RTVE and Canal Sur have shared the more than 50 local licenses promoted by the Government with the aim of carrying out audiovisual tests for the implementation of the so-called ultra high definition or 4K.
Ultra high definition, also known as Ultra HD or UHD, is an image resolution format that allows a definition capacity of television broadcasting four times more than the standard high definition of 1080p.
Also known as 4K, it is a television innovation project that has been working in Spain since 2013. First, a small production was undertaken, lasting five minutes, which was broadcast at the Mobile World Congress that year. Then came the first European commercial documentary in this format, ‘The Passion of the Prado ‘, a work by José Morillas and Juan Carlos González that takes a tour of the 400 works in the Prado National Museum.
Sources from the UHD Spain association, which has members such as Atresmedia, Mediapro or RTVE, have explained to Confidencial Digital that a medium-term plan is not being considered for the implementation of Ultra HD in Spain since it would be necessary to change “the audiovisual landscape” completely due to the occupation of most of the audiovisual spectrum today.
Another complication in the development of 4K, whose capabilities are explained at length in the association website, is that only televisions that have DVB-T2 video broadcast capabilities are compatible with 4K and therefore allow viewing in this quality.
Dominio del 4K de RTVE
Meanwhile, to promote the development of this better image quality, there are currently more than fifty Spanish channels where ultra high definition is being tested.
These channels are located in all the autonomous communities of Spain except the Canary Islands and Murcia. Each one has a different number and They are located mainly in the capitals of each province.
In Madrid it is located in the number 36; in Barcelona, in ’43; in Seville, at number 36, for example.
Andalusia has six regional channels among all its provinces. Among them, channel number 26 in Malaga, TVE, as well as 44 in Cádiz and 48 in Granada, stands out.
In addition, another community with a multitude of UHD test spaces is Castilla y León, with a total of eight stations, all from RTVE. These channels are located in all the provincial capitals of the autonomous community except Valladolid. The number 42 and 41 are the most repeated in this autonomous community, with Burgos, León and Palencia in the first and Ávila and Segovia in the second case.
Of the total 52 planned UHD channels, 49 are already in operation and 3 will arrive soon. RTVE leads most of the tests with a total of 49 licenses that are operated through two operators, Cellnex and Telecom CLM.
On the other hand, there are 4 licenses available to Canal Sur, which are managed through the Axión channel.
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