Sony bring 4K World Cup to a London Cinema

Sony F55 Football Match

Sony is filming three of the World Cup games in 4K and now it has been announced that two of the three games will be shown to an invited audience in a London VUE cinema (Westfield near Shepherds Bush)

Sony has teamed up with IDC, Eutelsat and DSAT Cinema to make the live 4K screenings happen. Eutelsat will downlink the signal coming from Brazil at its teleport near Paris. It will then uplink it to the EUTELSAT 5 West A satellite for direct reception by the cinema. At the cinema the signal will be decoded using a professional satellite receiver provided by IDC which will deliver the decoded audio visual content to the Sony SRX-R320 4K theatre projector and the theatre audio system.

Sony have been blazing a trail in the field of live 4K by making the first 4K cameras that were ready for 4K live broadcast and also actually working to make 4K live event broadcasting to cinemas happen both with the 4K Warhorse broadcast and now with the World Cup broadcasts. As cinema and Television continues to merge we can expect to see more and more of these live broadcasts to cinema and they seem likely to become a significant part of the cinema landscape.

Access to the screenings is by invitation only, but Sony are also going to be showing 2014 World Cup highlights in selected stores across Europe, so you can experience the 4K football experience on their BRAVIA X95 and X9 televisions. Hopefully by the time the next World Cup rolls around you will be able to downlink the football matches live on your own 4K television.