Sunrise and Swisscom to launch ultra-high definition TV next year

Sunrise announced on Monday that it will launch a UHD-capable TV reception box in the first quarter. The number of UHD TV channels has not yet been determined, Sunrise spokesman Roger Schaller told news agency SDA in response to an inquiry. As with the switch from standard definition to HD TV, there will be more and more channels with the new technology over time, he added. For comparison: Of Sunrise's 230 TV channels, more than 80 are now broadcast in HD.

Home theater

"Consumers want to bring the cinema home," Dirk Wierzbitzki, the head of Swisscom's fixed network business for residential customers, told the media in Zurich on Tuesday. For this, he said, UHD TV is needed. That's because flat screens have been getting bigger since their introduction, he said. "However, the picture quality has not kept pace with the increasingly larger screens," Wierzbitzki said. The same number of pixels, he said, is being stretched over an ever-larger area. As a result, the individual pixels become larger, and image sharpness suffers. This is where UHD comes in, which has four times as many pixels as an HD TV picture. In addition, the new HDR (High-Dynamic-Resolution) technology greatly expands the contrast between black and white and increases the color variety. TVs equipped with HDR can display eight times more colors and have five times the brightness. This makes the good old
"matte disc" finally becomes a glossy disc.

Data mountain

The downside to the brave, shiny new world of television is the amount of data that has to be transmitted. While an HD channel today requires a bandwidth of 9 megabits per second (Mbit/s), a UHD channel requires 25 to 30 Mbit/s. Initially, about two-thirds of households on the Swisscom network should be able to receive UHD TV, Wierzbitzki said. Swisscom plans to launch the new TV world next spring, he said, when the UHD-enabled reception box is launched. Initially, feature films, documentaries and series would be offered on demand in the high resolution. Starting with the next season 2016/17, one to two matches per round of the highest Swiss soccer league will also be broadcast in UHD. In addition, the intention is to broadcast selected matches from the Euro2016 European Championship where possible. Whether Swiss ice hockey games will also be shown in UHD is still being considered, said Wierzbitzki.

Overtake UPC Cablecom

At the beginning, he expects Swisscom to be able to offer about a dozen UHD TV channels. However, these tend to be niche channels and not the major broadcasters such as SRG or ARD. "In addition, we are discussing with Sky the acquisition of Bundesliga soccer matches in UHD," Wierzbitzki said. Swisscom's clear goal is to become the largest Swiss TV provider by the first quarter and overtake current market leader UPC Cablecom, said private customer boss Marc Werner. For its part, UPC Cablecom kept mum on UHD TV. "We can't say anything concrete at the moment," said spokesman Bernard Strapp.(SDA)