The most recent widespread change in broadcast quality for LED displays has been the adoption of 4K video resolution, which offers nearly four times the visual fidelity of 1080p high definition.
There are two primary standards used for 4K video; there is the Digital Cinema Initiatives-led DCI 4K, which has a resolution of 4096×2160 pixels, and the 4K Ultra HD television resolution, which is 3840×2160.
Much like how HD can trace its history back far further than one might expect, the first device that could display up to 4K resolutions was the Hitachi ARTC HD63484 from 1984, which could display monochrome still images up to HD resolutions.
The earliest cameras that could film in 4K were released in 2003 with projectors being offered as early as 2004, despite the lack of content available; even cinemas would not start projecting films at 4K resolution until 2011 and it would take until Netflix before customers would have a large catalogue of UHD content.
The first 4K live broadcast tests would be in 2013, where public viewings of both the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2014 FIFA World Cup in host city Rio De Janeiro would be broadcast in UHD, but it would take until 2018 for all the matches to be produced in 4K.
Instead, the first football match widely broadcast in UHD was the 2015 FA Community Shield match between then-Premier League Champions Chelsea and then-FA Cup winners Arsenal, broadcast on the UK’s only UHD channel, BT Sports Ultra HD.
Despite the live broadcast truck only being completed five days before its inaugural broadcast and the risks involved in running two completely separate broadcasts of the match, nothing seemed to go wrong.
BT ran a standard HD broadcast, complete with their studio setup, but for the 4K broadcast, everything ran natively at 3840×2160, including having a completely separate half-time analysis from the match commentators, instead of returning to the HD studio.
This was important, in no small part because the UHD stream ran at 50 frames per second as opposed to the standard 25, which meant that all of the action felt smoother and retained its detail.
Ultimately, the project was a success and UHD remains the standard to this very day.