The BBC has kicked off its ambitious trial of Super Hi-Vision, an incredible new broadcast technology that delivers pictures 16 Times sharper than high definition.

Trialled alongside the London 2012 Olympics, the BBC and its broadcast partner, Japan's NHK, believe that Super Hi-Vision - and not 3D - is the "future of television".

Unfortunately, though, don't expect to have a telly capable of watching the footage in your home just yet, as the service is not expected to go into consumer launch until at least the next decade.

It is without doubt that Super Hi Vision is a quite incredible television viewing experience. After watching pre-recorded footage of Danny Boyle's glittering opening ceremony on an 85-inch specialist Sharp LCD television - among just a handful of its type in the world - it was easy to see the difference in quality from normal HD.

Imagine the moment you saw true native HD pictures; the visual jump from standard definition. Times that feeling by 16 and you have Super Hi-Vision. Add in 22.2 multichannel audio using full surround sound speakers and you have a pretty tasty audio/visual combination.

Super Hi-Vision is not 3D. There are no graphics or objects coming out of the screen. Rather, the broadcast technology pulls you into the picture with its level of detail and scale, particularly in live viewing.

We joined the BBC for only the fourth live broadcast using a workable Super Hi-Vision set up (the first was for the London 2012 opening ceremony on Friday).

The corporation has set up three specialist viewing theatres (essentially mini cinemas) at its refurbished Broadcasting House hub in London, Pacific Quay base in Glasgow and at the National Media Museum in Bradford to show off the footage (live pictures are also being beamed to Tokyo and Fukushima in Japan during the Games, and Washington in the US).

Using just three cameras placed at the Aquatics Centre at the Olympic Park, London, in essentially locked off wide shots, the Super Hi-Vision coverage is basic when compared to HD (more than 60 HD cameras are currently placed at the centre). But the BBC believes that the detail is what really sings.

Almost like being in the swimming venue, your eye was drawn to all the little movements in the crowd; someone opening a bag of crisps, a cameraman getting ready for broadcast, an official looking bored.

On its own, the picture is impressive, almost 3D in the way it wraps around the human eye - albeit on a huge screen. But it is the audio that ices the cake. 22 speakers placed all around the viewing theatre transmit the roar of the crowd and the droning thump of the music. The BBC has also decided to include no graphics or commentary on the feed, so all you get is what the people there are experiencing, albeit without the addition of 'smellovision'.

At an earlier showcase session at BBC Television Centre, the BBC said that the Super Hi-Vision trial is part of its experiments in "immersion" around the broadcast experience.

Rather than 3D, the BBC feels that Super Hi-Vision is the "end state" of immersive viewing and where the vector will ultimately go. Essentially, new technology in the television world is like placing big bets in a very long game; and the BBC clearly believes this is a horse worth backing.

You certainly can't buy a Super Hi-Vision-enabled television set in the shops now, but the BBC feels that you will within a decade or so, and it wants to be at the forefront of the revolution.

Britain and Japan are suitable partners for this experiment. The last London games was host to the first outside broadcast in 1948; the 1964 Tokyo games saw the first full colour TV coverage and live satellite feed to the USA; and then at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, NHK ran the first experiments in high definition broadcasts.

NHK started developing Super Hi Vision way back in the late 1990s and delivered its first broadcast in 2001 - footage of a mother and child outside one of its laboratories in Japan. It hopes to have a domestic service ready in Japan by 2020.

The BBC is less bullish, offering no firm indication as to when we might also have the tech in our homes. Instead, the corporation sees this is as a learning experience both about Super Hi-Vision, and ways to move a massive amount of data around easily and effectively.

This is because the numbers for Super Hi-Vision are currently quite frankly frightening.

Even compressed the signal runs at half a gigabit per second, and the BBC turned to JANET, a high bandwidth network used by major public institutions, to operate the trial without overloading its other services.

As the feed is 16 times sharper than HD, the BBC and NHK are using 16 HD recorders, while 8 dedicated encoders split the feed into two IP streams for delivery. After some persuasion from the BBC, NHK agreed to bump the frame rate from 60 to an incredible 120fps.

An uncompressed feed for Super Hi-Vision, as is delivered to the head of the Olympic Broadcast Service (OBS) organisation at the Olympic Park, runs at an eye-watering 85 Gbps.

Everything is prototype in the operation. In excess of $10m of NHK's Super Hi-Vision equipment - bespoke kit that is claimed to be the only of its kind in the world - has been shipped to the UK for the Games.

Some of it is at the Olympic venues, mostly the cameras and audio/visual trucks, but there is also a makeshift studio set up at BBC Television Centre, including the main editing and payout facilities.

In the absence of a big screen and a specialist projector, you will need a full 8K television to watch the action, delivering the equivalent of about 32 megapixels at a screen resolution of 7680 x 4320 - and probably the surname Zuckerberg or Gates to afford it.

Mass production of Super Hi Vision will, of course, bring the costs down of sets and production equipment, meaning the technology will come within the reach of the average consumer.

That may be a few years away, but it should be noted that the first HD broadcast tests were launched at the Summer Olympics 28 years ago and it has taken up to recent years for HD to really take hold. Hopefully, though, we won't have too long to wait to get this incredible new technology.

The BBC Broadcasting House Super Hi-Vision screenings are said to be oversubscribed, but there are apparently still tickets at Pacific Quay and the National Media Museum. Please see the BBC ticketing website of NMM site for details.

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