NHK is advancing its research and development efforts on SUPER Hi-VISION (SHV) broadcasting system with a successful transmissions of SHV content over cable. A joint experiment to test the transmission method was recently performed together with Nihon Network Service (NNS) of Kofu City, Yamanashi Prefecture.

SHV content includes way too much information for transmission on any single extant cable TV channel, since it has 16 times the number of pixels of HD.

For the test transmission, the companies used a newly developed transmission system using multiple vacant channels. This transmission system is a technique for separating the SHV signals at the cable station (point of origin) for transmission on several different channels and recombining them correctly at the receiver (point of reception). This makes it possible to transmit SHV signals without any need to alter existing cable TV facilities.

The test was performed using multiple vacant channels on cable TV facilities in operation in Yamanashi Prefecture and confirmed that compressed, recoded SHV signals could be transmitted this way.

NHK is pushing forward with the development transmission, compression, storage and display systems that would advance the early introduction of SHV broadcasting.