The transition from SD to HD TV has taken a fair number of years, but despite a large number of SD satellite channels still 'on air', we have arrived quite firmly in the HD TV area. The transition to 4K TV, which started quietly some 10 years ago still has a long way to go, but eventually we'll get there, as more and more events – especially big sports events but also live music events – will get covered in 4K at some point, right?

Well, maybe not.


How it started
I've been covering the evolution that is Ultra HD TV since December 2012, on my @UHD4k microblog on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

4K broadcast TV started more than 10 years ago. BT did the first 4K sports coverage trials during IBC 2013, announced in February 2014 their plans for doing 4K TV sports distribution, and made good on this promise a year later, with the launch of the BT Sport UHD channel and the BT UHD YouView box in August of 2015. The channel covered football matches every weekend in 4K, but also other sports such as rugby and boxing.


 BT Ultra HD YouView box, one of the first 4K set top boxes rolled out, in 2015

BT TV's competitor Sky wasn't sitting around idly, and unveiled their Ultra HD offering with their Sky Q platform, announced in November 2015 and launched early 2016. In its first year alone, Sky would broadcast no fewer than 124 Premier League matches in 4K.

A sports event that's been covered in Ultra HD since a long time, not weekly but annually, is the French Open tennis tournament, better known as Roland Garros. This kicked off in 2013. Ever since, the matches from the Philippe Chatrier centre court have been captured by France Télé in Ultra HD. Initially in 4K SDR, and from 2016 in 4K HDR. The technological progress did not stop there. In 2018 and 2019, trials with 8K capture were done. In 2019, those 8K signals were transmitted via 5G. Other experiments included 360° 'VR' viewing, tried in 2016. 

Is 8K resolution technology overshoot? Arguably. But is 4K? 8K TVs are about 0.1% of all TV sales and an even smaller fraction of the installed base of TVs, but in North America and Western Europe, half of all households already have a 4K TV as their primary set. And virtually all of these have HDR. 

Another big tennis tournament, Wimbledon, similarly started with trials in 2013. Since 2017, the Centre Court matches have always been captured by BBC in 4K HDR, and made available on BBC iPlayer. Also this year. Since 2023, UHD coverage has been expanded from Centre Court only to include No. 1 Court matches as well.

The UEFA Champions League final football (soccer) match has been captured in 4K since 2015, while the Euro football tournament, which takes place every 4 years, has switched to 4K in 2016.

FIFA, the world football (soccer) organization, started with 4K coverage of the World Cup in 2014, when they broadcast the final match in 4K. The tournament, which also takes place every 4 years, in 2018 had all matches covered in 4K HDR, something they did again in 2022.


 The 2018 World Football (Soccer) Cup had lots of broadcasters taking the 4K HDR feed 

Most of the takers of the 4K feeds of these sports events have been European broadcasters. Dutch public broadcaster NPO decided to go with HD HDR in 2022. 

Then there are purely American events, such as the Super Bowl – the final of the American Football season. It's considered “the greatest show on earth”, even if it's mainly broadcast and watched in the U.S.  It took until 2020 to be broadcast in 4K for the first time. The production rotates annually between Fox, CBS and NBC. CBS passed on the opportunity in 2021, as did NBC in 2022. Fox showed again how it's done in 2023, but CBS stuck  with 1080i (not even 1080p) in 2024. The company has yet to embrace 4K.

Fox Sports has begun broadcasting NFL Thursday Night Football matches in 4K/HDR in 2019.
Since the beginning of the 2023-2024 season, Amazon Prime Video streams these NFL games and it does so in HDR, but in 1080p resolution. They also produce the NWSL National Women's Soccer League in 1080p HDR.

The NBA has seen 4K TV broadcasts from 2016. Since 2024, they're in HDR – Dolby Vision, no less – but in HD resolution.

Another major sports league, the MLB, began with 4K broadcasts in 2016. It's available in 4K now, but be aware that it's upscaled from HD. The HDR is native, but the production takes place in 1080p which then gets upconverted for transmission – an approach Fox Sports has followed since years. The situation is the same with NHL games. 

Apple streams Friday Night Baseball (MLB) and MLS games on Apple TV+, in HD with HDR. NBC Sports produces and distributes all 'Big Ten' college football Saturday night matches in 1080p HDR.


The Olympics
A sports event with truly global appeal are the Olympic Games. Trials with 4K have first been undertaken during the 2014 Winter Olympics. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, 4K coverage was limited to the opening and closing ceremonies. We got more coverage during the 2018 Winter Olympics in Korea, and yet more during the 2020 Summer Olympics, which took place in Tokyo in 2021 and at the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing. In this year's Summer Olympics in Paris, 2024, 4K coverage was deep and wide. I will just skip over 8K coverage, except to say that while it's been announced since 2013 and actually trialled in 2020 in Tokyo and in 2022 in Beijing, in Paris this year 8K was limited to the opening and closing ceremonies, like 4K was 8 years earlier.

