BBC iPlayer to stream FA Cup semi and final in Ultra HD
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Editor
| 03 April 2019

In the next steps of its journey into Ultra HD, the BBC has announced that the iPlayer will transmit the forthcoming FA Cup semi-final between Manchester City and Brighton, and the FA Cup final on 18 May, live in UHD and HDR.

The feed will be available by pressing the Red Button during the BBC’s coverage, or directly through the BBC iPlayer app on a TV. With its football coverage, the BBC is hoping to replicate previous successes for UHD on the iPlayer. It says that trials have proved very popular with 1.4 million out of a total of 8 million iPlayer requests for natural history programme Dynasties, being in Ultra HD and last summer’s live sport trial seeing 1.6 million live requests for the BBC’s Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup coverage in Ultra HD.

Yet despite its overall bullishness, the BBC expressed realistic caution reading its ambition for the FA Cup games. It emphasised that due to the experimental nature of the FA Cup trial and the high bandwidth required, there would be a cap of tens of thousands of people watching live at a time, as there was during the World Cup.

To gain access to content, audiences will need an Internet connection of at least 40Mbps for full 3840-pixel Ultra HD or 20Mbps for 2560-pixel Ultra HD. The BBC added that give Wi-Fi performance can vary greatly, so a wired Internet connection to the TV may provide a more consistent Ultra HD experience. Footage will be played at 50 frames per second and will use Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) HDR.

“As Ultra HD becomes increasingly popular in the future, the BBC is making sure nobody is left behind,” said BBC R&D head of broadcast and connected systems Phil Layton. “Our research has already provided a highly effective way for free-to-air broadcasters to put HDR into their Ultra HD programmes, and we’re working on a range of projects to make Ultra HD even better for audiences and the industry.”