Rai teams up with Eutelsat to offer Euro2016 in UHD

Italian public broadcaster Rai is using Eutelsat to deliver Ultra HD coverage of premium sport via the Tivùsat platform.

Seven matches of the Euro 2016 championship will be offered to Italian TV homes receiving Tivùsat, the free-to-view platform distributed by satellite from Eutelsat’s Hot Bird platform. The initiative marks Rai’s most ambitious foray into UHD to date.

UHD broadcasts will begin on June 30, with the first match of the quarter-finals, followed by the other quarter-finals on July 1, 2 and 3.

The semi-finals will be broadcast in Ultra HD on July 6 and 7 with the final scheduled for July 10.

Viewers equipped with an Ultra HD screen and a CAM certified by Tivùsat will be able to watch the matches by tuning to the number of the special channel to be activated by Tivùsat for the championship.

The broadcasts will be supported by technology partners including V-Nova, which will provide P.Link 4K, a software-based contribution encoding and decoding system.

According to Italian communications technology industry group ANITEC, sales of UHD TVs in the country will pass one million by the end of this year.

Rai will also use Eutelsat to extend its number of HD channels to 11. The five channels already available in HD via Tivùsat – Rai 1, Rai 2, Rai 3, Rai Sport 1 and Rai 4 – will be joined in May by Rai Movie and Rai Premium.