.
“Using the public internet, Deluxe’s BDN provides a highly secure, lower cost solution at a higher quality and without the bandwidth limitations of traditional satellite or fixed fiber transport mechanisms,” Stichbury said.
