The opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was one of the most anticipated events of this year. In Japan, the lucky few were able to see it in ultra-high 8K resolution with 22.2 surround sound. This subsequently resulted in the first pirated copy of 8K to appear on pirate sites, which is a major milestone in itself.
Attracting thousands of millions From the eyes of the world, the Summer Olympics are the most watched sporting event.
While sporting achievements are the main focus, the opening ceremony attracts one of the largest audiences. This was no different last Friday when Tokyo 2020 officially opened.
In the past, we have also noticed a massive interest in the Olympics on various pirate sites. In 2008, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was downloaded. million times through torrent sites, for example.
Four years later, The Pirate Bay joined when the site renamed itself "Olympic bay, โProviding users with a direct link to the newly uploaded torrents for the London 2012 games.
For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, we haven't noticed a lot of activity on torrent sites. However, the opening ceremony and sporting events are hacked on streaming sites, especially when cheap legal alternatives are lacking.
Despite the low buzz of the Olympic torrents, there is still one important milestone to report. A few days after the Olympics began, an 8K HLG copy of the 22.2 surround sound opening ceremony began circulating on a private torrent site.
As far as we know, this is the first time that a conventional transmission has been copied at this quality. The release comes from the TrollUHD group, which is known for their high-resolution releases. The entire ceremony is 135 Gigabytes in size, which means it will take a while to download.
The source of the file is not mentioned, but the HLG format and 22.2 audio match the broadcast specifications of the Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Other countries have 8K streams too, but without audio 22.2.
It stands to reason that the NHK stream is the first major 8K release to be hacked. The Japanese company was the first to start working on 8K video in 1995, which was codenamed 'Super Hi-Vision' at the time. NHK's science and technology research laboratories also developed 22.2 surround sound.
While the first hacked 8K release is a milestone, the expected audience is quite small. Downloading the file, which requires access to a private community, is just the first hurdle. Most people simply don't have the hardware to support playing this type of video and audio.
This challenge is also reflected in downloader comments, where many people indicated that they had a hard time getting it to work.
Over the past few days, the International Olympic Committee has worked hard to remove and block pirated content. This is in line with previous comments, where the organization said it is extremely concerned about hacking. But given the small audience, we don't think 8K worries them too much right now.
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A copy of the NFO file for the release of "Summer Olympics Tokyo 2020 S01E01 Opening Ceremony 4320p HLG UHDTV AAC22 2 HEVC-TrollUHD" can be found here
