French Tennis Open sees first live HEVC broadcast

Orange Labs, through the 4EVER consortium, is leading the live broadcast of the French Tennis Open in HD using HEVC compression this week.

The 4EVER consortium, the French ministry of industry-supported collaborative project, is using the Roland Garros tournament to provide demonstrations of multiscreen delivery using the new compression format.

From June 1 to June 9 the daily schedule of televised games will be fed to an HEVC live experimental end-to-end delivery chain including encoding, streaming, decoding, and display. Using IPTV, DVB-T2 and internet delivery networks, the matches will be broadcast to PCs, TVs and tablets, in high-definition, for viewing in France Télévisions’ public spaces, and in the technical area of Orange and in a showroom in Rennes.

According to Orange, this will be the first public demonstration of an end-to-end HEVC delivery chain, incorporating both encoding and decoding in real time.

The three-year 4EVER – “for Enhanced Video ExpeRience” – project comprises nine industry and academic partners and is supported by the French ministry of industry, three competitiveness clusters, local authorities and the European Regional Development Fund.