MUMBAI: One day ahead of the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show where Ultra HD is set to be a continuing hot trend, Eutelsat Communications has announced the launch Travelxp 4K at its popular Hotbird video neighbourhood. Travelxp 4K has concluded a multi-year contract with Eutelsat to leverage Hotbird’s market-leading penetration into cable and IPTV networks across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Travelxp 4K is scheduled to start broadcasting this month. The channel has selected HEVC encoding with 10bits of colour depth (1 billion colours), at 50 frames per second.

“Travelxp 4K is all about bringing the world to homes in stunning resolution. 10 bit REC 2020 with HLG, HDR will make the viewing experience more immersive and vivid. It’s not just about more pixels in 4K but better pixels. We are proud to reinforce our partnership with Eutelsat and to benefit from their vast knowledge of the Ultra HD broadcasting chain. Joining the Hotbird neighbourhood and gaining access to a unique and ethnically diverse population pool is a natural step for us that will fast-track penetration of Travelxp 4K into homes across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East,” said Travelxp 4K CEO Prashant Chothani.

Available in seven languages, Travelxp 4K, features hundreds of hours of world class travel programs filmed all over the world.

The 4K channel follows the success of Travelxp HD, which offers 100 per cent originally-produced premium travel and lifestyle programming distributed to over 50 million homes globally. It will also broadcast in 10bit REC 2020 colour space using the new HDR (High Dynamic Range) standard developed by the BBC and NHK that creates richer and more dynamic images by increasing the contrast ratio between the lightest and darkest areas of the screen and expanding the volume of colours displayed. This standard uses HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma) technology, enabling legacy Standard Dynamic (SDR) displays to decode the HDR standard.

“The launch of Travelxp 4K is new evidence of the move by content producers to Ultra HD. Their trust in Eutelsat reflects our commitment to delivering service that guarantees viewers an enriched and unrivalled Ultra HD experience. We are proud to support this new channel and look forward to accelerating its distribution across the vast footprint provided by our Hotbird video neighbourhood,” added Eutelsat chief commercial and development officer Michel Azibert.