It’s not quite been the summer of 4K as it was when the Tokyo Olympics took place. While the BBC presented the Wimbledon tennis tournment in 4K via iPlayer, Euro 2024 was only shown in HD HDR.
Will you be able to watch the Paris Olympics in 4K HDR or stream it at 1080p HDR? Read on to find out
You can catch the Olympic action from Friday 26th July running all the way through to August 11th.
How to watch the 2024 Olympic Games in 4K HDR
For those watching in the UK, we have three broadcasters who’ll be relaying the action from Paris 2024: BBC, Discovery+ and Eurosport.
Unlike Euro 2024, you will be able to watch the action in UHD with HDR. To do so you’ll need access to the Eurosport linerar channels, which are available through pay-TV broadcasters such as Sky (last we checked the Eurosport 4K channel was 906).
For the Tokyo Olympics you could also watch the dedicated Eurosport 4K channel by pressing the red button on channel 410 and 411, but we’d need to double check if that’s still the case for the Paris Oympics.
However, that’s the only way you’ll be able to watch the Paris Olympics in full fat 4K HDR.
Discovery+ will have all the events available via streaming but it will not be broadcasting in 4K, just HDR. According to Cordbusters, this is due to the sheer volume of events being shown and rather than limiting some events to 4K, the decision was made to show all in HDR. Sky TV customers will have access to the Discovery+ standard plan as part of their subscription.
4K/HDR streams are exclusive to Eurosport and Discovery+, which means that the BBC’s production of the Olympics will be in HD SDR. So no HDR streaming over iPlayer unfortunately.
What do I need to watch the Olympics in 4K HDR
To watch in 4K, you will need a 4K TV to do so. That TV will also need to support the HLG standard but that shouldn’t be a problem as HLG HDR is supported as standard across all 4K TVs.
If you have access to pay-TV services such as Sky and Virgin, you will need a HDR ready Sky Q box, Sky Stream or Glass TV to gain access to Eurosport’s coverage of the games. Virgin Media customers will need either the V6 box or the TV 360 streamer.
