WOWOW, a Japanese premium pay TV broadcaster, recently live streamed a musical performance in real time using MQA audio with HD video.
Virtuoso marimba player, Makoto Nakura, performed a selection of Bach repertoire in Tokyo’s stunning Hakuju Hall. The audio was captured at 192/24, encoded in MQA in real time, and encapsulated concurrently within the HD video file to deliver the highest quality live stream to both onsite and remote audience members. MQA’s technology enables a 192/24 file to be ‘folded’ into a smaller file of 48/24 which is the standard for broadcast video.
“It makes no sense that audio quality still lags behind, while video is achieving higher definition with 4k and 8k resolution display,” says Hideo Irimajiri, senior expert, engineering division and project lead at WOWOW.
The performance was streamed in real time using MPEG-4 ALS lossless technology (developed by NTT SMARTCONNECT), which supports bit-perfect PCM data transmission.Â
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