In the US, all Olympics coverage was produced by NBC Universal. It must be said that this has been quite advanced, with not just 4K resolution but in HDR (Dolby Vision even) with Dolby Atmos 5.1.4 audio. I'd like to note, however, that while the event was captured in 4K, NBC chose not to take the 4K feed but the HD HDR feed, and re-upconvert the video back to 4K on the other side of the ocean, for unspecified reasons that I suspect boil down to cost.


How it's going
So the trend seems to be up, right? Well, until the Euro2024 football championship, that is. The UEFA football league, a multi-billion dollar business, didn't see the value in 4K production, and settled on HD with HDR instead. Any 4K coverage you may have seen was upconverted. The same was the case with the 2024 Champions League final – an event that in 2023 was still in 4K.

 Also read: Major sports broadcasters abandon 4K in favor of 'enhanced HD'

I'm aware that organizations like the Ultra HD Forum have for years advocated the use of HD HDR (sometimes referred to as 'Enhanced HD') as a pragmatic step forwards for broadcasters, and for good reason. I think however that this was meant to 'convert' those still sitting on the fence. I did not expect it to be embraced for events that had already upgraded to 4K HDR years before.

Why is this? Of course, because of money. The business case for 4K is hard to make, especially for broadcasters. More than half of all households in the western world have a 4K TV as their main TV, but advertisers aren't clamouring for a switch to 4K. 

Concerning HDR, that's definitely on the rise, if slowly. Research has shown that improved dynamic range (HDR) is more important than increased spatial resolution (4K), but the combination of both technologies, especially with wide colour gamut (WCG) and higher colour resolution (10-bit) makes for the best experience. 

I like to advocate the use of High Frame Rate (HFR), which can be considered even more important for sports coverage, and there's already a considerable installed base of 100/120fps TV sets, yet there is zero content available. There hasn't even been a public trial yet.

The ATSC boasts a strong uptake of UHD by U.S. networks using ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV (listed in the Ultra HD Service Tracker), but note that in all cases, they use HD HDR. This qualifies as Ultra HD under the definitions of the Ultra HD Forum, but for this article I'm looking specifically at actual 4K.


Conclusion
So my conclusion is that, yes, when it comes to TV broadcast, were are past Peak 4K. In my view, the peak occurred around 2021, and we can spot signs of stagnation from 2022 on. Organisations in the TV broadcast ecosystem have looked at 4K, experimented with it, and apparently concluded that for many of them, it's overshoot and they're settling on HD HDR, which is also what live streaming uses. The good examples, that is. A lot of sports streaming is actually still in 720p SDR.

When it comes to TV broadcast, we are past Peak 4K. The peak occurred around 2021
Is 4K doomed? Not at all, but it may remain the almost exclusive domain of films and TV series, streamed on-demand through OTT services or played from Ultra HD Blu-ray physical media, basically the highest-quality format you can get.

I've written about the 'resolution gap' before: the chasm between the resolution that people's TV sets are capable of and that of the content they play on it. In the 5 years since I wrote that piece the gap has widened and I predict it will continue to do so, even if the transition to 8K TVs isn't happening. 4K TVs outnumber HDTVs in sales by a wide margin, so they'll continue to increase household penetration well beyond 50%. 

What also continues to grow is the size of people's TV screens. There's a long-term trend where the average screen diagonal grows by 1.3 inch annually. What the average is differs between America, Europe and Japan, but the yearly increase is the same across all regions. What doesn't increase is the viewing distance – living rooms aren't getting bigger – and this is why 4K matters.


 The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest (picture credit: EBU) 

Eurovision
I can live with HD HDR. TV hardware can do a decent job upscaling HD to 4K and, as argued, in the end HDR may be more important. It's just a pity that TV broadcast isn't keeping up with the capabilities of consumer TVs, even for the biggest sports events. Or music events. The Eurovision Song Content, one of the world's biggest and most colourful spectacles every year, is still broadcast in 1080i50 SDR, which is a travesty. This content just screams for HDR and WCG. The EBU claims there is “not sufficient demand” for 4K HDR, but the pubcasters I'm in contact with haven't even been asked, and apparently consumer demand doesn't matter.

In countries in Europe such as Germany, 78% of TV sales in the first half of 2024 were 4K models, and 100% of those had HDR. Somebody please tell the EBU. If HD HDR is the future of live TV broadcast for major sports and music events, let's go for it.

Yoeri Geutskens works as a consultant in media technology with years of experience in consumer electronics and telecommunications. He writes about high-resolution audio and video. You can find his blogs about Ultra HD at @UHD4k and @UltraHDBluray.