The 4K Summit shows the world what the future of Ultra High Definition television will be like

During these days, the Digital Content Pole turns Malaga into the world capital of Ultra High Definition with the presence of twenty experts who share experiences with three hundred professional professionals from all over the world.

The mayor of Malaga, Francisco de la Torre, was in charge of opening the main international meeting of professionals in the Ultra High Definition industry, the 4K Summit, which brings together experts from 20 countries, including representatives of the United States Space Agency (NASA), Telefónica and Samsung.

The 4K Summit, which has reached capacity with more than 300 registered, is the only event that brings together the great technological and content specialists of Ultra High Definition to share experiences in a top-level multidisciplinary meeting. The summit is organized by Medina Medina with Panorama Audiovisual as main media partner

The inaugural conference was given by the president of Telefónica Spain, Luis Miguel Gilpérez. In his inaugural presentation Gilpérez pointed out that with Movistar+ customers choose what, when and how to watch the content, thus changing the way in which Spaniards watch television. Regarding 4K, the president of Telefónica has indicated that they want to boost the market and by 2018, his company will have the first 4K set-top boxes. Furthermore, next year a large part of the content will be produced in 4K, both in sports and fiction, making an effort for 4K to emerge in Spain and our country to be a benchmark in the creation of 4K content.

The steps that this sector is taking to improve the visual experience of users have been listed by Nacho Monge, audio and video marketing manager at Samsung Spain, which has also reviewed the evolution of video formats, as well as 4K and UHD technologies.

Monge has anticipated some recent innovations from Samsung, which are already present in the new category of QLED TVs that the firm has launched on the market this year. Michel Chabrol, vice president of New Television Formats, presented the Ultra #HD Eutelsat TV Observatory at the 4K Summit, which shows that there are currently a hundred channels around the world that are already offering Ultra HD/4K services via satellite, although 4K is still far from achieving the penetration that HD has.

For his part, the consultant IHS Markit Paul Gray broke down the 4K market from a global point of view. Carlos Fontanot, head of images of the International Space Station dependent on the NASA, opened the afternoon session of the first day detailing NASA's processes to apply the most advanced television technology in space.

Sports, from the hand of Peter Hutton, CEO of Eurosport, took over in the auditorium of the Digital Content Pole of Malaga, who together with later Fernando Ruiz, editor-in-chief of Eurosport Spain and Guillermo Jiménez, director of broadcast systems at OBS, spoke about how the network faces the next broadcast of the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea and showed a preview of the documentary series, produced by Medina Media for Eurosport, 'Heading to Pyeongchang'.

Football in 4K

Football in 4K Mediapro, with Emili Planas, continued to give a sporting character to the evening presentations, demonstrating that these contents are one of the driving forces behind the implementation of 4K UHD. RTVE and its 4K proposal closed the first day of presentations at the 4KSummit. An extensive delegation led by the director of La 2, Juan Manuel Hidalgo, showed all their projects in 4K as a company that marks the technological and content vanguard in Spain in Ultra High Definition.

The 4K Summit and the Spanish National Team, both sponsored by Movistar, united football and new technologies throughout the day at the Malaga Digital Content Pole. All attendees were able to have their photos taken with the four National Team cups: the World Cup and the three European Cups.

Attendees are being able to follow the sessions with a dynamic, multi-screen performance from the Auditorium, thanks to I am, Tech Partner of the 4K Summit for the third consecutive year, and from the projection room equipped with the 4K HDR projector of Canon.

Second round

During Thursday's session, Michael Zink, president of the Global UHD Alliance (Ultra High Definition) and vice president of Technology at Warner, has presented the work of the alliance to promote the standardized and coordinated development of Ultra High Definition. Zink reviewed the technical parameters that will determine the consumer experience as a result of a thorough study with a hundred users in order to understand their consumption habits with respect to UHD.

For his part, the producer of the Global Content Development Division of the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Hidenobu Miyazaki, surprised everyone with some demonstrations of the latest productions that the Japanese broadcaster is making in 4K and 8K.

In addition to the presentations, the 4K Summit offers an exhibition area where Sony, Nokia, Fujifilm y Rohde&Schwarz, among others, offer free access workshops for professionals.

As another novelty this year, the 4K Summit offers a market area for Spanish producers to take advantage of the opportunity to have senior executives from content companies in Malaga to explore possibilities for co-productions, especially European ones. One of the biggest attractions of the 4K Summit is the 'networking' and the meetings between managers of large technology companies and those of audiovisual content, but Medina Media, organizer of the event, also wanted to offer the possibility of following the conferences, in English and Spanish, by paid streaming.

In this way, those professionals, producers, engineers, professors, consultants, filmmakers or university students, from any country in the world, who have not been able to travel to Malaga, will be able to follow the entire 4K Summit agenda by streaming from the official website of the event.