First 8K broadcasts already in December, but currently only in Japan

After the announcement of the first televisions with 8K panels at IFA in Berlin, perhaps the biggest news of the whole fair, naturally television broadcasts will come to support the new resolution.

Starting from 1 December, the Japanese national television station NHK will launch a new channel which, through a satellite connection (the only one that guarantees the bandwidth required for broadcasts, equal to about 100 Mbps) will give the possibility to see contents both in 4K that in 8K.

This is a work of preparation for the broadcast of the upcoming 2020 Olympics, giving more meaning to the announcements made by Samsung, Sony and LG to IFA. According to Engadget, Sharp will release in November, in time for the launch of the new channel, a new satellite receiver capable of reproducing the transmissions in Super Hi-Vision 4K/8K. The Japanese will be the first to enjoy native 8K broadcasts, and not just the U-upscaling of new televisions.

NHK has already started testing in 2016 for the Super Hi-Vision 8K transmissions during the Rio Olympics, with the aim of broadcasting the Tokyo Olympics to be held in 2020 at the highest possible resolution.

We do not yet have any pricing information on the Sharp 8K receiver needed to access the broadcasts, while we know that it can connect to the Aquos 8K LC-80X500 TV via four HDMI cables, and software upgrades are required.

This is because the HDMI 2.1 is not yet supported by televisions, but in the future a single cable will allow to get support at resolutions 8K @ 60 Hz and 4K @ 120 Hz. The expense to be among the first to look at the 8K resolution in the living room of his own house will probably be high, both for televisions and for the receiver. The Sharp TV, we were talking about slightly above the diagonal of 70″, is proposed to the typical figure of a small car equipped.