Eutelsat partners with Vatican Television Centre for first worldwide Ultra HD transmission

Capacity on three Eutelsat satellites mobilised for live coverage of opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s in Rome to mark beginning of Jubilee Year of Mercy

Paris, Rome, 3 December 2015 - The ceremony of the opening of the Holy Door on 8 December, that marks the beginning of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, will be the first worldwide Ultra HD broadcast via satellite. The event is being produced by the Vatican Television Center with the support of Eutelsat, Sony, Globecast and DBW Communication.

This unprecedented initiative in the broadcast industry will use C-band resources on EUTELSAT 8 West B for coverage of Europe, Africa and South America, EUTELSAT 113/117 West for North and South America and EUTELSAT 172A for Asia and Oceania.

The live satellite images of the ceremony will be shown on two screens placed in the Paul VI Atrium in the Vatican. The Ultra HD images will also be available on a Direct-to-Home basis via the 4K1 channel broadcast from Eutelsat’s HOT BIRD video neighbourhood. Italian satellite TV homes with compatible devices will be able to follow the event in Ultra HD through Tivùsat which recently added Eutelsat’s 4K1 channel to its platform. In France, the ceremony will be broadcast on the FRANSAT Ultra HD channel via the EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite.

This worldwide premiere will be routed through four teleports, with operations centralised from Eutelsat's teleport in Rambouillet, near Paris. Two mobile units located in the Vatican and operated by Globecast will manage uplinks of images filmed in Ultra HD and HD by DBW Communication. The Ultra HD signals, shot with 19 Sony cameras, will be compressed using the HEVC standard and encoded using the latest tools provided by Ericsson, NTT Electronics and Thomson Video Networks.