Timeline Television helps facilitate the BBC’s live UHD HDR broadcast of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia

Timeline Television delivered the outside broadcast facilities for BBC Sport’s coverage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in HD and UHD HDR.

Timeline’s award winning UHD HDR outside broadcast truck, UHD2, was on site for the duration of the tournament based at the heart of the operation in Moscow’s Red Square. It delivered the BBC Presentation Studio with a simultaneous UHD Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) output for the BBC iPlayer platform. Viewers with a compatible 4K HDR TV were able to watch the World Cup matches in superb UHD HDR, as well as in SD and HD.

A joint partnership between the BBC and NHK over the last few years has led to the release of HLG (or Hybrid Log Gamma). This form of HDR is royalty free and is essentially backwards compatible with non-HDR UHD TV sets.

Prior to the World Cup, Timeline partnered with BBC R&D running various trials at York City Knights R.L.F.C and The Royal Wedding using the Sony PXW-Z450 camcorders as UHD HDR radio cameras. Due to the success of these trials Timeline and BBC were able to provide the FIFA World Cup coverage in UHD HDR.

Six cameras made up the basis of the studio. This was combined with the world feed from each stadium and brought together at Timeline’s operation in Red Square. This allowed the BBC to base its operation onsite and provide a spectacular backdrop to the on-air programmes.

Find out more about Timeline’s outside broadcast services.