Five ways the Japanese are technically better than us

By Ian Morris on 09 October 2008, 5:58pm

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HD is established in America and in Europe we're starting to get our first taste of the glory of watching TV in glorious high definition. Not so in Japan: they've had HD for so long they sneer at 1080p and laugh in derision at 720p.

Japan's earliest HD was analogue in nature and had a resolution of 1035i, a refresh rate of 60Hz, a 16:9 picture and even 48kHz 16-bit stereo sound. Launched in the late 1980s with the name Hi Vision, the signals took up more space than could be provided via terrestrial broadcast, so signals were sent via satellite.

To give you an idea of how backwards we are in comparison, Sky launched its analogue TV service on 5 February 1989 in the UK -- we didn't get HD until May 2006. Even now, we're only transmitting 1080i, which must have Japanese HD fans crying with a mixture of laughter and pity. We don't even broadcast Hole in the Wall in HD.

These days Japan is all about ultra high-definition TV. With a 33-megapixel image and frame sizes of 7,680x4,320, this system is 16 times more detailed than 1080p and glories in the name Super Hi-Vision. The sound system needs to be pretty good to back it up, so the audio is presented in 22.2, which features ten speakers at ear level, three below ear level and nine somewhere near the ceiling. It should start broadcasting in 2015, by which time 1080p may even be available in Britain.