The 2022 Qatar World Cup can be followed in 4K in Italy

The most important football event of the year will be broadcast by Italian Radio and Television, via satellite. RAI 4K will broadcast 56 of the 64 matches in 4K format, confirms Tonio Di Stefano, director of Networks and Platforms at RAI and president of UHD Forum Italia.

Cristiano Belt, Global SVP – Eutelsat Professional Video, added that “The World Cup will be available in native 4K mainly on satellite through the Tivùsat platform, which is basically free.”

Di Stefano who will be a speaker at the 4K HDR Summit 22 which will take place in Malaga, recognizes that “for Italy and for RAI, with its 4K channel, football is the best application for the 4K format.” "We will broadcast 56 of the 64 matches in 4K. We have not been able to broadcast them all, because there are matches that are being played at the same time and we have had to choose. We cannot duplicate the broadcast in 4K."

In addition, Di Stefano has confirmed that the main transmission of the Qatar World Cup in 4K will be via satellite: "We will use the RAI 4K channels on Tivùsat, LCN number 210. That is, we will use the satellite as the main platform for the transmission. in 4K We will also use the RAI 4K transmission on HBBTV with the RAI application (RaiTV+)."

Since the Italian soccer team is not competing in the World Cup in Qatar, Italy has had to reinvent itself to create an attractive format for users. The 4K format plays a very relevant role there, Di Stefano acknowledges: "If we talk about the Italian team playing the World Cup, we would crush the network in 4K. But the Italian team is not in the 22nd World Cup, so we want to do an experiment to surprise users with these transmissions, especially for IP transmission."

Finally, for Di Stéfano, these challenges that arise from Italy, such as the broadcast of the World Cup in 4K, aim to ensure that “4K is, from now on, the new normal, but for them we must move towards the good dissemination of the technology.”

The World Cup by Eutelsat in 4K

Cristiano Benzi, Global SVP – Professional Video at Eutelsat, who will also be present at the 4K HDR Summit 2022 in Malaga, has also confirmed that “RAI will broadcast the Qatar Football World Cup in 4K via satellite through Tivùsat, the free-to-view satellite platform for the Italian market.”

The collaboration between Eutelsat and RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana to boost 4K broadcasting began in 2016 when 7 matches of the UEFA Euro 2016 Football Tournament were broadcast via satellite on RAI4K, a channel that at the time was event-activated. Since then, RAI has made RAI4K a permanent satellite channel through TivuSat, broadcasting content ranging from fiction, series and live sporting events. RAI was “probably the first major public service channel in Europe to decide to invest in 4K with a permanent 4K channel,” said Cristiano Benzi, who also wanted to highlight the “brave decision to broadcast the World Cup in native 4K.”

Receiving the Qatar Football World Cup in 4K will be quite simple for TivuSat users, it will just be a matter of having a 4K TV with a compatible TivuSat smart card or a TivuSat 4K satellite receiver.

For Benzi, this historic event of broadcasting the World Cup in 4K is further proof that the old continent is committed to UHD: “Without a doubt, it is further proof that Europe is committed to 4K.” “Italy is one of the strongest market countries in Europe with a lot of appetite for 4K transmission and 6 UltraHD channels transmitted on TivuSat,” he concludes. .